The sisters walked together to the side of the pallet bed, and sate down side by side, took hold of each other's hands, and looked each other in the face, but without speaking a word.

In this posture they remained for a minute, while the gleam of joy gradually faded from their features, and gave way to the most intense expression, first of melancholy, and then of agony, till, throwing themselves again into each other's arms, they, to use the language of Scripture, lifted up their voices, and wept bitterly.
Even the hardhearted turnkey, who had spent his life in scenes calculated to stifle both conscience and feeling, could not witness this scene without a touch of human sympathy.

It was shown in a trifling action, but which had more delicacy in it than seemed to belong to Ratcliffe's character and station.

The unglazed window of the miserable chamber was open, and the beams of a bright sun fell right upon the bed where the sufferers were seated.

With a gentleness that had something of reverence in it, Ratcliffe partly closed the shutter, and seemed thus to throw a veil over a scene so sorrowful.
"Ye are ill, Effie," were the first words Jeanie could utter; "ye are very ill." "O, what wad I gie to be ten times waur, Jeanie!" was the reply--"what wad I gie to be cauld dead afore the ten o'clock bell the morn! And our father--but I am his bairn nae langer now--O, I hae nae friend left in the warld!--O, that I were lying dead at my mother's side, in Newbattle kirkyard!" "Hout, lassie," said Ratcliffe, willing to show the interest which he absolutely felt, "dinna be sae dooms doon-hearted as a' that; there's mony a tod hunted that's no killed.