At length June arrived; and though winter lingered in _spates_, the song of the skylark and the thrush heralded the spring. When the dream-like voice of the cuckoo should be heard once more, Peter and Margaret had determined to take a long summer trip. They were to go first to Perth, where Captain Thorkald was stationed, and then to Glasgow and see Ronald. But God had planned another journey for Peter, even one to a "land very far off." A disease, to which he had been subject at intervals for many years, suddenly assumed a fatal character and Peter needed no one to tell him that his days were numbered.
He set his house in order, and then, going with Margaret to his summer dwelling, waited quietly. He said little on the subject, and as long as he was able, gave himself up with the delight of a child to watching the few flowers in his garden; but still one solemn, waylaying thought made these few last weeks of life peculiarly hushed and sacred. Ronald had been sent for, and the old man, with the clear prescience that sometimes comes before death, divined much and foresaw much he did not care to speak about--only that in some subtle way he made Margaret perceive that Ronald was to be cared for and watched over, and that to her this charge was committed.
Before the summer was quite over Peter Sinclair went away. In his tarrying by the eternal shore he became, as it were, purified of the body, and one lovely night, when gloaming and dawning mingled, and the lark was thrilling the midnight skies, he heard the Master call him, and promptly answered, "Here am I." Then "Death, with sweet enlargement, did dismiss him hence."
He had been considered a rich man in Orkney, and, therefore, Ronald--who had become accustomed to a Glasgow standard of wealth--was much disappointed. His whole estate was not worth over six thousand pounds; about two thousand pounds of this was in gold, the rest was invested in his houses in Kirkwall, and in a little cottage in Stromness, where Peter's wife had been born. He gave to Ronald £1800, and to Margaret £200 and the life rent of the real property. Ronald had already received £1400, and, therefore, had no cause of complaint, but somehow he felt as if he had been wronged. He was older than his sister, and the son of the house, and use and custom were not in favor of recognizing daughters as having equal rights. But he kept such thoughts to himself, and when he went back to Glasgow took with him solid proof of his sister's devotion.