The Last of Their Race

by Annie S. Swan

"Murderer!" she said. "Don't come a step farther. You have no right in this house, which you have destroyed!"

Malcolm looked thunder-struck, and the sight of Rosmead a few steps higher up the stair did not help to lessen the mystery.

"Why, what has happened, and why is Mr. Rosmead here? What is it?" he demanded peremptorily.

Rosmead hastened past them and went out by the door without a word. He knew that the time had come for him to go--that with what now passed in the Lodge of Creagh between the brother and sister no stranger might intermeddle. But he left the woman whom he had learned to love--left her with a pang.

Rosmead was no fool, and he guessed that the letter that had been in the General's dead hand must, in some way, have concerned his son, and that, whatever news it contained, it was the shock of it that had killed him.

This also Isla knew, and Malcolm would have to answer to his sister, to his own conscience, and to his Maker for his sin.

Rosmead's heart was heavy as he took his horse from the queer little stable of Creagh, and, mounting, rode slowly down Glenogle. The mystery of life, its awful suffering--so much of it preventible--oppressed his healthy mind like a nightmare. And always it was the innocent and the good who had to bear the full brunt.

As he rode through the clear beauty of the summer morning he took a vow that he would do what he could to make up to Isla Mackinnon--that if she would permit him he would devote his whole life to making her happy, to effacing the memory of the bitterness that her young life had known.

Only he must not be in too much haste, because the quick pride of her would resent any assumption of right on his part. Isla must be slowly and laboriously wooed. But how well worth the winning! Rosmead's outlook upon life had undergone a swift change, and now it was bounded east, west, north, and south, by the deep quiet eyes and the beautiful face of one woman.

The love that had come to him late would be the great passion of his life--a passion such as few men know. He had kept himself singularly pure and wholly detached from women. His capacity for affection had never been dissipated by lighter loves. He brought a virgin heart to lay at the feet of the woman he loved. And, in spite of the sorrow and the woe to which he had been a witness, life promised fair to Peter Rosmead that summer morning as he rode through Glenogle and watched the sheen of the sun upon hill and water and heard the birds singing their heart out in the crystal clearness of the upper air.