The young man smiled as he helped her out at the Camerons' gate. He could not help seeing that she was concealing something beneath her shawl, and was as frightened as though it had been a dynamite bomb. He was amused, and wondered, as he always did when he met Miss Arabella, what the queer little body was thinking about. He never dreamed that his conduct could have had the smallest effect upon her odd behavior, so blind was he to the far-reaching influence of all human action, good or evil.
Her heart once more in her mouth, Miss Arabella sped up the Camerons' lane to the back door. Old lady Cameron was seated by the sitting-room window, knitting. She wore her best black dress and her lace collar with the big cairngorm brooch; for the minister and his wife were expected to tea. She tapped upon the window-pane with her knitting-needle, and smilingly beckoned Miss Arabella to come in by the front way. But she shook her head and sped on. She darted up the steps and into the kitchen, without knocking. Elsie, in a trim cotton gown and a spotless white apron, was setting the tea-table; and in a warm corner behind the stove Uncle Hughie, crippled with a bad attack of rheumatism, was rocking in his old arm-chair, and singing the "March o' the Cameron Men."
"Hoots! toots! Come away, Arabella! Come away!" he cried. "Eh, hech! And would you be coming over in all the rain? Well! well! well! and that would be kind, whatefer."
Elsie put down the pitcher of milk she was bringing from the pantry and came forward to remove the visitor's dripping shawl.
"Don't, Elsie, don't!" whispered Miss Arabella, clutching it tighter. "Come on upstairs. I want to tell you something—something awful."
Elsie's big eyes opened wide. "Is anything wrong, Arabella?" she whispered.
"I—I don't know. No; but somethin' awful's happened, or goin' to happen—I don't know which."
Without another word the girl opened the door leading to the hall. She looked in at the sitting-room door as she passed.
"Mother, Arabella's coming upstairs with me for a few minutes," she called. "We'll be down soon."
She said no more until they were in the privacy of her own bedroom. She placed the trembling visitor in a chair by the window, where occasional bursts of sunlight came through the soft muslin curtains. Then she drew up another chair and sat close beside her.