That answer was very slow in coming. The posts to the north of Scotland were tardy and uncertain at that time. Days had grown into weeks since the Professor's funeral, and still we waited. One evening, however, old Susan answered Master Caleb's low knock at the kitchen door with unwonted quickness, scarcely waiting for him to speak before she thrust a letter into his hand. 'Just you read it for yourself, Master Morton; I brought it away without Mistress Dolly's knowing of it, on purpose for you to see it. Some one ought to know how they treat the poor lamb.'
Master Caleb tore it open, without stopping, in his eagerness, to consider whether he had a right to read it or not. The letter was not long. A formal condolence on the severe bereavement she had sustained; a regret that he and his only brother had never been enabled to meet again after their long separation,—a hope that she found herself as well as could be anticipated under the melancholy circumstances, and at the end, a half-expressed chilling invitation to make his house her home until, as no doubt would be the case, she could enter into some permanent arrangement better suited to her.
'What did she do?' asked Master Caleb, looking up with blazing eyes.
'She just fetched a long sigh,' said the old woman, 'a long, long sigh!' and she put the letter into my hands, and said, 'See, Susan; he does not want us.'
Master Caleb had meant to stay in Morechester that night, and had left me, as he sometimes did when he was away, to sleep at the schoolhouse.
Mrs. Janet and I sat up rather late that evening. She was sewing, and I, on my best behaviour, was reading 'Baxter's Saint's Rest' aloud. We were both thunderstruck when the door opened suddenly, and Master Caleb appeared, dripping wet, for it was raining heavily, and looking as pale as death.
'Caleb! you here!' exclaimed his sister, getting up in astonishment to meet him. 'What brings you home on such a night as this? why, how wet you are!'
'I am come,' Master Caleb said, disregarding the hand she laid on his drenched coat-sleeve, 'because I cannot bear it any longer—because I want your counsel—because she is left all alone, and has no friend—no friend in all the world but us!'
'You speak of Dorothy Bruce,' said Mrs. Janet, slowly.
'She is so lonely,' he went on unheeding, 'and I want to comfort her, but I do not know how, and I cannot tell how to help her. Janet, you must tell me what I can do for her—not because she is alone, and that I pity her, but, Janet, because I love her.'