THE MINISTER’S WIFE

EVERETT’S LIBRARY, 7D. NET.

THE MINISTER’S WIFE

CHAPTER I

The Glebe Cottage at the head of Loch Diarmid was something between a primitive cottage and a little house of gentility, commonly called by that name. The hill-side of which it was the sole inhabitant had once been ecclesiastical soil belonging to the church of Lochhead, which was about a mile distant across the braes—and still, so far as this one dwelling was concerned, retained the name. It had originally been a building of one story thatched and mossy; but lately a few additional rooms had been built over one part of it, and covered with respectable slates. It was composite and characteristic, a human thing, growing out of human rules, and consequently more picturesque than if it had been the result of the most picturesque intention. The thatched end of the cottage was surrounded by no enclosure; the soft rich mossy grass of the hills broken by great bushes of heather pressed up to its very walls; while the other half, or western end, was cultivated and formed into a pretty homely garden. Hardy roses and honeysuckles, and a wavering wealth of fuchsias, hanging rich with crimson bells, clothed the southern front and west end—the refined part of the cottage. On the mountain side, there was nothing but the rough, low whitewashed wall, the overhanging thatch, the heather within a yard of the house. And here, some thirty years ago, lived a family of Diarmids, as curiously varied in internal constitution as was the aspect of their home.

The father of the household had been a soldier ‘in the war,’ and, though little more than a peasant by birth, had risen from the ranks and won his commission by sheer daring and bravery. It is very doubtful whether he was much the happier for it. When he had won his epaulettes another piece of luck befell him: he caught the eye and fancy of a pretty, romantic girl, who married him for his valour and his inches and his red coat. To him she was an heiress, though the actual amount of her wealth was small. Probably he meant, in his gratitude and pride, to be a good husband and live happy ever after, and for this end bought the cottage he had been born in, and added some modern additions to it for the comfort of his lady-wife. But Duncan was Duncan still, notwithstanding his good fortune and his epaulettes; and his poor young wife, finding out her mistake, died at the end of a year or two, after bringing a pair of twin girls into the world. After this Captain Diarmid saw a great deal of service in all quarters of the world, and when he came back married again, a homely ‘neighbour lass,’ and died after she too had become the mother of two children. They all lived together in the Glebe Cottage—two sets of people as different as could well be conceived. During the Captain’s lifetime a certain arbitrary link united them; but after his death it was not expected by the country-side that there could be any further family union between the twin sisters to whom everything belonged, and the homely widow with her girl and boy. It was a wonder to many of the genteel people of the neighbourhood when it was discovered that Margaret and Isabel meant to permit their father’s widow, Jean Campbell, to share their house. Even old Miss Catherine at the Lochhead gave it as her opinion that ‘Jean and her bairns had no claim on them.’ But the sisters, it was evident, thought differently, though it was not without a certain conflict within and between themselves that the decision was made. They were then between nineteen and twenty, two girls who had grown up as Nature would, with little training of any description, but with that curious refinement of race or tradition which is so often to be found in those who, springing from a higher origin, have yet lived chiefly among the poor. They were ‘ladies born,’ as was acknowledged by ‘all the Loch’—and universal respect was paid them; although they were not, except on formal occasions, dignified by the title of ‘the Miss Diarmids,’ but were generally distinguished only as ‘the Captain’s Margaret,’ and ‘the Captain’s Isabel.’ Margaret had fallen into bad health some years before her father’s death, and sickness and a more elevated type of character had made her as much the elder of the two as if her seniority had been a matter of years instead of minutes. It was she whose will had prevailed in respect of her stepmother.

‘She was his wife after all,’ Margaret had said, ‘and they are our brother and sister. We have no right to forget that——’

‘She had no right to be his wife!’ said hasty Isabel, with sudden tears. ‘If she were a poor body in a cot-house do you think I would grudge her anything? but I cannot bear it, because she’s thought to belong to us—her and those weary bairns.’

‘They are my father’s bairns,’ said the invalid; and then she added after a pause, ‘And I hope they are God’s bairns, Bell—and you too.’

‘Me!’ said Isabel, looking round, as with a hasty determination even to deny this bond of union; but when the meaning of the words reached her, a shade of compunction, a gleam of sorrow, shot one after another over her face which expressed all she thought, ‘Oh, Margaret, no like you,’ cried the impulsive girl, ‘no like you!’

‘Dinna break my heart,’ said the other, falling in her emotion into the soft vernacular which both in their composed moments avoided; ‘are we not all God’s bairns? But we shut our hearts and shut our door the one on the other; the like of us can be grand and proud and high—but the like of Him was neighbour and mair to all the poor folk. We ay forget that.’

‘You never forget,’ said Isabel; ‘I’ll do what you like, my dear, my dear! I’ll serve them on my knees night and day if you’ll but stay and be content.’

‘I’m very content to stay,’ said Margaret, with a smile,—‘too content. It’s not for me to judge; but, Bell, we’ll never be parted if I stay or if I go.’

To this the other girl made no answer, but fell down on her knees beside the invalid’s chair, and hid her face in her sister’s dress, weeping there in silence. Margaret laid her thin hand upon the bright hair and smoothed it tenderly. She was no older than the creature at her feet, and yet it seemed to be her child, warm with all the passion of life, whom she was caressing in her calm and patience. And she smiled, though Isabel saw it not.

‘I’ll go no further than to Him,’ she said, ‘and you’ve ay access to Him at all times. I’ll take a grip of His robe that’s made of light, and I’ll hear your voice when He’s listening to you. I’ll tell Him it’s my sister:—as if He needed us to tell Him,’ she added, with a soft laugh of contempt at herself; and her eyes lighted up in her pale face, and went away far beyond Isabel kneeling at her side, far beyond the homely walls and little humble house.

By and by Isabel’s weeping ceased, and she became aware, by her sister’s silence, and by the chill touch of the hand which rested on her head, that Margaret’s mind had stolen away from all their trials and troubles. She rose up softly, not disturbing her, and throwing one piteous look at the pale, soft countenance, withdrew to a corner. One or two hot, hasty tears fell on the work she had taken up mechanically. It was little Mary’s black frock, her other sister—Jean Campbell’s little girl. That was how Isabel succinctly described the children; Jean Campbell’s bairns; and was that to be all she would have for a sister when God had His way?

This was how it came to be settled that Jean Campbell and her bairns should remain in the Glebe Cottage. Jean had few qualifications for the office of guardian to these girls, but she was in some sort a protector to them, and took care of their goods and managed their humble affairs. She was not a woman of such elevation of character as might have fitted her to take the command of the situation; but she was one of those kind and faithful souls who so often hide the sweeter qualities of their nature under an almost harsh, quite uncaressing and undemonstrative appearance. She, too, had mother-wit enough to see through the Captain, though no doubt his rank had dazzled her at first; but now that Captain Duncan was gone, she would have defended his memory to her last breath, and she was very good and tender in her own way to his daughters. She accepted her position loyally, without any attempt to better or change it. The state of Margaret’s health was too apparent to leave bystanders in any doubt: and Jean was often uneasy—it is impossible to disguise the fact—as to what might become of herself and her children in such a case.

But in the meantime she was very kind to her husband’s daughters, and cared for their goods as if they had been her own, and was a faithful servant to them. She and her children were as comfortable in their end of the cottage as were Margaret and Isabel in their half, to which by times the gentlefolks of the district would come as visitors, out of consideration for the good blood which ran in their veins by their mother’s side. It was Isabel who was the representative sister out-of-doors, and whom Miss Catherine carried with her to return calls, and make such return as was possible to the civilities of her neighbours and connections. But it was Margaret who was the queen within and received all the homage. Day by day, however, carried the elder sister more out of the range of worldly affairs. It was, as Jean said, ‘a decline’ that had seized her. Not a violent disease, but a soft fading. The current of her life kept shrinking into always a narrower and a narrower channel. She still went every day to a certain spot on the hill-side above the house, where a little burn went trickling from stone to stone, and a mountain-ash drooped its leafy branches over a little green knoll. For many years it had been her daily custom to sit and ponder, or to pray in this silent grassy place. It was long before she knew that anyone watched her daily pilgrimage: but nothing escapes the keen inspection of a rural community. When it had just begun to be a toil to her to seek her little oratory, a poor mother from the village, who had been hanging wistfully about, accosted her with a humble petition that she would ‘think upon’ a suffering child ‘when she gaed up bye to the brae.’ It was too late then for her to change or to hide her custom, and by degrees she became used to the petition. She went up with tremulous, feeble step day after day, bearing upon her tender soul the burden of other people’s troubles, penitences, and fears. Not a soul in the parish would willingly have gone that way to disturb the saintly creature, as she knelt under her rowan-tree, with the soft burn singing in her ear, and the soft breeze blowing her hair; and offered her offering and made her intercession. They were stern Puritans in the village below, and rampant Protestants; but they sent their white spotless virgin to intercede for them, with a faith which no doctrine could shake.

She was stealing down softly in the slowly falling twilight, when the country was brightening into spring, six months after her father’s death. She had a warm shawl wrapped closely round her shoulders, and her step was not quite steady as she left the soft grass of the hill-side for the path. It was but a few yards to the cottage, but her strength was no more than equal to the exertion. There were two people standing waiting for her near the door; one of them a tall, vigorous, old lady, wrapped like herself in a large, soft, black and white shawl, who stood talking, with some eagerness, to the clergyman of the parish, a fresh, rural, middle-aged man, with clear eyes, clear complexion, and a general distinctness about him. It was Miss Catherine of the Lochhead who was speaking to the minister. Family names were unusual in the parish, for the population, with some trifling exceptions, were all Diarmids. Miss Catherine was in some respects the squire of the district. Her brother, it is true, was the real laird, but he was seldom at home, and Miss Catherine reigned in his stead. She was discussing the great topic of the moment with Mr. Lothian; and the two were not quite agreed.

‘Don’t speak to me about miracles,’ said Miss Catherine. ‘I’m not one of your believing kind. I don’t deny that some of the things are very surprising, but they’re all to be accounted for. We are surrounded by surprising things. I never lift my hand to my head, but when I think of it, it is a wonder to me—but as for direct miracles——’

‘Here is Margaret,’ said the minister; ‘we’ll ask her; you all believe her better than you’ll ever believe me.’

Margaret came up with her slightly faltering, uncertain step as he spoke; and the two gazed at her with that mingled awe and pity which a creature standing on the boundary between life and death naturally calls forth in every sympathetic soul. Mr. Lothian drew her hand through his arm as her father might have done.

‘You should not walk so far till you get stronger,’ he said. Margaret looked at him with a smile, and shook her head.

‘You know I will never get stronger,’ she said. ‘It is not like you to say what you don’t mean. But you’ll come in. My feet are failing already, and it’s not often we see Miss Catherine here.’

‘My dear,’ said the old lady, speaking quickly as if to shake the tears out of her voice, ‘the horses are all busy at the plough, and I’m a poor walker. I always hear how you are all the same.’

‘You’re vexed to look at me,’ said Margaret. ‘I know what you mean. You’re like to break your heart when you see my face; but I’m not grieved for my part. I cannot see what great difference there can be between this world and the other. God is ay the same. I would like to see Isabel and know that the poor bairns are doing as they ought——’

‘Oh, Margaret, do not break my heart with your bairns,’ cried Miss Catherine, with tears in her eyes. ‘It’s you I’m thinking of—I care nothing for other folk.’

‘You would hate me if I thought that,’ said Margaret, with her soft smile; ‘and I would be very glad to have your advice. I’m troubled about Jamie’s education. Isabel is young; she’ll maybe not think as I do. I am very anxious for your advice.’

‘We were talking of different things,’ said Mr. Lothian, leading the invalid into the house. ‘We were discussing what has happened in the country-side. If anybody can convince Miss Catherine it is you, Margaret. She will not believe the story everybody is full of—though I saw Ailie with my own eyes, one day helpless on her bed, the next walking down the hill-side far more strongly, my poor child, than you.’

‘It was hysterical; nothing will make me believe different,’ said Miss Catherine; ‘fanciful illness, fanciful cure. I’m not gainsaying the facts, but you’ll never get me to believe it was miraculous. What is Ailie Macfarlane that God should do miracles for her? If it had been Margaret here——’

‘But He knows I want no miracles,’ said Margaret; ‘I’m very content with what I get. I’m fond of both the bairns myself; but I give most to little Mary; not that she deserves it most, or that I like her best, but because her nature’s ay craving. It’s the same thing. Ailie craves, too, and God knows the nature He gave her; but for me—He sees I’m content.’

‘And you would be content if you were cut in little pieces for Isabel and Jean Campbell’s weans,’ cried Miss Catherine, with an indignation that was assumed to hide something else. ‘It takes little to content you.’

‘Everybody is so good to me,’ said Margaret. ‘You are not so good to Ailie Macfarlane. You take up her little words, and you’re angry at God for doing more for her than for me; but I take it as a compliment, for my part,’ said the girl, with a smile. She was so near her Father in Heaven, that she spoke of Him almost as she would have done of a father on earth.

‘Well—well,’ said Miss Catherine, impatiently, ‘we must all believe just what you like to tell us. Where is Isabel? I think she might be here to look after you and keep you comfortable instead of wandering all the day among the hills.’

‘She is never away from me,’ said Margaret, warmly; ‘she would carry me in her arms if I would let her. I sent her out for change, poor Bell! It would be a hard thing if I was to let her put all her happiness on me.’

‘Better on you than on that English lad,’ said Miss Catherine, with heat, ‘that nobody knows. In my day, we were never allowed to speak to a young man till his kith and kin were known. You think you’re wiser now—but I wish it may come to no harm,’ said the old lady. She was an old woman given to opposition, but the strength of her indignation now lay in the absolute necessity she felt to do or say something which should not drop into weak lamentation and tears.

Margaret made no answer. She bent back in her invalid chair, and threw off the shawl which wrapped her, and untied the bonnet which surrounded her delicate face like a great projecting frame. As for the minister, his face flushed, and his hands grew restless with agitation; though on the surface of things it would have seemed that he had very little to do with the matter.

‘There is no meaning in it,’ said Mr. Lothian; ‘they’re children both; she is not the one, especially now—No, you need not think of that.’

And with this speech he rose up and went to the window, and gazed out, not knowing what to say. Miss Catherine held up her hands commenting on his excitement as women do—half contemptuous, half amused—

‘What is it to him that might be her father?’ she said, leaning over Margaret, in a whisper. And Margaret smiled with the indulgent quiet of old age.

‘Let them be,’ she said, softly; ‘God will guide it His own way. I’m not afraid for my Isabel. When I’m away you’ll see what is in her. My shadow is ay coming in, though you don’t think it, between her and you.’

At this moment the minister turned round, as with a little impatience, and interrupted the side-talk.

‘And as we speak of her, here comes Isabel,’ he said, with a hasty sigh. Both the women knew at once more distinctly than if he had said it, that the ‘English lad,’ young Stapylton, the one idler of the country-side, was with Isabel. As the young pair approached, the elder visitors prepared to go away. Miss Catherine was absorbed in her anxiety and grief for Margaret, but other feelings stirred in the mind of her companion. He was eager to leave the cottage before Isabel and her escort should appear, and hurried the old lady in her leave-taking.

‘We must not tire her out,’ he said, pressing Margaret’s hand with a certain petulant haste, which she forgave him. It was true he was old enough to be Isabel’s father; but even that reflection, though he had often insisted upon it in his own thoughts, had not moved him as it ought to have done. He could not wait to meet her, but nodded his head with a poor assumption of carelessness, and hurried Miss Catherine down the opposite path. Even Mr. Lothian’s secret sentiments had been discovered, like other things, by the country-side; and the old lady perceived what he meant, and dried the tear in her eye, and looked at him with a certain grim, half-pitying smile about the corner of her mouth.

‘Isabel will think we are angry,’ she said, watching him with a certain interest—almost amusement in his suffering; ‘though, poor thing, I don’t know that she is to blame.’

‘Miss Catherine, you forget that an innocent girl should not be spoken of so,’ said the minister, with a heavy sigh.

‘I forget nothing, Edward Lothian—nor that you, like an old fool, are breaking your heart about her; a girl that might be your daughter—a mere silly bairn!’

‘Hush!’ he said. A faint colour had crept upon his face. He made no attempt to deny the accusation. ‘I hope I am not a man to break my heart, as you say, for anything in the world,’ he added, after a pause, ‘as long as there is the parish, and my work;’ and the poor man unconsciously once more rounded his sentence with a sigh.

CHAPTER II

It was almost twilight when Isabel and Horace Stapylton entered the little parlour where Margaret lay back wearily in her chair, longing for rest and the silence of the night; but she smiled softly at her sister, and half rose from her seat, weak, but courteous to acknowledge the presence of the stranger. Stapylton was the son of an English squire, who had been sent to Scotland to study agriculture, and from the high farming of Lothian had found his way to Ayrshire on the score of cheesemaking, and thence to the other side of the Loch to Mr. Smeaton’s great stock farm. It had been autumn when he came, and the grouse was a still more potent attraction. And after a while he had found his way over the braes to see Mr. Lothian, who had once been tutor to the young earl (before he came to be marquis), and had many English friends. A Scotch Manse is the home of hospitality, and young Stapylton found himself comfortable and saw Isabel, and discovered many attractions in the place; and, after a succession of flying visits, had settled down as Mr. Lothian’s permanent guest. In the primitive world of Loch Diarmid he was distinguished by his nationality, which placed him on a little pedestal apart from all competitors. He was ‘yon English lad’ to the prejudiced multitude; and more kindly bystanders entitled him ‘the young Englishman at the Manse.’ He was a ruddy, well-looking, not highly refined type of man; but he was a stranger and ‘English,’ and surrounded with a certain agreeable half-mystery in consequence. His accent had a sound of refinement and elevation in it to ears used to the broader vowels and ‘West-country drawl’ of the vernacular. And to Isabel Diarmid he had a charm more subtle even than the attraction of singularity and unlikeness to the multitude. He was the first man who had openly and evidently owned her power as a woman, which of itself is a great matter. It did not matter where she went, he knew of it as by magic, and was always at hand, a kind of persecution which is not always disagreeable to an inexperienced girl. It gave to Isabel that vague, sweet sense of being one of the princesses of romance which tells for so much in a young life. She went in now, to her sister, with life breathing about her, with the wild perfume of the summer blossoms, the heather she had been brushing against, the bog-myrtle she had been treading under foot, like an atmosphere round her; and love untold and hope without bounds, all tender, vague, and splendid, encircling her like the air she breathed. This was the difference between the two sisters, and it was a strange difference. If Margaret had been an ordinary invalid it would have been a touching and melancholy contrast. But as it was the advantage was not all on her sister’s side.

‘We’ve been hearing of Ailie Macfarlane,’ said Isabel, eagerly; ‘I have seen her. If it is faith that has cured Ailie, why should you lie there so weak? Oh, my bonnie Maggie! If it was the like of me it would be different; but why should Ailie be well and strong and you lie there?’

‘I think because it’s God’s will,’ said Margaret: ‘but Miss Catherine has been here, and I have done nothing this hour but talk of myself; it is not the best subject. Mr. Stapylton, I thought you were leaving the Loch? There is not much to take up a young man like you here.’

‘There is more here than anywhere else in the world,’ said young Stapylton; ‘I should like to stay all my life—I hate the very thought of going away.’

‘But your friends are all in England,’ said Margaret. ‘and your life—it is not easy for me now to feel what life is. I am like one lying by a riverside, seeing it glide and glide away. I can do little but speak, and that’s poor work. But you that are young and strong are different—you and Isabel. You should not put off each other’s time.’

‘We met by chance,’ said Isabel, with a sudden blush; ‘and I have done all I had to do. There are times when one cannot work; it’s gloaming now and the day is past. There is a meeting down at the Lochhead with Mr. Lothian and all the ministers. But I would rather stay with you. She’s coming in from the Lochhead, and the bairns are ready for their supper—and, Margaret, we’ve wearied you.’

She was Jean Campbell, the stepmother to whom Isabel was less kind and tolerant than her sister, and whom presently they heard come in with a little commotion into the large low kitchen where the family took its meals. Little Mary had been with her mother, and by and by a little knock at the parlour-door announced her approach. The lady-visitors were very great people to the child, and only she of ‘the other family’ ever ventured uninvited into that splendid apartment. She was like Isabel, though Isabel was indignant to be told so—with two large excitable, brilliant brown eyes, which at this moment blazed out of the little flushed and agitated face. She had been at the meeting, and had heard all, and felt all, with precocious sensibility. While Isabel went out under pretence of helping her stepmother, but in reality to accompany her visitor to the door, the child knelt down on the stool she had been sitting on by Margaret’s side, and began her little passionate tale.

‘It was like in the Bible,’ said little Mary; ‘in the middle of the reading the Holy Spirit came. O Margaret, I couldn’t bear it! Ailie gave a great cry, and then she spoke; but it wasna her that spoke: her countenance was shining white, like the light—just like the Bible; and she spoke out like a minister, but far better than the minister. It was awfu’ to hear her; and, O Margaret, I couldn’t bear it; I thought shame.’

‘Why did you think shame?’ said Margaret. ‘You should have been glad to hear, thankful to hear—even if it was too high for a bairn like you to understand.’

‘It wasna that,’ cried the child. ‘I thought shame that it wasna you. Why can Ailie do it, and no you? And they say you are as good as Ailie, and as holy; but they say you havena faith. O Margaret, would you let her ay be the first, and a’ the folk going after her? I canna bear it! I have faith mysel. You could get up this minute, and go and speak like Ailie, if you would but have faith.’

Margaret put her arm softly round the excited child, and the little thing’s agitation found vent in tears. She put down her head on her sisters shoulder, and sobbed with childish mortification and wounded pride. Whether any echo of that cry woke in the patient soul thus strangely reproached, the angels only know. Margaret said nothing for some minutes; she held the child close with her feeble arm, and calmed and soothed her; and it was only when the sobs were over and the excitement subdued that she spoke.

‘So you think God’s no so kind to me?’ she said softly in the darkness. ‘My little Mary, you are too little to understand. I am not one that craves for gifts; I am content with love. I am best pleased as it is. Ailie and me are two different spirits; not that one is better and the other worse. If we had both been angels, we would still have been different. You are too little to understand. I am not the one to speak and to work; I am the one to be content.’

‘But you shouldna be content,’ said little Mary; ‘you should have faith. O Margaret, I’m little, but I’ve faith. Rise up, and be well and live! They a’ say that to be ill and die is a sin against the Holy Ghost.’

The child had risen up in her excitement, and stood stretching out her little arms over her sister. The room was dark and still, with but the ‘glimmering square’ of the window fully risible, and night gathering in all the corners. Margaret’s form was invisible in the soft gloom; the outline of her reclining figure, the little phantom standing over her, the suggestion of a contrast, intense as anything in life, was all that could have been divined by any spectator. Presently soft hands stretched upwards, and took hold of the little rigid arms of the would-be marvel-worker; and a voice still softer—low like the coo of a dove, came out of the darkness.

Margaret attempted no reply; she made no remonstrance; she only repeated that psalm which is as the voice of its mother to every Scottish child—the first thing learnt, the last forgotten:—

‘The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want,
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green; He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.

Yea, though I walk in death’s dark vale,
Yet will I fear none ill;
For Thou art with me, and Thy rod
And staff me comfort still.’

As the soft familiar voice went on, poor little Mary’s excited nerves broke down. She burst once more into tears, and ere the psalm was ended added her small faltering voice to the low and steady tones of her sister. She was overcome by influences much too exciting to be understood by a child. The little creature yielded, because her physical endurance was not equal to the task she had set herself, but her mind was unchanged. She was impatient, angry, and mortified. Her sister’s rival had triumphed, and little Mary could not bear it. As for Margaret, she rose when her psalm was ended, and took her little sister’s hand and led her into the kitchen, where the family table was prepared. Margaret sat down in the cushioned chair which awaited her, still holding little Mary by the hand. She had to pause to take breath before she spoke, and the child stood by her like an eager little prisoner, with her big eyes shining. Mary’s mind was precocious, and stimulated into premature action by the strange circumstances that surrounded her. She felt as profoundly as if she had been twenty, that while Margaret and Isabel were the Miss Diarmids, she was only ‘Jean Campbell’s bairn;’ and now a sure way of obtaining individual distinction, the highest of all grades of rank, had burst upon the child; therefore she was in no mood for the half-reproof which she foresaw was to come.

‘I think little Mary is too young for the meetings,’ said Margaret; ‘not that I mean she should not learn; but she is very quick and easy moved, and she is but a bairn.’

The stepmother looked up with a little flash of not unnatural suspicion.

‘She is no a lady born like you,’ said Jean, hastily; ‘but in my way of thinking that’s a reason the more why she should learn.’

‘But no when she is so young,’ said Margaret. ‘Her little face is all moving, and the bairn herself trembling. It’s her nerves I’m thinking of,’ said the sick girl, with a deprecating smile; at which, however, Jean only shook her head, as she looked at the child’s glowing, startled face.

‘Nerves! I never heard of nerves in her kith or kin,’ said the woman; and then added, ‘You may speak to Isabel about nerves, Margaret; she’s been greeting about the house like an infant, and tells me “naething,” when I asks what ails her. It’s to her you should speak.’

Margaret looked at her sister across the table, and shook her head. ‘You all take your own way,’ she said, with a touch of sadness, ‘though you say it is to please me. I am thankful beyond measure that you care for the kirk and for prayer, but little Mary might be as well if she was left with me. We are great friends. And, Isabel, you’ll make your bonnie eyes red, but you’ll no give up a hard thought or a hasty word; and yet that would be worth more than miracles. Jamie, come and tell me what has happened to-day on the hill.’

‘Me!’ said Jamie, looking up with his mouth full of porridge, and his eyes large with wonder. ‘There’s never naething happens till me.’

‘Is that a way to answer when Margaret speaks to you?’ cried his mother. ‘But he’ll never learn manners—never, whatever you do. I think whiles he’s no better than a natural born.’

‘But he knows every creature on the hill, and every bird on the trees,’ said Margaret, ‘and is never cruel to one of them. That’s grand manners. He’s good to everything God has made. Jamie, did you see the minister to-day?’

‘Hunting flowers on the hill,’ said Jamie promptly, thrusting away his thick matted white hair from his round, staring, wondering eyes.

‘So mony great things going on at his very side, and him gathering a wheen useless flowers! And it was well seen on him,’ she cried; ‘there was Mr. Fraser of the Langholm and Mr. Wood on the other side of the hill, that took it a’ upon themselves; though Ailie’s in our parish, and a’ the stir. And our ain minister without a word to say! I’ve ay said he was ower much taken up with his flowers, and his fancies; no, but what I think it would be a far better thing for Isabel——’

‘Nothing about me, if you please,’ said Isabel, flashing into sudden wrath; and then she gave Margaret a guilty look. As for Margaret she but shook her head softly once more.

‘He is not so sure in his own mind,’ she said ‘that is what makes him silent. Mr. Wood and Mr. Fraser are different kind of men. Some can just believe without more ado, and some have to think first. Isabel, if you’re ready, it is the bairns’ bedtime, and we can go.’

‘You’re awfu’ anxious to-night about the bairns,’ said Jean, still irritable and displeased.

‘She is so little,’ said Margaret, stooping over little Mary to kiss her. ‘If you would but believe me, and no take her down yonder. How can she understand at her age? and she has nerves as well as Isabel. Will you promise me not to think to-night? but just to fall asleep, little Mary, as soon as you’ve said your prayers?’

‘I’ll pray for you, Margaret,’ cried the child, with the tremulous tones of excitement, ‘and you’ll, maybe, be well and strong like Ailie the morn’s morn.’

‘Then wait till morning comes,’ said Margaret, ‘for to-night I am wearied, and I want to rest.’

Thus they separated, the sisters with their candles retiring to their little parlour—the lights in the window of which were watched by more than one watcher from far, with tender thoughts of the young inmates. But Margaret was weary—too weary—for the counsel she had to give. She went to bed leaving Isabel, the latest of all the house, sitting alone, in a fever of thought which she could now indulge for the first time. The lonely little window sent a feeble ray upon the hill-side road, and was visible on the Loch to such a late hour as seldom witnessed any window alight in Loch Diarmid. There were many causes for the tumult of fancies which absorbed the girl and made her forget the progress of time. The very air around her was full of excitement; her sister for anything she knew might the next day rise healed from her bed. She herself might be free as the winds to choose her own life; and it was at the very climax and crisis of this life that Isabel stood.

CHAPTER III

It will have been guessed by what has been already said that one of the periodical fits of religious excitement to which every primitive country is liable, had lately taken place in the parish of Loch Diarmid. There had been a general quickening of popular interest in religious matters. Religion had taken a new meaning to the fervid primitive mind. A miraculous world, all glowing with undeveloped forces, rose up around them. The end might be that the Lord would come, bringing confusion to His enemies and triumph to His people, or, at least, that such supernatural endowments would come as should make poor men and peasant maidens the reformers of the world. At the first outset there was something splendid, something exalting, in this hope. And the strange story which a short time before had run round the Loch as by magic gave it instant confirmation. Ailie Macfarlane, a young woman known to be hopelessly ill, who had been visited, and sympathised with, and ministered to by all the kindly gossips of the parish—whose parents had been condoled with on her approaching loss—and whose symptoms were as well known to the community as their several and individual sufferings, had risen up all at once from her sick bed and gone out on a journey at the call of faith. The astonished parish had suddenly encountered her afoot upon its public roads, yet knew with a certainty beyond all power of deception, that the day before she had been a helpless sufferer.

Such a wonder had an immense effect upon the popular mind, as indeed a thoroughly ascertained fact of the kind would have had anywhere. Whether or not she might turn out a prophetess, as she claimed to be, this wonderful preliminary was certain. She had risen up and walked like the paralytic in the Gospel, in defiance of all physicians and human means of cure, and was visible among them in restored health and activity a creature who had been on the verge of the grave. Throughout the whole country, great and small, without exception, were occupied by Ailie Macfarlane’s wonderful recovery. Nobody could deny, and nobody could explain it.

The thrill of strange expectation which thus ran through the parish was, as may be supposed, more strongly felt by Margaret’s friends than by any other of the rustic neighbours. The strength of their love for her tempted them almost to accuse, and certainly to reproach, the wilful sufferer who would not avail herself of her known favour with Heaven and be healed like the other. It was this certainty that set her sister free (or at least, so she thought,) to entertain visions of happiness to herself independent of Margaret. On the very next evening, when the sun had set upon the loch, but still lingered red upon the further hills, Isabel resumed the subject which had occupied her thoughts. Could she do it? Sunder her future life from her past at a leap—set herself free from all the present claims upon her—could it be possible to do it? or, on the other hand, would she, could she give up her love?

Isabel’s brain had grown giddy by dint of thinking, when suddenly she heard a little gravel thrown on the corner of the parlour window—the signal that she was waited for without. She threw her shawl round her hastily, drawing it over her head, and stole out. Margaret was not there to be disturbed. She had gone to her place of prayer some time before, and was still in that silent nook, with the sweet rowan-tree blossoms scenting the air round her. Isabel stole out with a certain guilty sense that her errand was not one to be approved by any beholder. Some way up, beyond the cottage, among the great bushes of whims and heather, lingered a single figure. Few passengers cared to wade among that thick undergrowth; here and there it was treacherous moss in which the foot sank; here and there a young birch waved its brown locks pathetically in the evening breeze; and the heather-bushes, with their gnarled stalks like miniature oaks, were not very pleasant to walk among. But the two who had appointed their meeting there did not care for the heather stalks, or the trembling moss. They were thinking but of themselves—or, rather, as they would have said, of each other.

‘Have you thought it all over?’ said the young man, eagerly. ‘Isabel, you cannot mean to cast me off. Don’t tell me so; don’t look as if you could be so cruel. I could bear anything for your sake, but that I could not bear.’

This was said in haste and excitement, after a long pause; for Isabel had nothing to say to her lover, but went on with him in silence, turning her face away from his anxious looks.

‘I never thought of casting you off,’ said Isabel; ‘how could that be? If we were to be parted for ever and ever, I could never cast you off; but I canna do it, Horace—I canna do it. You must ask me no more.’

‘Why cannot you do it?’ he said. ‘What is to prevent you? I have told you everything, Isabel. They will say I am too young to marry if I ask them at home—and they don’t know you. If my mother knew my Isabel, it would be different. And if we were but married, it would be different. Once married, everything would come right. And what matter is it if we were married in private or in public? It is always in a house here in Scotland. I only ask that one little sacrifice. Is it much to ask when I am ready to do anything—everything——’

‘But there is nothing for you to do,’ said Isabel; ‘it would all be me. You are making me deceive them now. I never said what was not true all my life before; and now I’m false to everybody—everybody but you.’

‘It would put an end to that if you would do what I say,’ cried the young man. ‘We should go away; and then when we came back, everybody would know. I am asking so little—only to have it done privately. We would come back, and all would be right. My people would make up their minds to it when they could not help it; and yours——’

‘Ah!’ cried Isabel, ‘to speak to me of running away and being married, and my Margaret—my only sister, lying dying! How can you name such a thing to me?’

‘Now, Isabel,’ said young Stapylton, ‘this is nonsense, you know. If you break my heart, what good will that do to her? It will not cure her. Besides,’ he added with suppressed scorn, ‘you know yourself—you have told me—that Margaret might be well if she liked. She is very good, isn’t she? better than that girl whom you are all talking of—and she ought to be cured. If she keeps herself ill on purpose, it is cruel and selfish of her. Why should she spoil your life and her own too?’

‘How dare you speak like that of my sister?’ said Isabel, with blazing eyes, ‘and her so near the angels? Oh, Horace, you would never think so of Margaret if you were really, really caring for me.’

‘If you can doubt me, I have no more to say,’ said the young man; and then they started apart, and the briefest lovers’ quarrel ensued—a quarrel soon made up in the inevitable, universal way, strengthening the position of the one who attacked, and weakening that of the defender. Stapylton drew Isabel’s hand through his arm when she gave it him in reconciliation and led her through the heather farther and farther from home. ‘You are never to utter such cruel words any more,’ he said, ‘nor so much as to think them. Am not I ready to give up everything for you? The old Hall, and my father’s favour, and all I might have if I pleased. It is different from Loch Diarmid, Isabel; but I care for nothing but you; and you will not make the least little sacrifice for me.’

‘I would make any sacrifice—any sacrifice; there is nothing so hard but I would try to do it—for you, Horace,’ said the girl with tears.

‘And yet you will not come away with me for two or three days, and be made my wife! What are you afraid of, Isabel? Can you not trust me? Do you think I would harm you? Tell me what it is you fear?’

‘Fear!’ said Isabel surprised, lifting her eyes to his face. ‘When you are with me what can I fear?’

‘Then why don’t you trust me?’ said the young fellow, with a sudden flush on his face.

‘I trust you as I trust myself,’ said Isabel. ‘Could I care for anyone as I care for you, and not trust him? It is my own folk I am thinking of. I cannot deceive my own folk. Oh, dinna ask me, Horace, and I will do anything else in the world.’

‘Your own folk!’ said Horace, with a little contempt; ‘Jean Campbell, perhaps, that is not good enough to be your housekeeper. I am deceiving father and mother for you, Isabel, and I never grumble. To think of your father’s widow in comparison with me!’

‘I think of Margaret,’ said Isabel, ‘my twin sister. Oh, never ask me more! It would kill my Margaret. Me to deceive her that has been part of herself. Oh, Horace, dinna ask me! I would die to please you; but not even to please you, would I hurt her. I canna do it. I would sooner die!’

Young Stapylton’s face grew red all over with a passionate, furious colour: then he drew his breath hard and restrained himself. For one moment he grasped Isabel’s hand, which rested on his arm, with a firm pressure, which would have made her scream had she been less startled. Then he loosed it with a strange little laugh which was not pleasant to hear.

‘Isabel.’ he said, ‘if you don’t make me hate Margaret before all’s over, it will be a wonder. Do you forget what you have told me? or do you think I forget? Would I ever ask you to leave your sister, if things were here just as they are in other places? Have you not told me that the age of miracles has come back; and don’t I know that there is nobody in the place so good as Margaret? Why should she die when the rest recover? It stands to reason; and you are not going to spend all your lives together, you two. Of course you will marry some time: and so will she—when she is better,’ the young man added after a pause.

‘Margaret marry? Never, never!’ cried Isabel ‘You cannot understand; and you dinna say that as if you believed it either—but like a scoffer,’ she added, ‘that thinks nothing is true.’

‘I think my Isabel is true,’ said the young man, ‘and I believe anything she says.’

‘Oh, no me, no me,’ cried Isabel, with tears, ‘dinna call me true. I am false to everybody belonging to me. I am cheating and deceiving all my own folk. I am true to nobody but you.’

‘After all, that is the most important,’ said Stapylton, with an attempt at playfulness. ‘Isabel, am not I the first now? the first to be loved—the first to be considered? I know you are to me.’

Isabel made a long pause. She wandered on with him, for they were walking all the time, with her eyes bent on the sweet grass she trod under foot and the heather-bushes among which they picked their way. After a long interval a ‘No’ dropped from her lips. ‘No,’ she went on, shaking her head slowly. ‘I must not think of you first—not now. I must think of Margaret first. Dinna be angry, Horace. It is but a year since I saw you first, and she has been my best friend and my dearest for twenty years. And you are well and strong, and she is dying; and you have plenty of friends, and she has no one but me. I must think of her before you.’

‘Then you don’t love me!’ cried the young man. ‘I see how it is: you have a liking for me—that is all. You are pleased to keep a man dangling about at your orders, waiting for you, as they say here, at kirk and market; but as for loving—giving up all and following your husband—you’re not the girl for that, Isabel. I see: you’re Scotch, and you’re cautious; and you won’t take one step till you see what is to be the next; and as for speaking of love——’

Isabel looked up at him nastily with indignant, tender eyes, wounded to the heart. She drew her hand out from his arm. Not love him, and yet deceive her friends for him and leave Margaret alone the long, slow evening through! The colour rose violent and hot to her face. But she was very proud as well as very warm in her affections. She would not explain. Turning away from him as she disengaged her hand, her eye suddenly caught the dreary blank of the moor around them, from which the light had faded. Never before in all their rambles had they wandered so far. The cottage was invisible, as well as every other habitation. The night was falling. It was time already for the family supper, and Margaret, all alone, would be waiting for her sister, while Isabel was far from home, in the dark on the moor, with only her lover beside her. A little cry of consternation burst from the girl’s lips. Had she had wings, she could scarcely have gone back quick enough to save Margaret from anxiety and wonder, and perhaps fear. Her companion saw her start, her painful surprise, and forgot his upbraiding. He seized her hand again suddenly, and drew it almost with a degree of force within his arm.

‘Isabel,’ he cried energetically, ‘it’s night, and nobody will see us; and we are as near to Loch Goil as we are to the Glebe—I think nearer, Isabel. It’s but to go on, now you are so far on your way. There shall be nothing to worry, nothing to frighten you. Let us go down on the other side, and get it over. It is not a great matter, if you love me. Margaret will be anxious, but we’ll send her word to-morrow. I know a good woman to take you to. I know a quiet way down, where nobody will see us. Isabel, Isabel! you don’t mean to say you’re angry. You are not afraid of me?’

‘I’m feared for no man,’ cried Isabel, drawing herself away from him, and turning back with startled, gleaming eyes. She made no further answer, but folded her shawl close round her, and turned her back upon her eager, pleading lover. He had to follow her as she made her way with nervous haste back to the highroad which crossed the hill. Even then he did not think his cause lost. The night was growing dark, and he had brought her far from home, and the road led both ways. He went after her, entreating, praying, using every art he knew.

‘They will be anxious now as they can be,’ he said; ‘they will think we have gone; they will be better pleased to see you come back to-morrow my wife than to have all the parish telling that you and I were here so long on the hill. Isabel, it will be all to do over again, anxiety and everything. The worst is over. Come; an hour’s walk will bring us to Loch Goil.’

He put his hand on her arm as he spoke. They were on the verge of the highroad, which by this time was scarcely distinguishable from the moor. He had followed closely across the heather, as she sped along, keeping by her side, urging his anxious arguments. Now, for the first time, he put out his hand, drawing her closer to him, drawing her the other way, on the downward path which led to another life. Isabel snatched herself away and stood facing him for a moment. It was a moment of breathless suspense to both. He knew her so little that he believed she might still decide for him; and held his breath in expectation: while the indignant, proud, tender creature stood looking at him, uncertain whether she should part with him for ever, or throw herself into his arms in a momentary storm of love and upbraiding, making him understand at once and for ever the possibilities and impossibilities in her nature. She stood lingering for that moment of doubt—and then she turned suddenly from him without a word, and drew her shawl over her head and fled homewards like a deer or a child of the hills. While he stood still in consternation he heard her rapid feet scattering the pebbles on the road, going as fast as a mountain-stream. The young man made a plunge after her; but she was already far in advance, and had known the path all her life, and there was neither credit nor advantage in pursuing a runaway maiden. He came to a dead pause and ground his teeth in vexation and disappointment. He was passionately ‘in love’ with the girl, and yet he called her names in the bitterness of his mortified feelings. ‘I’ll have her yet, all the same, whether she will or no,’ he said with fury, as he found himself thus left in the lurch. As for Isabel, she took no time to think. She knew every step of the road along which she rushed in the darkness. Her heart was hot and burned within her; if it was anger, if it was excitement, if it was misery, she had no time to decide. The only thing before her was to get home. If she could but reach home, and find Margaret tranquil, as was her wont, then the whole matter should be ended for ever. This was what Isabel was thinking, so far as she could be said to think at all.

When she came at last within sight of the dim light in the kitchen window, a low lattice, out of which the lamp was faintly shining like a glowworm on the ground, Isabel’s flying pace was quickened. She could distinguish already some vague outlines of more than one figure round the door. Had the occasion or her feelings been less urgent, she would have paused to recover her breath, to put back her shawl, and end her precipitate course with an attempt at decorum; but she was too much agitated now to think of any such precautions. They heard her rapid feet as she began to hear the soft sound of their voices in the summer gloom; and Jean Campbell had but time to call out ‘Who goes there? is it oor Isabel?’—when the girl rushed into the midst of them, breathless, her hair ruffled by the shawl, her face glowing with the unusual exercise, her eyes shining. She rushed into the midst of the little group, catching hold of her stepmother in her agitation to stop herself in her headlong course. And the watchers started and gave place to her with a mixture of joy and terror.

‘Lassie, you’ll have me down!’ cried Jean Campbell, staggering under the sudden clutch, ‘but it’s you, God be praised. Here’s your sister half out of her mind. And where have you been?’

‘Is Margaret there?’ cried the panting Isabel. ‘And it so late, and the dew falling—and all my fault! But I did not mean it—I never thought it was so late; and then we got astray on the hill; and I’ve run every step of the way,’ cried Isabel hastily.

‘And what were you doing on the hill?’ began the stepmother. Margaret interrupted the expostulation. She put her hand out in the darkness to her sister. ‘I am not able to stand longer—now Isabel’s come,’ she said; ‘I am wearied and faint with waiting—say nothing to-night—the morn will be a new day.’

‘Aye,’ said Jean Campbell to herself, when the sisters had gone in; ‘the morn’s ay a new day; but them that’s lightheaded and thoughtless the night will be thoughtless the morn. Naething is to be counted on with a young lass. She’ll hae her fling though she’s a lady born. And Margaret there, puir thing, that never kent what it was to have the life dancing in her bits of veins! I’m, maybe, hard on her mysel,’ Jean murmured, pausing a moment at the closed door of the parlour. There was a sound of weeping from within, which touched her heart. She listened, hesitating whether to interfere. ‘If she had twa-three words to say to her lad on the hill, there was nae harm in that,’ said Jean to herself; and moved by recollections, she knocked at the door. ‘Lasses, ten’s chappit,’ she said. ‘The bairns are in their beds, and Margaret should ay be bedded as soon as the bairns. As for her there, likely she meant nae harm. Let her gang to her bed and say her prayers, and we’ll think on’t nae mair.’

‘I hope my own sister may say what she likes,’ said Isabel, starting up and turning on the good-natured mediator with her bright eyes full of tears. ‘There is nobody has a right to meddle between Margaret and me.’

‘Oh, hush, hush,’ said Margaret, ‘you two. I am not finding fault with her—and she is not ungrateful to you. It is a thing will never happen again.’

‘No—till the next time,’ said Jean Campbell, closing the parlour door after her with rising irritation. ‘Am I a fool to mind what the silly thing says?’ she said to herself, as she fastened the cottage door. Just then the sound of another foot scattering the gravel on the road came to her ear. With natural curiosity she reopened the door, leaving a little chink by which she could see through. ‘I kent it was him,’ she said triumphantly within herself. Though it was so dark, there was something about young Stapylton’s appearance, as a stranger and foreigner, which was instantly distinguishable to rural eyes. Jean looked on with keen curiosity as he passed. He could not see her, nor could he perceive the loophole through which her eyes watched him. To him the house was all dark and silent, shut up in its usual tranquillity. He paused before it, and inspected it all round, evidently with the idea that Isabel might be lingering outside. When he saw the light in the parlour window, he turned away with an exclamation of disgust, and shook his fist at the house which contained his love. The astonished watcher could not hear what he muttered to himself, nor divine what was the cause of his wrath; but she threw the door open, and shook her fist at him in return, with prompt resentment. ‘It’s a dark night for a long walk, Maister Stapylton,’ Jean called out to him, with fierce satisfaction; ‘and there’s an awfu’ ill bit down there where the burn’s broke the bank. Can I len’ you a lantern till you’re past the burn?’

The young man quickened his steps, and went rambling on detaching the stones down the rugged road with some inarticulate angry answer of which Jean could make nothing. The disappointed wooer was in no very good humour either with himself or the household, which he pictured to himself must be laughing over his failure. Jean, for her part, put up the bolt with demonstration when she had thus gratified her feelings. The ‘lad’ whom his lass had left disconsolate on the hill, was fair game in the eyes of the peasant woman, and the little matter was concluded when he was thus sent angry and humbled away.

But it was not so in the parlour where Isabel was telling her story with many tears. Margaret, whose mind had long been abstracted from all such thoughts, listened with a curious mingling of interest and pain. That it could ever have entered into the mind of her sister to leave her thus suddenly, without warning, was an idea that filled her with consternation. She was silent while the confession was being made, confused as if a new world had suddenly opened up before her. Not a word of reproof did Margaret say; but she listened like a creature in a dream. Love!—was it love that could work so, that could be so pitiless? The virgin soul awoke appalled, and looked out as upon a new earth. Even Isabel did not know the effect her words produced. Her penitence fell altogether short of the occasion. She was sorry for having listened, sorry for having given patient ear for a moment to such a project, but she was not utterly bewildered, like Margaret, to think that such a project could be.

‘And he thought, and I thought,’ cried Isabel, alarmed by her sister’s silence, ‘that you could never be long left when Ailie’s cured and well. He would never have dreamed of it, but that he believed, like me——. Oh, Margaret! it’s slow to come, but it’s coming, you’re sure it’s coming? God would never forsake you.’

‘He will never forsake me,’ cried Margaret; ‘but, Bell, I cannot be cured. That is not the Lord’s meaning for me. And if I had been well, you would have run away and left me!’ she added, with a little natural pang. Isabel could not encounter the wistful reproach in her eyes; she threw herself down by her sister’s side, and hid her face in Margaret’s dress.

‘If you had been well, you would not have minded,’ she sobbed: ‘if you had been well, somebody would have been coming for you as well as for me.’

‘For me!’ said the sick girl—her voice was too soft for indignation, too soft for reproach. ‘Yes,’ she said; after a pause, ‘the Bridegroom is soon coming for me; I hear His step nearer and nearer every day. And, Bell, I will not say a word. It is nature, they all tell me; I am not blaming you.’

‘If you would blame me, if you would but be wild at me!’ cried Isabel, weeping, ‘it wouldna be so hard to bear.’

Margaret bent down over the prostrate creature; she put her arms round the pretty head, with all its brown locks disordered, and pressed her own soft, faintly coloured cheek upon it, ‘It is but God that knows us all, to the bottom of our hearts,’ she said, ‘and He is always the kindest. We are all hard upon our neighbours, every one—even me that should know better and am ay talking. But, Bell, it cannot be well for him to tempt you; you should listen to him no more.’

‘I will never, never speak to him again!’ cried Isabel.

‘No that—not so much as that,’ said Margaret; ‘but he should not tempt my Bell to what is not true.’

And then the penitent girl felt her sister’s kiss on her forehead, and knew herself forgiven, and her fault passed over. She rose grateful and relieved, and the weight floated off her mind. The only one with whom the incident of the evening left any sting was the one who had most need of love’s consolation—the sick girl who loved everybody, and whom even God cast into the background, leaving her in the shade. Poor Margaret went to her rest confused and stunned, not knowing what had befallen her. All were preferred to her, both by man and by God.

CHAPTER IV

Next morning the household in the Glebe Cottage found itself solaced and comforted from the excitement of the night. To Jean Campbell the incident was commonplace; ‘No a thing to make a work about,’ she acknowledged frankly; while even Isabel, except for a certain sense of excitement and giddiness as she settled down to ordinary things, comforted herself, like a child, that the matter was over, and that she should hear no more of it.

When Mr. Lothian paid her his usual afternoon visit, he found the sick girl, as usual, in her invalid chair, with her knitting in her hands. Isabel had left the room only as he became visible on the road, and her work lay in a little heap on the table. He cast a hasty look at it, even at the moment when he greeted the other sister. That evidence of an abrupt departure was of more consequence than it ought to have been to the minister. He shook his head as he sat down by the abandoned work.

‘She need not have run away when she saw me coming,’ he said, with a little sigh. ‘I could have said nothing to anger her, here.’

‘She did not mean it,’ said Margaret. ‘She is hasty, like a bairn. I am afraid sometimes I have made too much a bairn of her. I have grown so old myself, and she is so bonnie and young.’

‘Too bonnie and young,’ said the poor minister; and then he roused himself to a sense of justice; ‘but not younger—nor bonnier either for that matter—than you, my poor Margaret. It is your illness that makes you feel a difference. I remember two years ago——’

‘I would rather forget that,’ said Margaret, with a faint blush. ‘It is not illness, but death, that makes the difference, and sometimes I wonder what will become of her when I’m gone. I feel as if I should always want to take care of Bell, even in Heaven.’

‘It may be so permitted for aught we know,’ said Mr. Lothian.

He put out his hand, and took her wasted hand into his. The first fret that had crossed it for years was on poor Margaret’s brow. To think of her sister as happy eventually, when her own grave was green, was sweet to the dying girl. But the conflict in Isabel’s mind now, of happiness and self-sacrifice, was the hardest burden that had ever fallen on her delicate spirit. It seemed to introduce an alien note in the soft concords of the ending life.

‘Yes, whether or no,’ said Margaret, with a faint smile; ‘and I wish you would preach to me now. I never get to the kirk with other folk. I am growing a law to myself, I fear, instead of minding the true law. Speak to me, for I’m wearied and cannot speak to myself.’

‘It is you that have taught me many a day,’ said the minister; and then he paused, and that pang of pity with which the strong sometimes look on the weak thrilled through him.

‘Margaret,’ he said, ‘you know I cannot speak to you as many can; your sickness comes from the hand of God, and you have never repined against Him. What comes from the clash and contradiction of human feelings is a different burden to bear. It seems a feature in our life that we must go against each other daily, whether we will or no. There is no happiness but has trouble in its train. What is joy to her is grief to you. What would be comfort to you, would sicken me and—aye, I will be just to him—one other, with disappointment and pain. The lassie that was married in the village yesterday made her mother’s heart bleed; but her own would have suffered as sorely, and so would the lad’s if she had not married. What can we say? It is not trouble of God’s sending, but the complications of human nature. He looks down from Heaven and beholds and tries the children of men, as says the Scripture. It is the one that bears the heat and the cold, the long calm and the fierce tempest, that is Christ’s soldier; but the cold and the heat, and the calm and the storm, are all natural—not punishments of God, but necessities of the world. We have to brace our minds up to them. It’s a cross world, and its conditions must be borne—I do not say because God sends them of first purpose and will—but always for Christ’s sake.’

In the silence that followed, and which Mr. Lothian made no attempt to disturb, sounds from without made themselves heard by degrees. There came an echo of steps on the road, and voices at the door. Margaret gave no heed, being absorbed in her own thoughts. But the minister, more used to the popular commotion, roused himself, and listened anxiously. Then there was a little parley outside. Mr. Lothian hurried out, to stay, if possible, the visit which he had foreseen. The group at the door was as great a contrast as could be imagined to the calm of the scene he had just left. Isabel stood, with flushed cheeks and clasped hands, before the parlour-door, half barring the entrance, half showing the way. Jean Campbell stood at the door of the kitchen, holding up her hands in excitement, and partial terror. ‘Eh, if it could be—if it could but be!’ she cried. ‘Our Margaret, that was ay a child of God! Oh, Ailie woman, think weel before you disturb her. I’ll no have her disturbed!—but if it was the will of God——’

‘It’s the will of God that brings me here,’ said the young prophetess of Loch Diarmid. She was scarcely older than the patient to whom she came. She stood on the threshold of the house, in simple, ordinary dress a fair Lowland beauty, with abundant light locks, a delicate, half-hectic colour, and blue eyes à fleur de tête, which, in her excitement, seemed absolutely to project from her face. They were the visionary, translucent eyes, not giving out, but absorbing, the light, which so often reveal the character of a mystic and enthusiast. She was no deceiver, it was evident, but believed in her own mission with a fervour which, to some degree, overcame the incredulity of every sympathetic spectator. She moved forward, with that strange directness which only primitive nature or passion ever shows, to the door of the room in which Margaret was. She took no notice of Isabel who stood in the way. ‘It’s in the name of the Lord,’ said the inspired creature. Even the minister, who stood there ready to defend the repose of his friend against all comers, gave way before her with a strange thrill of something like faith. It might be—it was possible—God had employed such messengers before now. A creature spotless, and perfect, and young, in the first glow of love, and energy, and enthusiasm, could any human thing be nearer the angels? And the angels were God’s messengers. Mr. Lothian stood back subdued—his own convictions and strong sense standing him in no stead against the excitement of the moment. Had he opposed her he would have felt guilty. He stood back against the wall and let her pass. ‘If it is of God,’ he said to himself. And she went in as Miriam might have gone with her timbrels—like a figure in a triumphant procession, going on to miracle and wonder in the name of the lord.

Behind her, however, came one who roused no such sentiments in the mind of the minister. This was a man evidently not of Ailie’s rank, nor in any way resembling her, except in the flush of excitement which in him might have gone to any length of fanaticism. His mouth was closely shut; the lines of his face were rigid and strained; his eyes burned with a cloudy fire. Passion, which might almost be insanity, was in his look. The pair were as unlike as if one had been an errant angel astray from Heaven, and the other one of the rebels who fell from them with Lucifer. The minister started and grew red, and put up his hand to oppose the further progress of this unexpected visitor; although it was already very well known that ‘Saul was among the prophets,’ and ‘Mr. John,’ heretofore of a very different character, had entered their ranks.

‘Mr. John, this is no place for you,’ said Mr. Lothian. ‘You have no need that I should tell you that. This is no place for you.’

‘Wherever God’s work is to be done is the place for me,’ was the answer; and the speaker pressed on. He was a powerful man, and a scuffle there might have been fatal to the dying girl; but yet the minister confronted him, and put his hand on his breast.

‘It is not the work of God to disturb his dying saint,’ said Mr. Lothian. ‘She’ll soon be free and in your way no longer. Let her go in peace.’

‘Go?’ cried Mr. John, ‘dying?—never while God is faithful that promised. Stand back and let us in; it is to save her life.’

But it was not this or any more likely reason; it was simply to prevent the noise of contradiction and controversy from reaching Margaret, that Mr. Lothian yielded. He himself followed the stranger into the room, and Isabel crept after him. By this time the sun had set, and the daylight began to wane. Perhaps Margaret had guessed what the interruption meant. She was sitting as she had been when Mr. Lothian left her, with her hands crossed upon her breast, motionless, her eyes fixed upon the soft obscurity that gleamed in through the window. She turned her head half round as they all entered. ‘Ailie, is it you?’ she said. There was scarcely any surprise in her voice. ‘I heard what had happened, and I knew you would be sure to come to me.’

Her perfect quiet, the composure of her attitude, the calm face gleaming like something cut in marble against the grey wall, had a certain effect even upon the young enthusiast. She made a pause ere she began, and her companion, who had been standing behind her, came round to her right hand, and gazed eagerly upon Margaret’s face. The moment she saw him, Margaret, too, was disturbed in her composure; she started and gave a little cry and raised herself up in her chair; while, as for the intruder, he pressed forward upon her with eyes that burned in their deep sockets and an air of restrained passion, before which for the moment the fever of Ailie’s inspiration sank into the shade.

‘Has it come to this?’ he said. ‘And I was never told, never called to her! But, thanks be to God, we are still in time, and the prayer of faith will save——’

‘Mr. John,’ said Margaret, raising herself erect, ‘this is no place for you. Why should you be told or called to me? If Ailie has anything to say I am content to hear her; but you and me are best apart.’

‘Why should we be best apart,’ cried Mr. John, ‘when you know what my heart is? No, I will not go. Be silent all of you; how dare you interfere between her and me? I have come with one of God’s handmaidens to save her life.’

‘Let him be,’ said Ailie. ‘We’ve come here together that we may hold the Lord to his promise. Margret Diarmid, I’ve come to bid you rise up and be strong as I am. O woman! can you lie there and see the world lying in wickedness, and no find it in your heart to throw off the bonds of Satan? Why should ye lie and suffer there? It’s no doctors you want, it’s faith you want. We a’ ken you’re a child of God. Margret, hearken to me. I was like you, I was in my bed, worse than you, and pondered and pondered and kept silence till my heart burned. I said to mysel why was it? and the Lord taught me it was Satan and no His will. Do you think I lay there one day mair? I listened to the voice that was in my ears. I thought no more of flesh and blood; I rose up and here I am. Margret Diarmid, I command you to rise up in the name of the Lord!’

They all gathered close, with an uncontrollable thrill of excitement, to listen to this appeal and to see the result of it. Isabel fell on her knees beside her sister, and gazed at her to see the change, if any came. Ailie, with her hands raised over Margaret’s head, and her face lifted to Heaven, waited for her answer. John Diarmid by her side, with a look of wilder passion still, hung over the group in speechless excitement. Even Jean Campbell behind stood wringing her hands, feeling her heart beat and her temples throb. Was it the Spirit of God that was about to come, shaking the homely room as by a whirlwind? There was a pause of awful stillness during which nobody spoke. When Margaret answered, the bystanders started and looked at each other. The calm tone of her voice fell upon their excited nerves like something from a different world.

‘I hear your voice, Ailie,’ said Margaret, with the softness of a whisper, though her words fell quite distinct and clear upon their ears, ‘but I hear no voice within. Can you not believe that God may deal one way with you and another with me?’

‘God has no stepbairns,’ cried Ailie. ‘Does He love me better than you? O neebors! on your knees—on your knees! Will He no remember His ain word that’s passed to us and canna be recalled. What two or three agree to ask is granted afore we speak. It’s no His consent, but her’s we have to seek!’

Then she threw herself on her knees, with upturned face and hands stretched out. They all sank down around her, filling the darkening room with kneeling figures. Even the minister, whose office was thus taken out of his hands, knelt down behind the girl who took such wild authority upon her, and bent his face into his clasped hands, moved, as only the prevailing excitement of the time could have moved him, by that faint tinge of possibility which was in the air. Isabel, kneeling too, took her sister’s hand, and watched her with an intense gaze which seemed to penetrate to her very heart.

No one in the room except Margaret escaped the contagion of that strange emotion. She had fallen back into her chair in weakness, and gazed at them with calm and pitiful looks, like those of an angel. Hers was the only heart that beat no faster. She lay and looked at them all as a creature past all the storms of life might be supposed to look at those still tossing on its stormy tide. She was not roused by the appeal made to her faith, nor overwhelmed by the fervour of the prayers, the tears, the exclamations, the bewildered, breathless expectations by which she was surrounded. She put one arm softly round Isabel, who knelt by her side, and with her other hand took hold of Ailie’s, which was stretched up over her in entreaty. There seemed to be something mesmeric in the touch of those cool, soft fingers. Ailie’s outstretched arms fell; her eyes turned to Margaret’s face; a strange wonder came over her countenance; her voice died away as if surprise had extinguished it; and then there was again another pause, full of fate.

‘Ailie, God hears,’ said the sick girl; ‘and He will give me life; but not here, and not now. You’re not to think your prayers refused. I’m near to the gate and I can hear the message sent. It says, “Aye, she shall be saved; aye, she shall rise up; not in earth, but in Heaven."’

‘No,’ said Ailie, passionately; ‘it’s no a true spirit of prophecy; it’s an evil spirit come to tempt you. No. O ye of little faith, wherefore do ye doubt? Is the Lord to be vexed for ever with this generation that will not believe? Listen to His voice. Arise, arise! shake off the bonds of Satan. Rise up, and stand upon your feet. Margaret, let not God’s servants plead in vain. Oh, hearken to mo while I plead with you, harder, far harder, than I have to plead with God. Why will ye die, O house of Israel? Rise up and live: I command you in the name of the Lord!’

‘Oh, if you would but try! O my Maggie, will you try?’ sobbed Isabel, clasping her sister closer, and gazing with supplication beyond words in her face.

And the minister lifted his face from his hands, and looked at her; and little Mary, who had stolen in, came forward like a little wandering spirit, and threw herself, with a cry, on Margaret’s shoulder, in a wild attempt to raise her up. This last effort of childish passion was more than the sick girl could bear. She turned round upon them all with a wondering burst of patience and impatience.

‘Is there no one to understand?’ she said, with a plaintive cry, and drew her hands away and covered her face with them in a kind of despair. Even her own had turned, as it were, against her. Her bodily strength gave way; her heart failed her; no response woke in her mind to those wild addresses. That they should leave her alone, alone, was all she longed for—only to be left in quiet, to be at peace.

Then the minister stood up, and took Ailie by the arm. She was shivering and trembling with the revulsion, worn out with her excitement. Her moment of ‘power’ was over.

‘You can do no more here,’ he said, with a thrill in his voice which betrayed how much he himself had been moved. She is worn out, and you are worn out, and here there is no more to say. Ailie, for God’s sake come with me, and disturb her no more.’

‘O friends, it’s the wiles of Satan,’ said Ailie. ‘Oh, to think he should be there! Margret—Margret, how can I leave you to perish! Let me stay by her day and night, and wrestle with Satan for his prey!’

‘You will come with me,’ said Mr. Lothian, firmly, and then the passionate creature burst into choking sobs and tears. Poor Margaret, whose thread of life was worn so thin, whose weakness could so ill bear the struggle, sat in the gathering twilight, and looked on while the prophetess, who had come to heal her, was led, like an exhausted child, from her presence. She thought she was alone, but a sound close to her startled her back again into a little flush of agitation. ‘I am worn and weaker,’ she said, driven to the limit of her powers. ‘Oh, will ye let me be? Whoever you are, leave me and my life to God!’

‘Margaret, it is I,’ said a deep voice close to her ear. ‘Why will you die? Do you know my heart will die with you, and my last hope? Am I to live to curse God? or will you live—will you live, and save a sinful soul? Margaret, because I have been ill to you have pity on me!’

Weak as she was, Margaret started from her seat. ‘John Diarmid,’ she cried, ‘how dare ye speak to me? Am I the one to bear the blame of your blessing or your misery? If you had the heart of a man, you would go miles and miles rather than enter here.’

‘I would lie at your door like a dog,’ said the man in his passion, ‘rather than be banished like this; but I’ll go away to the ends of the earth, Margaret, Margaret, if you’ll live, and not die!’

‘I’ll do as the Lord pleases,’ said the poor girl, stretching out her feeble hands in the darkness for some support. She was worn out. Before her persecutor could reach her she had sunk upon the floor with a faintness which soon reached the length of unconsciousness. The women, rushing in at his cry, carried her to her bed. She had not fainted to be out of suffering; her heart throbbed against her breast, as though struggling to be free. Poor Margaret! The human passion was more hard to meet than all that went before.

CHAPTER V

Mr. John, whose appearance at the Glebe had thus moved all the spectators, had been for a long time the embodiment of pleasure-seeking and dissipation to the country-side. His had been the jeunesse orageuse, which, as a pleasant discipline and beginning of life, had ceased to be realised on this side of the Channel. A quaint old house on the eastern side of the Loch, and a few hill-sides which had been in the family for centuries, were all his patrimony; but his mother had transmitted a moderate fortune to her only child, which he had got rid of in his younger days in gayer scenes than could be found on the Loch. When he had returned perforce, all his money being spent, to his long-neglected home, Mr. John for some years had taken rank as the Don Giovanni of the district. He had been so far prudent or fortunate as never to be the object of any unusually grave scandal. Miss Catherine, rigid as she was in morality, had not been compelled to shut her doors against her own connection, but had been able to doubt, to extenuate, to find excuses for him. ‘Left to his own will when he was but a callant,’ she would say, ‘flattered and served hand and foot by them that led him away. If I am to shut my doors on the poor lad, where would he get a word of advice, or be shown the error of his ways?’

It was thus that Mr. John, pursuing his pleasures with such daring as was possible, preserved still a shred of superficial character. And then the time had come when vulgar dissipation palled on the man. For a year or two he had partially recovered himself, and turned to a better life; and during this interval it was that he became acquainted with Margaret. Mr. John, whose family was unimpeachable, was a great man to Captain Duncan, whose slender connection with the aristocracy of the district was built more upon the gentility of his first wife than even on his commission. And no doubt a rude attempt at matchmaking had been planned by the old soldier. As for the two principally concerned, Margaret, who knew little of his previous character, had been naturally attracted by the best-bred and best-mannered man she had ever been brought into contact with; and he, a passionate soul in his way, seeking emotion and excitement through all his pleasures, had been suddenly seized upon by the pure and visionary creature, whose life was to him as a new revelation. Yet, notwithstanding his sense of her utter purity, notwithstanding his love for her, and the new germ of moral improvement within him, the habits of his former life, and the contempt in which he held her upstart father, had led him, strange as it may seem, to entertain dishonourable designs towards the spotless girl, who looked up to him as a higher type of manhood than any she had yet met with. Captain Duncan, hot enough in all that concerned his honour, had somehow discovered his suitor’s base meaning, and expelled him from his house with all the violence that belonged to his character. When Margaret became aware of the storm that raged round—when she found her lover shut out from the place, and herself forbidden to think of him, a brief tumult rose in her maidenly bosom. She might have resisted even, for her sense of justice was strong, and she had begun to love, had fiery Duncan been left to manage matters in his own way. But Mr. Lothian had stepped in with his good sense, and Jean Campbell, homely as she was, with his support, had brought her woman’s wit to work on the question. The two between them brought one of Mr. John’s victims quietly by night to tell her miserable story. Other miserable stories poured upon Margaret’s ear when the ice was broken. She gave but one cry, and went away from them and shut herself up in her own room. Nothing was said to her of any intended disrespect to herself. If she ever guessed the existence of such a horror, she never betrayed it to mortal ear; but the parish knew well enough why it was that Mr. John had the door of the house shut upon him, and was curtsied to by Miss Catherine with awful grandeur when they met at the church-door.

This sealed his fate so far as the Loch was concerned. His own race and class abandoned him to the devil and all his angels, to whom accordingly he devoted himself for some months with renewed spirit. But disgust had entered his heart; he had seen better things, and his soul had begun to move uneasily within him. Then commenced the religious movement which stirred the parish of Loch Diarmid. Mr. John, dreary, mournful, and alone, was one of the first to be moved by it. Here was, indeed, a religion worth having, one that held out to him the hope of immediate reward, the highest advantage that flesh and blood could hope for, deliverance from sickness, miraculous strength, favour, and power. He went into it with all the fervour of his nature. He was converted with much rejoicing on the one hand, and blackest painting of all his former errors on the other, as is natural in such cases. From penitence he went on rapidly to the highest grace, to own the inspiration of Ailie, and to believe in her and in himself. It was a curious process altogether, and yet it was not so inconsistent with nature as might have been supposed.

It had been by his special solicitation that this visit to the Glebe was made. Margaret had been ill he knew, but he did not know how ill; and with a man’s natural touch of vanity, he had imagined the illness to be caused partly at least by separation from himself. He had the fullest confidence in Ailie’s powers, and the most entire belief that what he and she together prayed for, in the passionate faith which they shared, would be done for them by God; but he had also in his secret heart some hope that the mere sight of him, a changed and converted man, would do much for Margaret. When he saw her, not tenderly touched by sentimental illness, but worn to the edge of the grave by consuming disease, it would be difficult to describe the shock he sustained. His passion for her revived to its fullest extent; and she was dying—dying, before his eyes. And God had promised in any case, however desperate, to hear the prayer of faith. Yet there she lay, calm, steadfast, content, not eager to be saved, crushing down the excitement at its height with the touch of her soft, cool hand. The agitation which possessed him almost rose to frenzy. He was angry with Ailie, the young leader of his faith, for requiring food and rest, and desiring to go home, instead of ‘wrestling in prayer’ along with him on the grassy bank beneath the Glebe. His vehemence was so extreme, that Ailie herself was moved to reprove it. ‘Brother,’ she said, ‘you’re not thinking of God’s glory, you’re thinking of Margaret’s life. Your mind’s gone wild for love of her. Set up no idols in your heart.’

‘Love!’ cried Mr John, ‘and between her and me!—that will never be. But she must not die. She is a child of God. She is so beloved, I think half the country would follow after her. Shall we lose that great advantage to the Lord’s cause? You have been my teacher in the way of life, must I be yours now?’

‘Aye,’ said Ailie,’ if the Lord has given you something to say.’

It was Mr. Lothian, who had followed them down the hill, who heard this strange conversation. Mr. John’s face changed, as was usual with all the gifted. A kind of spasm passed over him. ‘Hear the word of the Lord,’ he cried; ‘hear and obey! Will you go back to your selfish rest, and eat your selfish bread, and let His saint die? Is it not written, He that asketh receiveth. Shall we submit to be foiled by Satan? He is not an unjust judge, nor you a vengeful woman, and will you do less than He did to save a life? What is a night on the heather, a night on the hill, to the loss of that blessed creature? Never will she be bride of man,’ he cried, with a groan,—‘never bride of mine nor friend of mine that you say I’m mad with love. Our fathers lived in caves of the earth, and were hunted like beasts for the sake of the truth—and will we refuse to watch a night for the salvation of a soul? Could not ye watch with me one night? We are two together that put our trust in Him, and the Lord will remember His promise when we pray.’

‘I will pray in my own chamber,’ cried Ailie. ‘O, John Diarmid, I ken you’re a man of God! but your face frightens me, and your voice frightens me. I cannot bide with you on the hill. Lord, Lord, is it Thy will? I’ll watch for her—I’ll pray for her—I’ll give half my life for Margret; but I darena bide here.’

‘My sins find me out,’ said Mr. John;’ you are afraid of me, Ailie. You think it is the old man that speaks, and not the new.’

‘No,’ said Ailie, controlling herself, ‘I canna fear my brother. I know you are a man of God—but oh, will not the Lord’s purpose be served if we pray at home? He’s as near in a chamber as on the hill. Let us not speak nor waste our strength. Let us bend our minds to it, and pray for our sister going along this weary way. It will be a holy way,’ cried the girl, solemnly marching along, with her young elastic figure drawn up, her hands clasped, and her eyes raised to the sky, ‘if we make every step in prayer. Oh, hear us; oh, open Thy hands to us; oh, save her, dear Lord!’

Mr. Lothian, when he told this tale, would melt almost into tears. ‘She was an innocent creature,’ the minister would say. He followed them softly, unseen, with a man’s secret dread of the reformed sinner, ready to protect Ailie if she should want protection, and saw her move swiftly and silent along the path, never stumbling, never faltering, with her clasped hands and her eyes raised to Heaven. Broken words of prayer fell from her lips as she went on. As for the dark shadow by her side, the minister took less note of that. But he never forgot their joint prayer, sometimes rising to a mutual outburst of supplication as they went before him over the silent road. Mr. John’s spirit was rending itself with wild throes of pain, and at the same time satisfying itself with the violent strain of strongest emotion. Thus they went on until Ailie reached her mother’s cottage at Lochhead. And the silent follower behind them had been praying too. When he went into the Manse, which was too quiet, too lonely for that name, the minister asked himself, would it all be without avail; would God turn a deaf ear, though the very lion and lamb together pleaded with Him for a blessing—though the sinner became pure, and the suffering walked by faith? And for his part he rounded with a sigh the excitement of the evening, and opened the Bible on his table—that Bible within whose pages there are still so many prayers unanswered, waiting till God’s time shall come.

Next morning Mr. Lothian had the events of the night brought before him from another point of view. It was hard upon the minister that his house, of all houses in the parish, should be the one to shelter his young rival—a man in himself totally uncongenial to him. But so it was; he had incautiously received a guest whom he found it impossible to send away; and Mr. Lothian had been compelled to look on and see the young fellow all but win the prize on which his own heart had been set for so long. How the trifling youth could have caught Isabel’s fancy was a mystery to the good man; but naturally such a fact gave to every foolish word he uttered a double importance in his host’s jealous and wondering eyes.

‘I hear there was a prayer-meeting—or something—last night up at the Glebe,’ said Stapylton. ‘Was it effectual, do you know?’

‘What do you mean by effectual?’ said the minister, gravely.

‘Oh, I thought it might have had one of two effects,’ said the young man with careless contempt. ‘It might have cured the patient, you know; or at least, so they say. And they might have prayed her to death, which I should think the most likely, for my part.’

‘I did not know you were so well informed,’ said Mr. Lothian, who was in no conciliatory mood.

‘Oh, yes, I am posted up,’ said Stapylton, with a vain laugh, for which his companion could have knocked him down. ‘I think they will find it difficult to cure consumption; but the greater the difficulty the greater the miracle. It shows, at least, that they are not afraid.’

‘It shows they are not impostors, as you seem to think them,’ said the minister with some heat.

‘Oh, dear, no, not impostors,’ said Stapylton; ‘not any more than other people. We are all impostors, I suppose, more or less.’

‘Your views are too advanced for our rural minds,’ said Mr. Lothian, growing more and more angry in spite of himself. ‘We don’t understand them. Impostors are rare in this country-side.’

‘Oh, yes, I believe you,’ said Stapylton insolently. ‘Do you mean to say you put any faith in that praying crew? Did you think their shouting and bawling could do any good to that poor, consumptive creature——’

‘Is it Margaret Diarmid you are speaking of?’ said the minister; and the men paused and looked in each other’s faces. Stapylton had gone further than he meant to go. Isabel’s sister was nothing to him, though he loved Isabel in his selfish way. He had no respect for Margaret as a woman, or as a sick woman; he had no appreciation of her character. She was to him simply a poor, consumptive creature, whom he would be glad to have killed or cured out of his way. If Isabel were ever his, she should not long retain any foolish devotion to her sister. Therefore he could not understand the scorn and indignation of Mr. Lothian’s eyes.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I would not hurt her sister’s feelings by calling her so, you know. We’re all impostors, as I said. But still you know that is what the girl is, all the same.’

The minister rose from the table impatiently, and made no answer. And this was the man to whom Isabel had given her heart!

CHAPTER VI

‘I am saying nothing against Ailie,’ said Jean Campbell, ‘no a word. Our Margaret upholds her as a God-fearing lass; but maybe she was going beyond her tether when she came praying over our Margaret. No, it was of nae avail. I never expected it for my part.’

‘It maun have been want of faith,’ said one of the eager spiritual gossips who had flocked around Jean to hear the news. ‘Human nature is so full o’ short-comings. We’ve a’ looked up to her for her godly life; but the Lord will not put up with our idols. You’ve made an idol o’ Margaret Diarmid, asking her prayers; but now she’s weighed and found wanting. It’s been lack of faith.’

‘I dinna see how that can be,’ said another. ‘She’s won us a’ blessings morning and night. I’ve seen Heaven written plain in her face if ever it was written in a face in this world. Na; it must have been that they were lukewarm in their prayers.’

‘Hoots! they canna ay win,’ said a third neighbour; ‘if a’ the world was to be full of miracles where would us living folk be?’

‘But it’ll be a sair discouragement to the spread of the truth,’ said Mary White of the Mill, who had spoken first. ‘The enemy will cry out sore, like as if it was a triumph. And it’s ill for them of feeble minds to hear that Margaret Diarmid hasn’t faith to be saved, or Ailie Macfarlane lost her power.’

‘I would like to see the one that has more faith than our Margaret,’ said Jean Campbell, wounded in her tenderest point. ‘As for Ailie she’s a wonderful lass, but she’s upsetting with her prophet’s ways. If it had been the Lord’s will, would He have bided for Ailie to ask Him? Would He no have done it for our Margret that has kent Him longer and followed Him better? I’m no pretending to ken mysel—but if ever there was a saint of God it’s our Margret; and naebody need say onything else to me.’

‘There’s naebody in our parish would try,’ cried Jenny Spence, who was a connection. ‘As for Ailie Macfarlane she canna be said rightly to belong to the parish. It’s weel kent she was brought up in the Rue, and a’ her friends bide down by the Loch-end. I canna see ony reason for following after her, and thinking licht of our ain.’

‘Did you never hear, ye silly women,’ said a voice over their heads, ‘that a prophet has nae honour in his ain country? Bring in the new light, and cast out the wisdom that dwells among us: that’s ay been the world’s opinion since lang before it was divided into parishes. As for this poor lassie you make such a work about, she’s hysterical, and that’s the explanation of her cure and her prophesying; no that the creature means ill. She’s an innocent creature, so far as I can see the noo; but how lang her innocence will last if this goes on——’

‘Nae doubt you’re a fine authority, Maister Galbraith,’ said Mary, with a toss of her head; ‘you that believe in naething, neither spirit nor deevil, like the auld Sadducees. It’s grand to come and get lessons from you.’

‘I believe in more than you believe in, Mary, my woman,’ said the schoolmaster, who had interrupted the talk; ‘but I’ll no go into controversy. Jean Campbell, I’m wanting a word with you, if you’ll come inbye as you’re passing, after a’ this important business is done; you were ay good at settling the affairs of the parish—but if I were you I would leave the other world in peace till you win there.’

‘It’s much he kens about the ither world,’ said Mary White as the schoolmaster passed on. ‘Poor auld haverel, with his Latin and his poetry, that never could get a kirk, even in the auld Moderate times.’

The gossip thus came to an abrupt termination, and Jean Campbell went on her way without further pause to the schoolhouse door.

‘Weel, Jean, my woman,’ said the maister, ‘how’s a’ with ye? It’s a bonnie day.’

‘After a’ the saft weather we’ve had,’ said Jean, making the conventional answer which was expected of her. ‘And we’re a’ very weel but Margret, who’s no long for this world, Maister Galbraith, though it’s sair news to tell.’

‘No a word about that,’ said the maister, hastily, ‘and a’ the fools in the country-side living and thriving! I will not speak of what I cannot understand. It’s no about her I’m wanting you, but about bonnie Isabel.’

‘About Isabel?’ said Jean, wondering: and to herself she added, ‘Eh, if the auld fuil’s head should be turned like the lave with that bit lassie!’ a mental exclamation which was unexpectedly brought to light, as it were, by one of the Dominie’s broad sudden smiles.

‘I might be her grandfather,’ he said; ‘and whiles I feel as if I was grandfather to a’ these heedless things. You’ve had your ain ado, Jean, my woman, with the Captain’s family. Before ever you married Duncan, you mind what I said.’

‘I’m no complaining,’ said Jean, with intense and lofty pride.

‘No,’ said the maister, ‘you’re no the one to complain. You’re too spirity for that, and too proud. And Margaret for one knows what you’ve done; but as for me, that have ay taken an interest in them, I’m wanting you to do more than ever, and I know you’ll no be asked in vain.’

‘You had ay a skilfu’ tongue, maister.’ said Jean: ‘you were ay one to while the bird off the tree, when you liket to try. What is’t that’s coming noo?’

Upon which the maister laughed softly, for it was a point upon which he was susceptible to flattery.

‘It’s no laughing matter,’ he said; ‘you’ll give me your best attention, Jean. You and me are not the folk to meddle with love and lovers in their wooings and nonsense; but there are times when the like of us must interfere. Bonnie Isabel is but a bairn. I know she is Margaret’s twin, but there’s a wonderful difference between them for all that; and yon English lad at the Manse will beguile the lass if we do not take the better heed, you and me.’

‘Beguile our Isabel!’ said Jean, scornfully. ‘You ken heaps of things, maister, but no the heart of the like of her. If it was a lass out of the village, I wouldna say: but our Isabel’s a lady born.’

‘I stand corrected,’ said the maister; ‘you’re a woman of sense, Jean Campbell, and know better than me. I cannot express myself like you, but this was what I meant—that if we did not take heed, you and me, bonnie Isabel would be led further than she means to go; and the world, that is always an ill-thinking world, would make out a case of appearances against her. I’ve seen her with yon lad upon the hill——’

‘And what’s about that?’ said Jean; ‘is a lass never to speak to a lad but afore witnesses? And what’s the use of being young if you come to that? The lads have maist of the good things in this world; if a bonnie lass is no to have the upper hand o’ them and gie their heartstrings a bit wring when she has the power to do it. Na, na, maister, if you want her to let the lad be——’

‘She’s ta’en a good grip of some other heartstrings I know,’ said the maister, ‘more’s the pity. You’ve no bowels, you women. If it was but his heart that was in question, I do not say I would make much moan; but it is her credit, which is more to the purpose. Do not fire up at me; he was near running off with her the other night. You ask me how I know? Is not every secret word of your mouth or thought of your heart proclaimed on the housetops? If she were to go a step with him, it would be a sore heart for Margaret, and long would Isabel rue the day.’

‘I’ll not believe it,’ said Jean. ‘She’s prouder than the Marchioness, if you come to that. Her give way to a lad! I wouldna believe it if it was sworn to by a’ the Loch. She has mair spirit than that.’

‘Love’s blind,’ said the maister, with a melting tone in his harsh old voice; ‘it thinks no evil. He swears to her he means her well, and I would not say he did not mean well; but the day she’s that lad’s wife will be an ill day for Isabel, and all the more if she runs off with him. Whisht! and hear me out. They have quarrelled to-day, but to-morrow they will be ‘greed again—and she has no mother. I trust her, Jean Campbell, to you.’

‘I dinna believe it, no a word,’ said Jean, rising from her chair: but I ay do my best. No but Isabel is a sair handful, with her pride and her hasty ways. It’s the flower of a’ that the Lord winna spare. Eh, maister, it’s mair than I can understand.’

‘No a word of that,’ said the Dominie, ‘or you and me will criticise our Maker, and that mustna be. He must have some reason. Thae birds’ eggs are your Jamie’s, Jean. He’s a strange callant, awfu’ slow at his lessons, and awfu’ gleg on the hill.’

‘The hill will do him little good, maister,’ said Jean, discontented, ‘if you would but make him mind his book! It would be a terrible cross to me if he didna get on with his education, and him the Captain’s son.’

‘He’ll never mind his book,’ said the Dominie, promptly, ‘no more than his father before him. Make him a sodger if you please, like Duncan. If ye insist on schools and college, he’ll never be wiser than a stickit minister, like me.’

‘Eh, but it’s ower muckle learning with you!’ cried Jean, bewildered by the smile with which the maister described his condition. She had so described him herself, not without a touch of contempt. But at the present moment her mortification about her boy was swallowed up in reverential terror for the man who thus appreciated his own misfortunes. ‘It’s because my Jamie’s ower useful with the birds’ eggs, and the trash o’ flowers they are ay gathering,’ Jean said to herself, as she went home; ‘but I’ll send him where he’ll be well kept to his book, if the maister speaks like that to his mother again.’

CHAPTER VII

Excitement had once more sunk into calm at the Glebe Cottage; but Margaret, though she had recovered her composure, had suffered so much from the shock as to be unable to leave her bed next day.

On the other side of the wall sat Isabel trying in vain to occupy herself with her usual work. Her sister’s state had filled all her thoughts the previous night. Hopes and fears about her recovery, awe and excitement about the means to be used, a terrible strain of suspense, and blank of disappointment when all was over, had withdrawn Isabel’s mind entirely from her own affairs.

All at once she started, and sprang to her feet, changed as by a spell. She stood for a moment, irresolute, between her seat and the window. Then, by degrees, her whole expression altered. Her lip melted into the ghost of a smile, light came back to her pretty eyes; after a pause of consideration, she sat down once more by the wall. ‘I couldna leave Margaret,’ she said to herself. And she took up her work again, and worked briskly for about thirty seconds. Then she paused—listened—smiled. Ah! there could be no doubt about it. That was the accidental pebble that had struck the window. That was the soft, faint whistle, the merest whisper of a call which breathed on the air. He had come back, after all. It changed the entire current of Isabel’s thoughts in a moment. She had no further desire to go out, no impatience of her loneliness. These sounds had reconciled her to life and to herself. He was there, that was enough. She had even a pleasure in thinking he would have his walk and his waiting for nothing. She reminded herself of her anger and of her duty. Nothing in the world could induce her to leave Margaret. Her closed lips took a demure expression, as she sat and listened with a certain mischievous content. The blank which had seemed so intolerable and so permanent a few minutes before, flushed now with a thousand rosy colours. It was easy to deny herself, it was rather a pleasure than a pain to remain alone, so long as she knew that he watched for her and that she had not been forsaken.

Half an hour passed, and twice Isabel had heard, with a widening of the smile or half-smile round her mouth, the familiar pebble on the window, when Jean Campbell came suddenly into the room where she was sitting. It had once occurred to Isabel, with some anxiety, that Margaret alone, in her retirement, lying still in the unbroken silence, might hear these sounds and interpret them aright; but she thought of no one else, and cared for no one else, in her youthful pride. Her stepmother’s entrance disturbed her and moved her to impatience. It was seldom Jean came so far without special invitation, and never to join Isabel, who was less gentle, less patient, and had a much warmer, hastier temper than Margaret. She came in, however, on this occasion without so much, the girl angrily remarked, ‘as a knock at the door.’ Isabel stopped working and raised her astonished eyes to Jean with a demonstrative surprise. ‘Did you want anything?’ she asked, in her pretty, clear, but, so far as poor Jean was concerned, unsympathetic voice.

‘I wanted to see if you were here,’ said Jean, with a mixture of softness and resentment.

‘Where could I be but here,’ said Isabel, ‘and Margaret lying in her bed? Maybe you thought I was out enjoying myself,’ she added, with a certain pique; and just at that moment, borne upon a stronger gust than usual, came a bewildering echo of the distant whistle. In spite of herself she changed colour a little, and clutched at her work, as if to shut out the sound.

‘Eh, listen!’ said Jean; ‘what’s that? I’ve heard it near an hour about the house. I hope it’s nae ill-doer waiting about to watch for an open door.’

To this unsuitable accusation Isabel listened very demurely, returning to her work. The idea amused her, and converted the half-suppressed irritation with which she was too often in the habit of addressing Jean Campbell, to a certain equally repressed sense of fun. As for Jean, she looked suspiciously at her companion, and continued—

‘There’s mair ways of stealing than one. It might be some lad that would never meddle with siller or gold; but there’s things mair precious than siller or gold—eh, Isabel, my woman!’ cried honest Jean, with a thrill of true feeling in her voice.

‘What are you speaking of?’ said Isabel, coldly. ‘To hear you, folk would think you had some meaning. There’s little to steal at the Glebe, if that’s what you are thinking. Most likely it’s your son Jamie, wasting his time on the moor instead of learning his lessons. You need not be feared for him.’

‘I’m no feared for my Jamie,’ cried Jean, indignant. ‘He’s your father’s son as well as mine, Isabel, though you’re so proud. He’s your brother, and maybe the time will come when you’ll be glad to mind that. If I could think,’ she added, suddenly changing her tactics and making a direct attack, ‘that you had the heart to keep your lad waiting on the hill, and our Margret in her bed! Eh, and there’s the proof,’ she added, as an indiscreet pebble at that moment glanced upon the window. ‘I said it, but I could not think it—the like of this from you!’

Isabel’s cheeks flushed scarlet. She had been full of a great burst of indignation when this sudden evidence against her struck her ear and checked her utterance. To be sure she was in no way to blame, but yet appearances were against her, and her indignant self-defence was shorn of its fullness.

‘I have nothing to do with it,’ she cried; ‘I’ve sat by Margaret’s bedside the whole day. How am I to tell what folk may do outside? It’s no concern of mine. And you’ve no business to meddle with me,’ cried the girl, with hot unwilling tears.

‘Isabel,’ cried Jean, with solemnity, ‘you think very little of me. I’m no a lady like you, though I was your father’s wife; but I’m the oldest woman in the house, and I ken mair than you do, aye, or Margaret either. There was ane that warned me that I should do my duty to you and speak out. It would be easier for me to hold my tongue. It’s ay the easiest to hold your tongue; but ane that is your friend——’

‘I know who that is,’ cried Isabel, with flashing eyes, ‘and I think he might have known I could guide myself, and would have no meddling from you!’

‘Na, you didna ken who it was,’ said her stepmother; ‘it was ane that has kent you all your days; and it’s no that he has any cause to be jealous like him you’re thinking o’. Eh, that other ane! Poor man! it makes my heart sair to look in his face. A man that might ken better—and no a thought in his head but how to please a lassie’s heedless eye.’

‘There is many a thought in his head,’ cried Isabel, ‘I’ll not have you speak of my friends. Let me alone. I’m sitting listening if Margaret cries on me, and thinking of nobody. If the best man in the world was there, i would not go to the window to look at him; but don’t torment me, or I cannot tell what I may do.’

‘I’ll no be threatened,’ said Jean, with equal spirit. ‘and I’ll say what’s in my heart to say. If you go on with that English lad it’ll be to your destruction, Isabel. I was warned to say it, and I’ll say it—like it or not, as you please. When I have a burden on my mind, it’s no you that will stop me. If you take up with the lad at the Manse, the English lad——’

‘Mr. Lothian will disapprove,’ said Isabel, with a toss of her head.

‘I’ve nothing ado with Mr. Lothian,’ she said. ‘I’m no speaking from him. You’ll rue the day, Isabel. I’m no for putting a lass in a prison and forbidding her to speak to a man. Would I mind if it was a’ in play? I was ance a young lass mysel. But yon lad, he’s in earnest. And if he beguiles you to listen to him, you’ll rue the day!’

Isabel had risen to her feet in indignation, and was about to reply, when a faint call from Margaret interrupted the combatants. Probably Jean had raised her voice unduly, though neither of them were aware of it. It was Isabel Margaret called, and ‘Let her come too,’ added the invalid. This was how they generally described to each other their father’s wife. The two paused abashed, and went into the little room behind. Margaret had raised herself up on her pillows, and sat erect, with a flush on her cheeks. The excitement of the previous night had not yet died away. Its effect was to give her the feverish beauty which belongs to her complaint. She had her small Bible clasped between her two white worn hands, as she had been reading it. ‘Come in,’ she said, ‘come in,’ holding out her hand to Jean, who lingered at the door. Though she was so beautiful in her weakness, it was death that was in Margaret’s face.

‘I want to speak to you both,’ she said; ‘why will ye quarrel, you two, the moment I’m away?’

‘We were not quarrelling,’ said Isabel, turning her back upon her stepmother.

‘Na,’ added Jean, in explanation; ‘it was nae quarrel. It was me that was speaking. I’m no a lady born like you; but I’m the Captain’s widow, and a woman of experience, and I will not hold my tongue and see a young lass fall into trouble. Margaret, it’s no meaning to vex you; but she’s aye keeping on a troke and a kindness with that English lad.’

Isabel turned round with hasty wrath and flushed cheeks; but her resentment was useless. She caught her sister’s eye, to whom she could never make any false pretences; and suddenly bent down her head, and hid her face. To Margaret she had no defence to make, even though at this moment she was without blame.

‘Then it is him I hear on the hill,’ said Margaret. ‘Isabel, go and bring him in to speak to me.’

‘Bring him in—here?’ asked both the bystanders in a breath, aghast at the command. The amazement of their tone, and the glance they cast round the little room, brought a slight additional colour to Margaret’s cheek.

‘Bring him here,’ she repeated; ‘I’ve gone so far on my way that I’m free to do what I please. I cannot seek him out or stop him on the road. Isabel, go and bring him in to me.’

Isabel, who had grown suddenly pale and begun to tremble, hesitated to obey. ‘O my Maggie!’ she said, clasping her hands; and in her desperation she turned to her stepmother with an appealing glance. Jean was at her wits’ end, divided between lively dislike and repugnance to ‘the English lad,’ and that absolute reverence for Margaret which made it difficult to resist any of her wishes.

‘He’s no worthy,’ she said, with trembling eagerness; ‘he’s no fit to come into this chamber and speak face to face with the like of you. Let me gang and speak to him. We mustna be ower anxious; he’s but coortin’ like the other lads. It’s no as if him and Isabel had given each other their troth. It’s but a diversion, like a’ the rest. I’ll speak to him canny, and send him away.’

‘It’s no diversion,’ said Isabel, hotly, under her breath. Margaret sat in the abstraction of her weakness between the two who were so warm with life and all its emotions, clasping her little Bible in her hands.

‘No,’ she said, softly; ‘you mistake Bell. She is not like one of the lasses at Lochhead, to meet him and speak to him for diversion, as you say. It’s different. And there’s none to guard her but me. You’re very good—you’ve always been good to us both. Don’t be angry if she’s impatient. She’s but young,’ Margaret went on, with a pathetic smile and her eyes fixed on Jean, who by this time was crying without restraint; ‘when she knows more of the world, she’ll see that you’re a good woman and have ever been a help and comfort to her and me. But I am mother and sister and all to Isabel as long as I live; and I’ll no live long, and I would like to speak a word to him. Bell, you must dry your eyes and bring the young man to me.’

‘I’ll do what you bid me, if it was to break my heart,’ said the weeping Isabel.

Margaret made no reply. She knew that Isabel was perfectly sincere, and yet she knew that the flutter in the girl’s bosom was not for her sister but her lover. While Isabel stole slowly, reluctantly away, Margaret sat propped among her pillows, watching with soft eyes. She was herself so much beyond the world—so ready to go; so far on her way, as she herself expressed it, that the tumult of feeling in her sister’s bosom appeared to her almost like the baby flutterings of childhood. But Jean, whose experience was of a different kind, stood looking after the girl with mingled indignation and sympathy.

‘It’s hard on her,’ said the stepmother. ‘You ken an awfu’ deal mair than me, Margret; but you dinna see it’s hard upon her as I do: though I could never forgive her thinking of anything serious, and you so ill. We maun a’ hae our little diversion,’ Jean added, after a pause. ‘It’s but that. It couldna be marrying and giving in marriage the lass was thinking of, and you so far from well.’

‘Would it not be more unkind if it was mere diversion?’ said Margaret.

‘Na,’ said Jean quickly, ‘a lass like a bairn must whiles have the play. We’re a’ the better o’t. And Isabel meant nae mair. She’s thoughtless whiles, but she has a tender heart. You canna believe she was planning out her life and you lying suffering here?’

‘She’s so young,’ said Margaret, though a momentary contraction passed over her face. It was meet that Isabel’s life should be planned out before she was left alone in the world.

Isabel for her part went very slowly to the door, and looked up and down the road, to cheat her own conscience into the belief that she was obeying her sister. She took a few steps round the house in the wrong direction to look for the watcher, and went back to the door with a relieved heart, not having seen him. Her heart was not detached from her first love, but she had been much shaken in her belief in him at their last meeting; and though she denied indignantly that it was ‘diversion,’ she trembled to bring Stapylton to the length of an interview with Margaret, thereby binding him and herself for ever. So Isabel thought in her simplicity. ‘It would be as bad as being married,’ she said to herself; and she had no desire to be married. All that her heart asked could be given by those chance meetings, by the sweet sense of being loved, the charm of the tender secret which was between the two. To go any further at such a moment would have shocked and startled the girl; and what was to be done if she brought him to Margaret, but that the most serious consequences might follow. She was incapable of ‘diverting herself,’ as Jean thought, but yet had no inclination to quicken the pace of life, or rush upon facts. Serious existence looked still distant and far off, and Isabel approached it with tender delay, with soft wistfulness and reluctance. It would come to that eventually, no doubt. But why should Horace, why should Margaret, be so impatient now?

Isabel stood at the door, and her flushed face cooled in the evening air, and the beating of her heart grew less loud; but she could not see her lover on the road. ‘He must have gone away back, if he was ever there,’ she said, when she returned to Margaret’s room, or ‘maybe it was but the peeweep on the hill.’

‘It was nae peeweep,’ said Jean Campbell, turning round; but she was charitable enough to say no more, when she saw the look of anxiety on Isabel’s face.

‘If he’s gone there is no more to be said,’ said Margaret; and then she sighed. ‘It is not because I’m going,’ she added, with a smile, as it were correcting herself, ‘but because I would fain put myself in God’s place for my bonnie Bell; as if He did not love her more than I can—as if she were not safest with him!’

And then poor Isabel, full of remorse, bent down her head upon her sister’s outstretched hands. Could she trust Margaret, perfect as she was, to see all her thoughts; all the fancies that rose in her mind as God did? Jean Campbell, whose homely mind was free of these complications, withdrew at this point, drying her eyes and shaking her head.

‘And she’s nae aulder than Isabel!’ said the humble stepmother. It was the most pathetic commentary that could have been made.

CHAPTER VIII

‘I would not have thought,’ said Miss Catherine, looking steadily at young Stapylton, who had gone to pay her a visit, ‘that the farming over the hill was worth so long study. They must be wearying for you at home.’

‘There are more things than the farming,’ said Horace; ‘there is the grouse, for instance, and it will soon be September. The folks at home have to make up their mind to it. A man is not like a girl.’

‘The Lord forbid!’ said Miss Catherine, ‘or fathers and mothers would have little comfort of their lives. I hope there’s a pleasant young sister to keep them company at home.’

‘Oh, there are three girls, thank you,’ said young Stapylton, carelessly, ‘they are jolly enough. It’s against my principles to be always turning up at the Hall. What is the good of being young if one is not to have a little freedom? I suppose I shall settle down some time like my father. It’s very respectable and all that, but it’s not amusing. Women never can understand a man. You think we should be tied down to all the old cut-and-dry habits like yourselves.’

‘No,’ said Miss Catherine, ‘it is not to be expected we should understand you. We are creatures of a lower class, as is well known. But still you know the very dogs come to a kind of comprehension of their masters. I would think the Hall and the neighbours you have known all your days, and the hunting and such like, would have as many charms as Mr. Lothian and the grouse. It’s but a poor sphere for you here.’

‘Well, I suppose so long as I am content, that is enough,’ said Horace, with a feeling that he was being laughed at; and then he added, with an attempt at sarcasm, ‘Besides there are a great many superior people here; and this movement is very interesting to a student of human nature, you know.’

‘And what does a student of human nature make of the movement?’ said Miss Catherine, grimly, looking at the young fellow with her penetrating grey eyes. He was not the blasé young man of the present day, experienced in everything and weary of all. He was not sufficiently polished for the soft sneer and universal derision now current among us, but he was the first rough sketch of that accomplished personage; the fashion had come in, or at least had reached to his level. But it was a rough species of the art, and only good as an essay.

‘Well,’ said Horace, with a certain grandeur, an air which had often imposed upon Isabel, who knew no better, ‘I suppose it is just one of the ordinary religious swindles. But the simplicity of the people makes it look better than usual, to begin with. And it is only beginning. One can’t tell at first what follies such a business may fall into. The woman is mad, I suppose; or else she has taken this way of thrusting herself into notice. She is rather pretty, too. Somebody might be fool enough to marry her, if she was taken up by the better class. As for the men, I suppose they have some motive: ambition to be first among their neighbours, or love of excitement, or something. It is like whisky; and then it don’t lead to trouble as whisky does.’

Miss Catherine was much opposed to ‘the movement’ herself; but her soul was moved within her by this speech.

‘Do you tell them your opinions as frankly at the Glebe?’ she said, quietly; and her companion changed colour somewhat at the question.

‘Well, you know, the eldest girl is of the same way of thinking,’ he said. ‘It is quite natural she should be. She is very ill, and she must come to that, sooner or later: and then they all think it’s a chance for her to get better. I don’t wonder, in the least, at Margaret. The other—don’t know what to think,’ he added, with a little reluctance: ‘but, of course, one would not shock the feelings of two girls.’

‘That’s good of you,’ said Miss Catherine; ‘and I see the force of what you say. Religion is what we must all come to, sooner or later. It’s a very fine way of putting it, and shows a perception of character—But, my young friend, is it right of you to turn your steps night after night towards the Glebe? I am never at my west window in the evening, but I see you with your face that way. They are gentlewomen by the mother’s side, and no farther off than fifth cousins from the family at Ardallan: but their father was only a trooper, and they have little siller. Would your father be pleased with such a bride as Isabel for his heir? Not but what she is fit for a duke,’ said Miss Catherine, warmly, once more fixing her companion with her eye.

‘Bride?’ said the young man, blushing violently, and gazing at her, surprised; and then, for the first time, his tone changed. ‘She is sweet enough, and pretty enough, for a queen,’ he said; and then added—‘if that were all!’ with a sigh.

‘Yes, but it is not all,’ said Miss Catherine, somewhat melted. ‘There are many things to be taken into consideration. Old folk and young folk have different notions; and unless your people know what you’re doing, Mr. Horace, my advice would be that you should go no more to the Glebe.’

‘Oh, that’s all nonsense!’ said Horace, recovering himself. ‘Things have not gone so far as that. Poor little thing! she wants some amusement; her sister is always ill, and nobody with her but that woman. She is a pretty little thing, and I like to talk to her; and so, it appears, does she to me.’

‘And that is all?’ said Miss Catherine, with a return of the grimness to her face.

‘That is all,’ said Horace, lightly, ‘we may chatter to each other I hope now and then without going to the last extremity. I know what you are going to say, that there is somebody else ready to step in, and that I am standing in the way of her prospects.—Such prospects!—a man old enough to be her father, with a humdrum Manse to offer her. She ought to do better than that. In short, I am a defence to keep Mr. Lothian off,’ he added, with a laugh, which his high colour and the contraction of his forehead belied. ‘Confound the old inquisitor!’ he was saying to himself, ‘what has she to do with it—am I bound to tell her everything?’ Miss Catherine’s looks grew blacker and blacker as she listened.

‘You give a bonnie account of yourself,’ she said, ‘if you want nothing but to chatter with her, how dare ye stand between her and an honest man that loves her? When Margaret dies—and we all know that calamity cannot be long averted—is it your will, for the sake of your amusement, that a bonnie, tender creature should be left without friend or guide in the world? Yes, I know what you think,’ said Miss Catherine, growing hot; ‘you think she’s so soft and sweet, that you can play as you please. But mind what I say, you may go too far with Isabel; she is young, and younger than she might be, but she is not of a light nature to be guided by you. If you play her false, be it in one way, be it in another, you’ll get your punishment. Now you have heard what I have to say, and you can go on your own way, and take your own course, like all your kind; but you’ve got warning of what will follow. And now, Mr. Horace Stapylton,’ said Miss Catherine, rising and making him a stately curtsey, ‘I am obliged to bid you good day.’

Horace started to his feet amazed beyond description by this dismissal. ‘I am shocked to have intruded upon you,’ he said, angrily; ‘I shall take care never to repeat the infliction.’

‘That shall be as you please,’ said Miss Catherine, with another curtsey, and the young man found himself with artful incaution to Isabel, when despite all that had occurred, he succeeded in meeting her ‘by accident’ on the hill: ‘and all for your sake. You are getting out of the room and out of the house almost before he recovered his consciousness. ‘Old hag!’ he said to himself, ‘old Scotch cat!—venomous old maid!’ as he walked down the avenue. But he was worsted notwithstanding, and felt his defeat.

‘She turned me out of the house,’ he said, afterwards, ‘me into disgrace with everybody. They upbraid me for following you, for taking up your time, for keeping others away; and the folk at home write to ask if I am never coming back. People look glum at me wherever I go for your sake, and you will do nothing for me: I must say it is rather too bad.’

‘I would do anything for you,’ said Isabel. ‘I would not mind what all the world might say. They might gloom at me, and welcome; what would I care? anything but one thing, Horace—and that you know—you see—I could not do.’

‘Which, of course, is the only thing I want,’ said the young man, sullenly. ‘That is always the way with girls.’

‘And why should you want it so?’ said Isabel, eagerly. ‘We’re young, and we can wait. If all your folk were ready and willing, could I leave my Margaret? Horace, you know as well as I do she has been my comfort a’ my days; there is not one like her far or near. If you think, as other folk think, that Ailie is nearer God than our Margaret, oh, it shows how little you know,’ cried Isabel, with the hot colour rushing over her face; ‘and could I forsake her that has been like a mother to me? What is love, if it’s like that?’

‘I don’t think you know what love means,’ said Horace: ‘it is to give up all for one; it is to forsake father and mother—and your past life—and your prospects, as people call them—and good sense and caution and prudence, and all your Scotch qualities;—that is what love is, Isabel; to think of nobody, and care for nobody, but one; to give all your heart, and not a bit of it. I don’t ask you for a bit of it; I want you all—every thought, every feeling. I want you to give up everybody and come to me—to me!’ and here the young man opened his arms and turned to her with a look of passion which startled the girl. She made a sudden sidelong step beyond one of the great heather clumps before she answered. The colour changed from red to pale on her face; but she kept her eyes fixed on him, with a look of eagerness and wistfulness, trying to penetrate beneath the surface and see his heart.

‘Horace,’ she said, softly, ‘you and me are different—a man and a girl are different, I suppose. That is not what it is to me. It is something that makes life better, and stronger, and sweeter. I’m fonder of Margaret, I’m better to the bairns. Don’t turn away like that. It is like wine,’ cried the girl, with light rising in her eyes; ‘it gives you strength for all you have to do. You’re at your work, you’re minding your house, you’re vexed and wearied and troubled—and lo, you give a glance out of the window, and you see him pass, and all your trouble rolls away! That’s love to me. When you turn round and give me a smile, it’s like wine,’ cried Isabel once more; ‘I feel it all about my heart—I go back to my work, and something sings within me. I am neither tired nor troubled more. That’s love to me! And the world’s bonnier and the sky’s brighter,’ she went on faltering, ‘Oh, Horace, surely you know what I mean?’

‘No, I don’t know what you mean,’ cried the young man, with a kind of brutality. ‘I never understand your Scotch. If this is the sort of figure I am to cut, making you devote yourself more to Margaret and the bairns, as you call them, I had better take myself off, it would seem. A fellow is not to lose the best days of his life for such a reward as that.’

Isabel looked at him with but partial comprehension; her point of view was more elevated than his, but yet it was limited, like his, to her own side of the question. She looked at his clouded brow and averted face with a woman’s first violent effort to enter into a state of feeling which was the antipodes of her own. Slowly it dawned upon her that it might be as just as her own though so different. She clasped her arms round the slender white stem of a young birch-tree, and leant against it, gazing at her lover with dreamy eyes.

‘Maybe it’s all true,’ she said, slowly, ‘both what I think and what you think, Horace. It will break my heart, but I can bear it if that is best. Go away into the world, and please your own folk—and I’ll wait for you; I’ll wait all my life; I’ll wait years and years. Why should you lose your best days for me? Oh, I see well it is neither just nor right; and me that has so little to give! It’s a sin to keep you here,’ she continued, tears, unthought of, dropping from her eyes. ‘Loch Diarmid comes natural to me, and folk forget—But go, Horace, and think on me sometimes; and my heart will go with you; and if you should ever come back you’ll find me waiting here.’

‘Isabel, this is all folly and nonsense,’ cried young Stapylton. ‘What are you crying about? am I talking of going away? It is all very easy to send a fellow off and make a fuss, or to keep him hanging on, and kicking his heels among this confounded heather. Can’t you do what I want you instead? it’s simple enough. What’s the good of living in Scotland if you can’t get married how you please? If I were to go away I might never come back. They’d keep fast hold of me at home, or they’d pack me off somewhere out of reach; and you would change, and I might change. Who can undertake what would happen? I don’t believe in comings back. I should find you Mrs. Somebody or other with half a dozen—— Hallo, where are you going now?’

‘I’m going home,’ said Isabel, drying her tears indignantly. ‘It’s late, and I cannot enter into such questions. I am not one to change; but, Mr. Stapylton, if that’s your way of thinking it’s far best it should all come to an end. I don’t want to be married. I will never leave my sister. If you will have an answer yes or no, there’s your answer. Never, never, if she should live a dozen years!—and God send she may live a dozen years, and a dozen more to that!’ cried Isabel with a sob. ‘My Margaret, that never has a thought but for me! And to bid me run away and shame the house, and break her heart—and to call it love!’ said the girl, with an outburst of tears.

She had come back to the birch and leant her pretty head upon the graceful young tree, which waved its tender branches over her with a curious sympathetic resemblance to her own drooping form, while her lover drew near her slowly, his heart melting, though his temper was still ruffled. He was going to her to take her in his arms, to whisper his final arguments, to woo her with his breath on her cheek. At such a moment it did not occur to the young man to look around him, to guard against interruption; and, perhaps, in the soft twilight he could scarcely have perceived the lonely personage who was winding with a noiseless step among the heather, full of her own thoughts.

The dew was falling among the slender birches, and on the heather and gorse—the wild gale underfoot filled the air with sweetness, and with this soft perfume came the soft stir of silence, the breath of the great quiet, which gave a musical tone to the atmosphere. The shadows were falling over the loch and the hills; points of view that had been visible one moment were invisible the next; and all at once, up in the blue heavens, stars were revealing themselves, here and there one, like lamps among the clouds. A night to tempt anyone to linger in the open air, in the quiet, sweet, soft, darkling, humid twilight, full of the silences and splendours of nature, and unawares moved by some brooding of God. The other figure which, veiled by night, and by abstracting thought, was wandering devious on those hills, thinking little of where she went or whom she met, was in her way a better embodiment of the sentiment of the night than were the agitated lovers. It was Ailie Macfarlane come out to roam at eventide like Isaac. She had a shawl over her head after the primitive fashion common to all nations, her head veiled because of the angels. Sometimes she stumbled among the heather, not remarking whither her foot strayed. The darkling world in which those solemn hills stood up each folded in his twilight mantle, with stars about his head and a forehead wet with dew, was full of God to the inspired maiden. Her eyes were moist, like all the earth, with dew. Her mind was full, not of thought but of a quiet consciousness. The poetry that was love to Isabel was to Ailie, God. She was in His presence, His great eyes were upon her, at any moment she might hear His voice calling to her, as Adam heard it in the cool of the garden. As she strayed upon the hills alone with that great trembling, thrilling Nature which was conscious, too, of His presence, the Lord had strayed communing with His Father. He had passed the whole night there, as His servant was not able to do. He had gone down the darkling slopes and set his foot, unaware of the restrictions of nature, upon the gleaming silvery waters below as she could have done on the loch had her faith been but strong enough. ‘More faith! more faith!’ she murmured to herself as she went, ‘O Lord, increase my faith.’ Her young soul was burning within her with the cravings which Margaret Diarmid had divined; not soft submission to Him that rules Heaven and earth, but eager anticipations, restless energy, a heart full of passion. Joan of Arc might so have strayed on her southern moors; though it was from the yoke of Satan that Ailie longed to deliver her people—from wickedness, and disease, and misery. Why should not she? Had not the Lord promised whatsoever ye ask? Had not He granted to all eyes authentic wonders? Was His arm shortened that it could not save? or was there anything wanted but faith, more faith?

The sound of voices roused her from her abstraction, first to a sudden flush of annoyance, and then, as she perceived the two figures before her, to a warm thrill of zeal for their conversion. ‘The Lord has delivered them into my hand,’ the enthusiast said to herself. Their backs were turned to her, and their minds so much occupied that even the crackle of the heather under her foot did not betray her approach. She was close by their side, laying a sudden hand upon the shoulder of each before they were even aware of her presence.

‘What do ye here?’ said Ailie, rising as it seemed to them like a ghost out of the darkness. The two sprang apart and gazed at the intruder, but Ailie was too much absorbed by her office to heed their looks. ‘Isabel Diarmid,’ she repeated with solemnity, ‘what do you here?’

‘I was doing nothing,’ said Isabel, startled back into self-possession: ‘I might say what were you doing coming upon folk like a ghost?’

‘If ye mean a spirit,’ said Ailie, ‘it’s like that I wish to come. What is this poor body that we should let it thrall us? If I had faith I might fly upon angel’s wings: but oh! I’m feared it was not to serve the Lord that you two came here. Na, stand apart, and let me speak. Can ye see a’ this world round about ye, and no feel that you’re immortal? Isabel, the Lord would fain have ye to be His servant—and you too, young man.’

‘Oh, Ailie, I’m no like you,’ murmured Isabel, awed out of her first self-assertion. As for Stapylton, he turned away with contemptuous impatience.

‘What does she know about it?’ he said. ‘Isabel, don’t you give in to this rubbish. Nobody has any right to intrude upon another. Tell her to mind her own business.’ This was said in a low tone. ‘Come, I’ll see you home. It is getting late,’ he said, aloud.

‘Ah!’ said Ailie, ‘it’s getting late, awfu’ late. The blackness of the night is coming on afore the awfu’ dawn. Think what it will be when you canna go home, nor find a place to hide yourself in from the brightness of His coming. Worldly wisdom would bid you join yourselves to Him now. But I’m no thinking of worldly wisdom. To stand up for Him in a dark world; to go forth like the angels, and make the way clear; to love and to bless, and to give life for death. O Isabel! O young man! I would rather that than Heaven.’

Ailie, with her young face gleaming white in the twilight, her nervous arm raised, her abstracted, humid eyes gazing into the vacant darkness, was a creature whose influence it was hard to be altogether indifferent to. Stapylton, though he was capable of laughter at this exhibition ten minutes after, was, at least, silenced for the moment. He looked at her with that curious stupidity, in which the ordinary mind loses its faculties at the sight of such incomprehensible poetic exaltation. But Isabel, already excited, gazed upon the young prophetess with the big tears still standing in her eyes, drawn by one emotion more closely within the reach of another than she had yet been.

‘I am not standing against Him! Oh, Ailie, dinna think it! Not for the world!’ she cried, dropping those two great tears; and Nature gave a little gasp and sob within her. To go forth with God’s servants on this austere road, or to wander with her love in the primrose paths. If there was a choice to be made, could anyone doubt for a moment which would be the right choice? But Isabel felt herself so different from this inspired creature, so different even from Margaret, so much slighter, younger, more trifling, fond of praise and admiration, and amusement; not able to give her mind to it. And yet she was the same age as Margaret, and very little younger than Ailie. ‘I am not like you,’ she added, with an exquisite sense of her own imperfection, which brought other tears from those same sources. And then the feminine impulse of excuse came upon her: ‘We were meaning nothing,’ she said, hurriedly and humbly. ‘I met Mr. Stapylton here on the hill. And it’s a bonnie night. You were walking yourself, Ailie. And I’m going home. It was no harm.’

‘Oh, Isabel, ye never mind how you weary the Lord with your contradictions,’ said the prophetess. ‘I canna see your heart like Him; but do you think I canna see what’s moved ye? No the bonnie night, nor the bonnie hill, nor His presence that’s brooding ower a’ the world; but a lad that says he loves you, Isabel. There’s nae true love that’s no in Christ. If he’s true, let him come to the Lord with ye this moment, afore this blessed hour is gane. Eh, my heart’s troubled,’ she cried, suddenly raising her arms; ‘my heart’s sore for you. If he comes not now, when the Lord is holding wide the door, it’s that he’ll never come; and then there is nothing for you but tribulation and sorrow, and lamentation and woe!’

Her voice sank as suddenly as it had risen. She pressed her hands upon her eyes, with what seemed, to the terrified Isabel, the gesture of one who shuts out something terrible from her vision.

‘It is the spirit that’s upon her,’ Isabel murmured to herself, shivering. ‘Oh, Ailie, dinna lay any curse on us, that never did you harm!’

‘Curse!’ she said, so low that they could scarcely hear her. ‘It’s no for me to curse. He had no curses in His mind, and wherefore should I? It was a cloud that passed. Isabel, bring yon lad to God, bring him to God! or he’ll bring you to misery, and trouble, and pain. I am saying the truth. It’s borne in on me that he’ll bring you awfu’ trouble. But if he comes to the Lord, ye’ll break Satan’s spell.’

Stapylton had turned aside in impatience, and heard nothing of this; but now he came forward and laid his hand on Isabel’s arm.

‘Your sister will want you,’ he said, almost roughly; ‘it is getting late, and this is not the place for a prayer-meeting; let me take you home.’

‘Oh, Ailie, I must go home to my Margaret,’ said Isabel, clasping her hands. Nature was contending, with natural awe and reverence, in the girl’s mind. She did not reject the authority of the holy maid for one moment—she was ready to yield to its power; but as soon as the possibility of escape became visible to her, she seized it anxiously. ‘She’ll be waiting and watching for me; and you know how ill she is, and I must not keep her anxious,’ pleaded Isabel; ‘but I’ll think upon all you say.’

‘Aye, gang your ways, gang your ways,’ said Ailie, turning her back upon them and dismissing them with a wave of her hand. ‘Put it off to a convenient season; wait till you’re hardened in your worldly thoughts, and the Lord has shut-to the door; but dinna come then and say, Give us of your oil, for there will be nane to give in that day—nane to give! The market’s open the noo, and plenty to fill your vessels; but in that day there will be nane. Gang your ways to Margret, and tell her she’s but a faint heart, that will lie down and die, when the Lord has that need of her for His work. I’m no saying she’s not a child of God, but she has a faint heart. Gang your ways.’

‘If you knew my Margaret better, ye would never dare to speak like this,’ said Isabel, flushing into opposition. Stapylton drew her hand into his arm, and led her away.

‘Come now,’ he said, ‘come while she has turned her head. I want no more sermons for my part. Your sister is waiting, Isabel—come! this is too much for me.’

Isabel suffered herself to be led across the heather, scarcely aware, in her excitement, of the close pressure with which her lover held her hand. She was angry for Margaret’s sake. ‘Nobody understands,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Nobody knows what they’re saying. Her to be blamed that is the flower of all!’ and turned her head, notwithstanding Stapylton’s opposition, to maintain her sister’s cause against her rival. But Ailie had turned away. She was going back, moving slowly among the heather, with her head bent and her eyes cast down, dreaming after her fashion, though not dreams like those of Isabel. Ailie was thinking—with much confusion of images and vagueness of apprehension, but with the exalted glow of ascetic passion—of the love of God. Poor Isabel was trembling with all the complications, the duties, and desires going contradictory to each other which adhere to the love of man.

‘I suppose she must be mad,’ said Stapylton; ‘nothing but madness could account for it. That is what comes of prayer-meetings and such stuff. Or if she’s not mad, she’s cunning and likes the power.’

‘And how do you think you can judge?’ cried Isabel, turning upon him with the ready irritation of excitement,—‘you that know nothing of Ailie, nor of her way of living. If you were healed all in a moment and raised out of your bed, who would you believe did it but God? and could you stop to think and consider the question if you were mad or not, before you spoke. Let them judge that know!’

‘Never mind,’ said the young man, caressing the hand he held, ‘you little fury! I don’t know and I don’t care; but you never thanked me for reminding you of your sister, and freeing you from that mad creature. Now she is gone there is no hurry, Isabel. It is not late, after all.’

‘But Margaret will want me,’ said the girl. ‘No; I’ll not wait, I must go home.’

‘Only half an hour,’ he pleaded; ‘she is gone, and we have all the hill-side to ourselves.’

Isabel made no answer, but she drew her hand from his arm, and continued on her way, quickening rather than delaying her progress. He walked by her for some time, sullen and lowering. He had no comprehension of the high spirit of the girl, though he loved her. After a while he drew closer to her side, and laid his hand on her arm.

‘You must do as I said, my darling, now,’ he said, with real fervour. ‘She is going back to her meeting, and it will be all over the parish to-morrow, that you and I were courting on the hill.’

This was the drop too much that made Isabel’s cup run over. She turned upon him with eyes that flashed through her tears. ‘Do you reproach me with it?’ she cried—‘you I did it for? Oh, if I had known! But, Mr. Stapylton, it shall be the last time.’

‘Don’t turn my words against me,’ he said, ‘don’t be so peevish, so foolish, Isabel! as if it was that I meant.’

‘No, I’ll not be foolish,’ she answered, in her heat, ‘nor think shame of myself for any lad. After this ye may be sure, Mr. Stapylton, I’ll never do it again.’

And then she hastened down, increasing her speed at every step, and taking no time to think. And he went sullenly by her side, not quite sure whether he loved or hated her most in her perversity. And they parted with a curt, resentful good night at the very door of the Glebe Cottage, he being too angry and she too proud to linger over the parting. It was a parting which all the world might have witnessed. And Isabel returned to her quiet home, and Horace proceeded on to the village, each with the blaze of a lover’s quarrel quivering about them. Such flames are too hot and sudden to last; but nothing had yet done so much to separate them as had this unexpected meeting with Ailie on the hill.

CHAPTER IX

The Manse of Lochhead was not a venerable, nor a beautiful house. It had none of the associations which sometimes cluster about an English parsonage. It had not been built above twenty years, and neither its dimensions nor its appearance were in the least manorial. But it was a comfortable square house, quite large enough for the owner’s wants and income, and important enough to represent the dignity of the minister, amid the humble roofs of the village. It was built on a slope of the braes which rose heathery and wild behind, and the prospect from its windows was as soft as if there had been no mountains within a hundred miles. The unequal combination of the great Highland range on one side, with the pastoral loch on the other, which gave a charm to the Glebe Cottage, was lost on this lower elevation.

The minister and the Dominie had dined together on the afternoon preceding an adjourned meeting of the Kirk Session, partly because it was habitual on the Saturday half-holiday, and partly to strengthen each other for the work before them. The hour of their dinner was four o’clock, which was as if you had said eight o’clock to that primitive community. When the meal was over they adjourned to the study to smoke the quiet pipe which was one of their bonds of union. The study was a small room with one window looking into a vast rose-bush, though peeps of the trim kitchen-garden were to be had on one side. You would have supposed that it would be natural for two such men to prefer the other side of the house, where the loch was visible, changing to a hundred opal tints as the shadows pursued the fleeting uncertain sunshine of its bosom. But they were very familiar with the view, and the little study at the back was the legitimate place for the pipe and the consultation.

‘I am always afraid of these violent men,’ said the minister, ‘and then they are so much in earnest. Earnestness is a fine quality, no doubt, but it’s very hard to keep it in bounds; and I cannot let things go on as they are doing. They’ll soon take the very work out of my hands. Already it is not me but Ailie that’s at the head of the parish. And you tell me you’ll give me no help?’

‘It’s against my principles,’ said the Dominie. ‘Let alone, that’s ay my rule. I’m no for meddling with the development of the mind whatever form it takes. You may say it’s a childish way to take up religion; but so far as it’s gone there’s no harm.’

‘No harm! after what I told you of that scene at the Glebe, and the reprobate turned prophet,’ said Mr. Lothian, angrily.

‘You’re very sensitive about the Glebe. If it had been any other house in the parish it would not have gone so much to your heart.’

‘Well,’ said Mr. Lothian, ‘if I am, is it not natural? Two young creatures, so strangely situated, neither ladies, so to speak, nor simple lasses, though ladies in their hearts. And then that saint there is more like Heaven than earth. You need not smile. I do not disguise my feeling for her sister. It’s a mad notion for a man of my years, but I don’t disguise it. And yet it was of Margaret I thought.’

‘By all I hear,’ said the Dominie, ‘she’ll soon be out of all risk of disturbance.’

‘You speak at your ease,’ said the minister, rising in agitation to pace about the little room. ‘When Margaret Diarmid dies it will be like the quenching of a light to me, and more than me. And how can I protect her deathbed but by putting a stop to this? Her deathbed, aye, or her very grave. Have you forgot that they go further and further every day?’

‘I heard they were raising the dead,’ said the Dominie, calmly. ‘It’s the sense o’ power that leads them away.’

‘And they have power,’ said the minister, ‘that is the strangest of all. Wherever it comes from, from God or the devil, they have power in their hands. I cannot deny it—I cannot understand it. Are we to believe what we see in contradiction of every instinct, or are we to hold by reason and common sense, and the truth we understand, and give facts the lie? The thought is too much for me.’

‘And so you would put a stop to it?’ the Dominie said, with a long puff of smoke. ‘But ye’ll have discussion enough before that’s done. I’m more concerned for the two poor things at the Glebe. If Margaret dies, as she must die, what is to become of bonnie Isabel?’

The minister, though he was a man of vigorous frame, gave a momentary shiver, as if the cold had seized him, and then sat down again, and began to turn over his papers, averting his face. ‘You know what would become of her,’ he said, ‘if I had my will.’

‘You would bring the lassie down here to be mistress and mair,’ said Galbraith. ‘I’m no blaming you, though I cannot understand it myself. You and me are more wiselike companions than her and you could ever be. If you had married in your youth, like most men, ye might have had a daughter of your own as old as she is now.’

‘I’ve said all that to myself,’ said the minister, ‘a hundred times over. But it makes no difference. And I can bear whatever may happen—but my heart craves this thing from the Lord, and no other, before I die.’

‘You’re taking up their phraseology, for all your objections to them,’ said the Dominie, with a little disdain.

‘It’s the phraseology of all that yearn,’ cried the minister. ‘Why should I not ask it of the Lord? It’s a lawful thing I crave. God do so to me and more also if I would not cherish her like Christ His Church. I am old enough to be her father, as you say; but I never loved woman till now, and that is the youth of the heart. The boy there is fond of her in his way—but what sort of a way? a fancy of the moment for her sweet face. And you’ll say it’s more natural. But I tell you, Galbraith, there is no nature in it,’ he said, once more rising in his excitement, ‘to link that creature’s pure soul to a hardened, heathen, self-seeking man of the world. I know the lad; he is near her in age, but in nothing else. She makes a God of him in her imagination; and when her eyes were opened, and she saw the loathly creature by her side, what would become of my Isabel? She would break her heart, and she would die.’

‘Her eyes might never be opened,’ said the Dominie, reflectively. ‘There’s no bounds to a woman’s power of deceiving herself. She might make a hero of him all her days, though he was but a demon to the rest of the world. And the lad is maybe not so ill as ye say.’

‘That would be worst of all—for then he would drag her down to his level, and blind her eyes to good and evil. No more,’ said the minister, with a trembling voice; ‘you mean, well, Galbraith, but you don’t know how hard all this is to bear.’

‘Maybe no—maybe no,’ was the answer; ‘but she might stay still at the Glebe for all I can see, as long as Jean Campbell is there to take care of her. Jean Campbell is a very decent woman. Margaret knows the worth of her, but no yon hasty lassie of an Isabel. As long as she is there there’s no such desperate necessity for a change.’

‘And Margaret is living, and may live,’ said Mr. Lothian, sinking back into his easy chair.

The Dominie shook his head. ‘If one life could stand for another, I would be sore tempted to give her mine,’ he said; ‘it’s so little good to a man like me. I’ve had all that life can give. Ye may say it was a niggardly portion—daily bread and little more—no comfort to speak of, nothing like what you call success—no love beyond my mother’s when I was a lad. And yet, though there’s so little, I’ll have all the trouble of old age and death at the hinder end. Poor thing, she would be very welcome to my life if there was any possibility of a transfer. But ye must put away your profane thoughts, and get out your books, for yonder is Andrew White coming down the brae.’

Half an hour after the Kirk Session had met. The minister took his place at the head of the table, and Mr. Galbraith, with his book of minutes opened before him, prepared to fulfil his office of Session clerk. ‘I give no opinion,’ he had said to the other members of the court, ‘but I’m Session clerk, and I’ll not neglect my duty.’ There was a prayer to begin with, said by the minister, while they all stood up round the table, some with wide-open eyes and restless looks, some with bowed heads and reverence. And then the Dominie read the minutes of the last meeting, and the present one was constituted.

‘To appoint the Rev. the Moderator, Mr. Andrew White, and Mr. William Diarmid to inquire into the effect of the recent movement in the parish, with power to act against all presuming and schismatical persons that may be taking authority into their own hands.’

‘I have to ask the Moderator,’ said the Dominie, ‘if he is ready to present his report.’

‘I have to make an explanation instead,’ said the minister. ‘We were not agreed. What William Diarmid and myself found to be unreasonable and bordering upon enthusiasm. Andrew approved of with all his heart. I will give you the result of my own inquiries without prejudice to other members of the court. In the first place, there are two or three women who, contrary to all the rules of the church, and to the Apostle’s order, take upon them to speak and lead the prayers of the congregation——’

‘Wi’ a’ respect to the minister,’ said Andrew White, ‘I’ve ae small remark to make. If it had been contrary to the order of the Apostles, wherefore does St. Paul speak of the prophetesses that were to have a veil upon their heads? There’s plenty of passages I could quote to that——’

‘There’s ane that’s decisive to my way o’ thinking, said William Diarmid. ‘That women are no to speak in the church.’

‘A law’s one thing,’ said Samuel of Ardintore. ‘But an institution that’s actually existing is mair to be remembered than ae mention of a rule against it, that might be nae law.’

‘We can leave that point,’ said the minister. ‘I say it is not for edification, that Ailie Macfarlane, though I have not a word to say against her, should be led away by her zeal to take up such a position in the parish. By custom and use, if by nothing else, such things are forbidden. I have not finished. I have to object further that persons holding no office in the church, neither ministers, nor licentiates, nor elders, have likewise taken a leading part, and prayed, and exhorted, and held meetings, that so far as I can see they had no authority for. If it is sanctioned by the Kirk Session, that is a different matter. But the fact is that there are meetings taking place in every quarter of the parish without the authority of the Kirk Session, or so much as a sanction either from the elders or from me.’

‘I must protest,’ Moderator, said Samuel Diarmid. ‘I cannot allow that the freedom of the subject is to be sae confined, that a man canna praise God with his neighbours without authority from the minister; that I canna allow.’

‘Ye may enter your protest,’ said the Dominie, ‘but the Moderator must say out his say.’

‘And now I come to what is most serious of all,’ said Mr. Lothian. ‘It is my opinion that these continual meetings, held by unauthorised persons, are doing harm and not good to the devout in this parish. I say nothing about the wonders that have attended the movement. These may have been delusion; but far be it from me to say that there’s been deception——’

‘There can be nae deception,’ said Andrew White, ‘in the work of the Lord.’

‘Whisht, man!’ said Samuel; ‘the question the minister puts, if no in as many words, is, If it is the work of the Lord?’

‘For my part,’ said Mr. William, ‘I’ve no objection to meetings now and then. It’s a good way of keeping the folk alive, and keeping up their interest; and I wouldna say that Ailie Macfarlane should be put to silence. I canna think but the Spirit in her comes from above; and we a’ know that she was raised up by a miracle. I wouldna put a stop to nothing. I would only give them rules to guide them, and appoint the meetings oursels; and let none take place without the minister and an elder, or one of the neighbour ministers; or if that canna be, then twa elders, to see that things are done decently in order. That would be my proposition. No to let the parish go into ranting and violence; and at the same time, so far as it’s His doing, no to strive against the Lord.’

‘And are ye to dictate to the Lord what day He shall come and what day He shall bide?’ said Andrew. ‘If He gives a word of instruction to His servants, is the voice to be silenced by the Kirk Session? I’ll never give in to that. If it’s the work of man, let it come to an end; but dinna put your straw bands on the flame o’ the Spirit o’ God.’

‘That’s a’ very true,’ said Mr. Smeaton; ‘but if the word o’ the Lord was to come in the middle of the nicht, when the parish was sleeping, ye wouldna have the prophet rise up and ca’ the honest folk out of their beds? And if they can wait till the morning—or rather till the night after, for they’re a’ at night these prayer-meetings—what’s to hinder them to wait till anither day?’

‘It’s awfu’ carnal reasoning,’ said Samuel Diarmid; ‘but it’s no without meaning for them that ken no better. I wouldna object to William’s proposition mysel; but I canna answer for them that feel the word burning within them that they can bide for your set days.’

‘Your sawbaths and your new moons,’ said Andrew. ‘Na, ye might as well leemit the sun in his shining and the dew in its falling—they’ll speak in season and out of season. It was for that they were sent.’

But Mr. William’s conciliatory motion was at last carried after much more discussion. And the struggle did not break the bonds of amity which united the little assembly: Samuel Diarmid volunteered not only his advice, but a cart of guano to a certain field on the glebe, which, in his opinion, was not producing such a crop as it ought. ‘You’re no a married man yoursel, and it’s of less importance to ye,’ Samuel said, ‘but I canna bide to see land lying idle no more than men.’ And Andrew White announced the intention of the mistress to send the minister a skep of honey from the hills. ‘Ye keep nae bees yoursel, which is a pity,’ said the elder, always with that gentle touch of admonition with which the rural Scotch personage naturally addresses his clergyman. They parted in the soft gloaming, while still there was light enough to guide them on their respective ways. Mr. Smeaton, the stock farmer, had his horse waiting at John Macwhirter’s; and the others dropped in there on their homeward way to fight the battle over once more; all but Samuel and Andrew, who climbed the hill together to the mill, where the former was to take a bed for the night, his house being at the furthest limits of the parish, on the other side of ‘the braes.’

‘Yon was grand about the minister’s sermons, to his face,’ said Mr. Smeaton, as they went over the whole discussion in the smithy.

‘Ay, man; did they gang into that subject? I’m real glad o’t,’ said John Macwhirter; ‘he’s a learned man and a clever man, but he’s as fu’ of doctrines as an egg’s fu’ of meat. He’s no half practical enough for me.’

Thus it will be seen opinions differed widely even on the primitive shores of the Loch.

CHAPTER X

The next day, which was Sunday, carried the news of this decision through all the parish. It was a bright morning after the rain, one of those radiant pathetic days which are so usual in the Highlands. The women came across the hill with their dresses ‘kilted’ and pinned up to preserve them from the moisture which glistened on the heather. The birch-trees hung their glistening branches out to the sun. The paths ran with the recent rain; and at the same time the sun shone brilliantly upon everything reflected from the dazzling mirror of the Loch, where not a boat or sign of life disturbed the Sabbatical repose. The gathering of the kirk-going crowd is always a pretty sight. Dissent scarcely existed in those days in such rural places. Groups came gathering along all the paths; the village emptied itself of all but an occasional housewife, or the old grannie too deaf or feeble to join the congregation. While the cracked and miserable bell tingled forth its ten minutes from the tower, the women and children poured into the church, while the men lingered in a crowd in the churchyard waiting till the tingle should be over. This was the habit of the Loch; but to-day these groups were animated by a livelier interest than usual. There was no question of crops outside among the men, nor of measles and whooping-cough among the women rustling and whispering in their pews. ‘Have ye heard the news that the meetings are stopped?’ ‘I have heard it, but I canna believe it.’ ‘I’m very thankful, for there was nae saying what they might have turned to;’ or, ‘I’m awfu’ sorry, and such good as they were doing in the parish.’ ‘But the thing is, will Ailie submit, or Mr. John?’ These were the words that were whispered from one to another as the bell jingled forth its summons to church. The two thus conjoined had come to be regarded universally as the leaders of the movement; they were patronised and supported by many parochial personages of weight, but in the end it was evidently they who must decide.

Mr. Lothian’s sermon, as was expected, bore some reference to the momentous crisis of affairs. With that natural perversity to which even the best of men yield like their inferiors, the minister’s sermon, instead of being as Samuel Diarmid had suggested, ‘rousing,’ was calmer than usual in its tone; and he was so bold, almost rash, all things taken into consideration, as to take his text from the strange description in the Old Testament of those prophets whom Saul joined in their wild rapture of inspiration. By a rare self-denial he refrained from absolutely quoting the words which were on the lips of all his parishioners. ‘Is Saul also among the prophets?’—but dwelt upon the wild outburst which had so little effect upon the condition of the people, and upon the sorrowful calm of Samuel to whom no such ardour of religious excitement seemed to have been given. ‘From all we can see,’ said the minister, ‘he stood and looked on, not disapproving, but well aware in his heart how little was to be expected from such bursts of enthusiasm.’ The attention in the church was absorbing. Sometimes there would be a stolen glance at Ailie, who listened like the rest with profound attention, a gleam of colour now and then flitting over her visionary face; and he was happy who could obtain from his seat a glimpse of the Ardnamore pew, with Mr. John’s dark head relieved against the high back. He sat alone, and was very conspicuous in the front of the gallery, and at any time he would have been notable among the shrewd, expressive, peasant countenances round him. Something of the finer and more subtle varieties of expression given by education and intercourse with the world, and—though he was at best but a country squire—something of the flavour of race was in the passionate, dark face, fixed upon the preacher with a defiant attention which seemed likely at any moment to burst into utterance. People said he had actually risen to sneak when Mr. Lothian hastily gave the benediction and concluded the service. There had not been so exciting a ‘diet of worship’ on the Loch in the memory of man. The congregation, as it dispersed, broke into little groups, discussing the one subject from every point of view.

‘I wonder how he daur speak, with her yonder before him like one of the saints, and sae humble for a’ her gifts.’ ‘And, eh, I wonder how a young lass could sit and listen to a’ yon from the minister and still bide steadfast in her ain way, said the gossips. ‘But I canna haud with that way o’ finding fault with Scripture,’ said one of the fathers of the village. ‘A’ Scripture’s written for our instruction; and wha gave ony man authority to judge the auld prophets as if they were not examples every ane?’

‘It’s a fashion nowadays,’ said another. ‘I’ve heard some o’ them as hard on Jacob, honest man, as if he had been a neebor lad; and as for King Dawvid and his backslidings——’

‘Had he been a neebor lad, as ye say, he had never come within my door,’ cried Jenny Spence, ‘and seeing the Lord puts them to shame Himsel, wherefore should we set up for making them perfect? And, bless me, if ye think of a wheen naked men, tearing their claes, and ranting afore decent folk——’

‘Haud your tongue, Jenny!’ said John, ‘or speak o’ things ye understand.’

‘If I didna understand better nor you lads that never take thought of naething, it would be queer to me,’ retorted Jenny. ‘What wi’ your work, and your clavers, and Luckie Bisset ower the hill——’

‘Whisht! whisht! woman, it’s the Sawbath-day,’ said an older neighbour; and then the original subject was resumed.

Among the many church-going parties there was the habitual one from the Glebe. Jean Campbell, in her best attire, the heavy, well-preserved, but somewhat rusty weeds which became the Captain’s widow was an imposing figure. Her crape was rather brown, but it was a more perfect evidence of rank to her than silk or satin. Her fresh, comely face looked out pleasantly from the white crimped borders, and overshadowing pent-house of black, which marked her condition. Not a new-made widow on all the Loch had deeper weeds than she; though Isabel by her side in her grey gown and with her rose ribbons looked fresh as the day.

Jean had many salutations to make as they issued out of church; and pretty Isabel, who was very conscious of the little step of superiority in her position which make her notice of her rustic neighbours, ‘a compliment,’ distributed her little greetings like a princess, shyly looking out for Miss Catherine, with whom she was wont to walk home a far as the gate of Lochhead, thus separating herself from the common level on which her stepmother stood.

‘Look well at Isabel of the Glebe as you pass her; you maun make your new frock like yon,’ an anxious mother would say to her daughter. ‘They say she’s aye meeting that young Stapylton on the braes, but he daurna come near her on the Sabbath-day.’ ‘Eh, no, I’m thinking he wouldna have the face, and her waiting for Miss Catherine.’ Isabel was softly conscious of the comments made upon her. When Margaret and she were children, standing together waiting for their father on the same spot ten years before, the same looks had been turned upon them; the same curious observations made on their dress and their ‘manners;’ and ‘Ye dinna see the wee ladies behaving like that,’ had been a common admonition to the unruly children around.

‘I hope you are all well,’ she said to Jenny Spence with the pretty ‘English,’ which the Loch admired, and which, to tell the truth, Isabel herself often forgot, except on those Sabbatical occasions. And Jenny felt the compliment of the salutation and the pride of the connection so profoundly that she rushed into eager tender inquiries about Margaret, overwhelming the girl with her reverential affection. While she stood, with smiling dignity, listening to Jenny Spence, another little incident occurred that increased still further her importance with the crowd. Ailie Macfarlane was not in the habit of speaking to anyone as she left the church. She would pass through them all with her little Bible folded in her hands, her eyes either cast down or gazing rapt into the air, while everybody made way for her. But when she approached Isabel on this memorable day, Ailie paused. She took one of her hands from her Bible, and suddenly laid it upon Isabel’s. It was cold; and the girl, who had not expected it, made a little start backward from the touch.

‘It’s like ice to your warm blood,’ said Ailie; ‘and so am I to you. But I’m no acting on my ain notion. Isabel Diarmid, promise me you’ll come to the prayer-meeting the morn.’

‘O Ailie, how can I promise?’ said Isabel in dismay, ‘and Margaret so ill.’

‘Dinna set that up for an excuse. I’m bidden to ask you by them that will have no excuse,’ said Ailie. ‘To her ain Master she standeth or falleth—I’m no judging Margaret. But, Isabel, I’m bidden to summon you.’

‘I cannot leave my sister,’ faltered Isabel, raising her eyes to the crowd with a mute appeal for defence.

‘You can leave her for the hill,’ said Ailie, very low; and then she added hurriedly. ‘It’s no me that speaks. There’s awfu’ trouble and sorrow in your way, and you’re but a soft feckless thing to bear it. Come to the prayer-meeting the morn.’

It was just at this moment that Miss Catherine appeare. Isabel’s eyes had been diverted for the moment away from the church, and she had not seen the approach of her friend; who laid her hand upon the girl’s shoulder as Ailie repeated her invitation.

‘Ailie Macfarlane,’ Miss Catherine said, while Isabel started nervously at the unexpected touch. ‘You are not to bid her to your meetings; she is too young, and she is my kinswoman, and I cannot let her go.’

‘If she was the queen’s kinswoman I would bid her,’ said Ailie. ‘What are your ranks and degrees to the Spirit of the Lord? I’m offering her far more than you can offer her, though you’re a lady and me but a simple lass. Now that persecution has come upon us, as was to be looked for, it canna be but the Spirit will be poured out double. It’s out of love to Isabel I ask her, that she may taste the first-fruits and be kent for ane of the chosen. Who are you that would stand between the Lord and His handmaid? I’m freed from earthly bonds this day. Isabel, I’ll say nae mair to ye; but tell Margaret I bid her arise and meet me—for the corn is whitening to the harvest; and come yoursel.’

When she had said these words she passed on with the same rapt look as before, speaking to no one, seeing no one. The people round had gathered close to hear what she said, and dispersed slowly out of her path as she turned, making way for her reluctantly, and full of curiosity. Some of the women even plucked at her dress as she passed. ‘Eh, Ailie! speak one word. Will’t bring judgment on the parish?’ said one anxious voice. But Ailie made no reply. She glided away from them, with that directness and silent speed of motion which gives a certain spiritual and ghostly air to the very movements of the abstracted and impassioned.

Isabel had forgotten her simple vanity. She stood trembling, with tears in her eyes, by Miss Catherine’s side, not even capable of pride in being thus adopted as the special charge of the great lady of the parish.

‘She says I’m coming to grief and trouble,’ sobbed poor Isabel. ‘Oh, is it my Margaret she means?’

‘Hush!’ said Miss Catherine drawing Isabel’s hand through her own; ‘you must not cry before all these folk. Come and tell me all that ails you. Is Margaret worse that you tremble so? and what can that poor thing know about it more than you or me? Can she know as well as Margaret herself?’

‘But if it was true that she had the Spirit?’ faltered Isabel through her tears. ‘And oh, Miss Catherine, it goes to my heart what she aye says—if Margaret had but faith!’

‘Margaret has all the faith a Christian woman wants—be you sure of that,’ said Miss Catherine, with impatience; ‘and I wish the minister had taken order sooner to put a stop to all this. But, Isabel, there might be worse things in your way than the grief we all share. My dear, I have been wanting long to speak to you. Put Ailie and her raving put of your mind, and come cannily up to Lochhead with me.’

‘Margaret will want me,’ said Isabel, awakening suddenly to a sense that admonitions of another kind were hanging over her.

‘I’ll not keep you long,’ said Miss Catherine, ‘and Jean shall say where you are. Good-day, Mrs. Diarmid. I am taking Isabel with me to have a talk. Give Margaret my love, and I’ll walk up to see her this afternoon and bring her sister back. There’s no change?’

‘I canna say there’s ony change, Miss Catherine,’ said Jean, divided between the melancholy meaning of what she said and the glory of this address; for even Miss Catherine, punctilious as she was in giving honour where honour was due, seldom addressed her by the dignified title of Mrs. Diarmid; ‘but she’s aye wearing away, and weaker every day.’

‘The Lord help us, there’s nothing else to be looked for,’ said Miss Catherine, sadly. And Isabel, who had regained her composure to some extent, fell weeping once more, silently leaning on her friend’s arm. There was nothing more said till they descended the brae, and made their way through the village. The Loch had never been trained to the custom of curtseying to the lady of the manor. The groups stood aside with kindly looks to let her pass, and here and there a man better bred than usual took off his hat, but the salutations in general were rather nods of friendly greeting and smiles that broadened the honest rural faces than more reverential servilities. ‘How are all at home, John?’ Miss Catherine said, in her peremptory way as she passed. ‘How is all with ye, Janet?’ And then there was a needful pause, and the story of the children’s recovery from some childish epidemic would be told, or of the letter from ‘the lads’ in Canada, or of family distress and anxiety. When they were quite free of these interruptions, which had once more the effect of bringing composure to Isabel, whose April tears dried quickly, and whose heart could not be coerced out of hope, Miss Catherine turned to the special charge she had taken upon her.

‘My dear,’ she said, ‘I am going to be a cruel friend. I have made up in my mind all manner of hard things to say to you, Isabel. You are not to take them ill from me. We’re kindred far removed, but yet there’s one drop’s blood between you and me, and I know nobody on the Loch that wishes you well more warmly. Will you let me speak as if I were your mother? Had she been living it would have been her place.’

‘Miss Catherine,’ said Isabel, with a thrill of nervous impatience, a sudden heat flushing to her face, ‘how can you ask it? Ye have always said whatever you liked to me.’

‘And you think I’ve sometimes been hard upon you?’ said Miss Catherine. ‘Well, we’ll not argue. Your mother was younger than me, Isabel, and she had no near friends any more than you. If she had had a father or a brother to take care of her, she never would have married Duncan Diarmid. I am meaning no offence to the Captain. He did very well for himself, and a man that makes his way is always to be respected; but he was a different man from what your mother thought when she married him, and her life was short, and far from happy. She was a sweet, wilful tender, hot-tempered thing, just like you.’

‘Eh, I’m no wilful!’ said Isabel, thrilling in every vein with the determination to resist all advice that could be given to her. They were almost alone on the green glistening road which wound round the head of the Loch, and the water rippled up upon the pebbles, and flashed like a great mirror in the sunshine. The girl’s heart rose with the exhilaration of the brightness.

‘Your mother would take no advice,’ said Miss Catherine, ‘and she died at five-and-twenty, and left you, two poor babies, without a mother to guide you in the world.’

‘But, oh, it was not her fault she died,’ cried Isabel. ‘Folk die that are happy too.’

‘I’ll tell you what it was,’ said Miss Catherine; ‘not to put you against your father. He never pretended to more than he was. Duncan was aye honest, whatever else. But your mother saw qualities in him that no mortal could see. And when the hasty thing saw her idol broken, her heart broke too; and you’re like her—too like, Isabel.’

‘For one thing at least, I’m wronging nobody; and why should you say all this to me?’ cried the girl all flushed and resentful, and yet struggling with her tears.

‘How can I tell what you might be tempted to do? Margaret Diarmid—that’s your mother—gave me her word she would take time and think, and the very next Sabbath she was cried in the kirk! Isabel, I said I would be cruel. Do you know, do you ever think, what’s coming upon you, bairn?’

Isabel made no answer—her resentment could not stand against this solemnity of tone. She raised her eyes to Miss Catherine as one who awaits the sentence of fate.

‘While you are running about, out and in, like a butterfly or a bird, and singing your songs, and working at your seam, and meeting strange folk upon the braes’—said Miss Catherine with emphasis. ‘I am not blaming you, even for the last. But all this time there’s coming a day when you will be left alone in the world, Isabel. Your bit cottage will still be yours—so to speak a home; but a home that’s empty and desolate, what is that? And none to lean on, none to advise you, none to be your guide—silence in the chambers, and cold on the hearth; and you no better than a bairn, used from your cradle to lean on her and turn to her: what will you do when you are alone in the world?’

‘Oh, my Margaret!’ cried Isabel, drawing her hand from Catherine’s arm and bursting into a passion of tears. They were within the gate at Lochhead, and there was no one by to see the girl’s weeping, which was beyond control. She had been told of it again and again, and realised it to some degree, but never until now had brought her imagination to bear on the life that remained for herself after her sister was gone. Miss Catherine was softened by the violence of her emotion. She took Isabel into her arms and let fall a tear or two out of her old eyes, to mingle with those scorching drops that came wrung out of the other’s very heart.

‘Oh, you are cruel, cruel,’ cried Isabel, struggling out of her embrace; ‘I will die too! I canna bear it; I canna bear it! It is more than I can bear.’

Then Miss Catherine led her, blind with her tears, to a grassy seat hid among the trees, and sat down by her and did her best to administer comfort. ‘Isabel, you know well it must be so,’ she said at length, with some severity. ‘It cannot be that you have found it out for the first time to-day.’

‘Oh, do not speak to me,’ cried Isabel; ‘how can ye dare to say it is to be, when God could raise her up in a moment like Ailie? And there was Mary Diarmid down the Loch that was—dying—that’s what they said—and even she got the turn. Oh, do not speak to me, God is not cruel as you say.’

All these reproaches Miss Catherine bore, sitting compassionately by her victim until the force of her passion was spent; and when Isabel, faint and exhausted, like a creature in a dream, could resist no longer, she resumed where she had left off.

‘My dear, I am thinking what is to become of you when this comes to pass—and so does Margaret. Bless her, she thinks of you night and day; and many a talk we have about you, Isabel, when you’re little thinking of us. There is one good man in the parish that loves you well——’

‘I want no love,’ answered the girl, almost sullenly. ‘Oh, Miss Catherine, don’t speak like this to me.’

‘But I am speaking for Margaret’s sake. There is one that would be a comfort and strength and blessing to any woman. And there is the other lad. Isabel! your father was rough and wild, and not a match for my kinswoman Margaret Diarmid; but he had always a heart. This lad has little heart. If you but heard how he can speak of them you hold most dear——’

‘Miss Catherine,’ said Isabel, with a voice of despair, starting to her feet, ‘I will run home to Margaret; I can bear no more.’

CHAPTER XI

The prayer-meeting on Monday evening was the most exciting ‘occasion’ that had been known on the Loch for years. At this the decision of the prophets would be made known, as the decision of the Kirk Session had already been. It was moonlight, that great necessity of all rural evening gatherings; and from all the corners of the parish came curious hearers eager to know what was the next step to be taken. Mr. William’s wife from Wallacebrae was even one of the audience, undeterred by her husband’s objections. ‘How can I say I’m against them, and my ain wife led away to hear?’ he said. ‘Hoot away! No to hear them, but to see what they will do,’ said Mrs. Diarmid; ‘am I to be led away?’

And Isabel, who had begun to place a certain vague hope in Ailie, after the struggle she had gone through the day before, had made up her mind to obey the injunction so strongly laid upon her, and to go also. ‘I would like to hear what they say, and what they are going to do,’ she said to her sister, in almost the same words which the mistress at Wallacebrae had given as her excuse, owning no sympathy with the enthusiasts, but simple curiosity.

‘But you must not go to hear the Word of God as if it were a play,’ said Margaret, ‘it is always the word of God whoever speaks it. If you are but going out of curiosity, Isabel, it would be better to bide with me.’

‘I would rather stay with you than do anything else in the world; if you would but stay with me,’ said Isabel, with wistful looks, ‘and try, maybe, what Ailie said?’

‘Ye vex me,’ said the dying girl. But the tone was so soft that it could scarcely be called a reproach. And yet Margaret felt that to remain with her in the unbroken quiet of the long evening was more than Isabel could now bear. There were the braes with all their wistful delights to tempt her forth, and her own unquiet, restless heart, tortured by doubt and grief, and distracting gleams of the future; and there was perhaps the lover whom in her heart she yearned for and yet had begun to flee.

‘She is going,’ Isabel said again, after a pause, ‘and you are always so kind, you say ye want for nothing, Margaret. It is not for curiosity. They told me I was warned by name. No, I am not going away after them; I was thinking of different things.’

‘Ever of that miracle?’ said Margaret, with a faint smile, ‘which will never come. If it was not for you, Isabel, it would be a miracle to me to be away. But we will no speak of that; leave little Mary with me if you will go—not that I want anybody, I am real well to-night, and no breathless to speak of; but it’s ill for the bairn.’

‘Oh, Margaret! I feel whiles as if you thought more of that bairn than of your own sister!’ said Isabel, with all the hot jealousy of a heart which felt itself divided and guilty.

‘She is my sister,’ said Margaret, softly; ‘but nobody could ever be like my Bell; it would be strange if you needed to be told that now.’

And then the impatient, impetuous girl wept and upbraided herself. ‘Oh, I am not myself, I am not myself!’ she said; ‘I’m all wrong; it’s as if I could not submit to God.’

‘My bonnie Bell!’ said Margaret, wistfully, gazing at the perplexing creature, whom she could not understand, and laying her hand upon the bowed-down head. A little sigh of weariness mingled with her perplexity. She had come to that point when peace is demanded by worn-out nature; and those tumults were too much for her. ‘Put on something warm,’ she said, ‘and tell her she is not to go too far in; but be home soon and let me hear what’s passed. If Ailie speaks to you, tell her I’m real well and content.’

‘Will I tell her you are better? Oh, will I say you’re mending, Margaret?’

‘Ye cannot think how you vex me,’ said poor Margaret, sighing, ‘you more than all. Why should I mend? I am far on my journey now, and why should I come back just to tread all the weary way over again another time? Tell Ailie I’m winning home. The road is uphill, and maybe the last bit is the steepest; but I am real content. If you will not say that, say nothing, Isabel. And if you are going, it is time for you to go.’

‘But I’ll go and leave you angry, Margaret,’ cried Isabel; ‘angry and vexed at me?’

‘No, no; no angry,’ said Margaret, wearily. The hectic spot had come into her cheek. She laid her head back on the cushions with again a weary sigh. What wonder if she longed for the end—she to whom life had no longer anything to give? She closed her eyes for a moment, and Isabel, feeling more guilty than ever, stole away to warn her stepmother, and to tie on her cottage bonnet and great grey cloak. ‘You’ll watch Margaret that she wants nothing; but you’ll not speak to her to wear her out,’ she said to little Mary, ever jealous of her sister’s love.

The schoolhouse was all dark when the crowd reached it. Instead of the usual preparation for them the door was locked, and the Dominie stood on the step, looking down upon the dark groups as they began to arrive and gather round, with the patience of the rural mind. ‘The door’s no open yet.’ ‘The lights are no lightet.’ ‘I tell’t ye, for a’ your grumbling, we would be here soon enough.’ ‘It’s no often Ailie’s late.’ ‘And what’s the Dominie waiting there like a muckle ghost,’ murmured the crowd.

Mr. Galbraith, to tell the truth, was in no desirable position. He had the key in his hand, but that could not be seen; and he was charged with the dangerous mission of temporising, and commissioned to coax the multitude out of their excitement, and persuade them to go quietly home. If he did not succeed, there was always the key to fall back upon. ‘In the last place, if better is not to be made of it, I’ll let them have their will,’ he had said. Of all offices in the world the least satisfactory. Already he had begun to see that it was a mistake, but it was now too late to withdraw. ‘They should have found a’ dark and been treated to no explanations,’ he said to himself, as he stood with his back against the door and gazed on them. A mob is not an easy thing to deal with in any circumstances; and a religious mob, spurred up to the highest point of spiritual excitement, is the most dangerous of all. Had it not been for the large leaven of mere curiosity which kept down the pitch of agitation, things might have gone badly for the Dominie. He cleared his throat a great many times before he screwed himself to the point of addressing them. The prophets themselves had not yet appeared, and if it might be possible to dismiss the people before the arrival of their leaders, a great point would be gained. Spurred by this thought he at last broke the silence.

‘My friends,’ said the Dominie; and there was an immediate hush of the scraping feet, and the coughs and whispers of impatience. The moon had gone in and all was dark, so that he could distinguish none of the faces turned to him, and felt, as few orators can do, the sense of that vague abstraction, a crowd unbroken by the glance of any exceptional sympathetic face. ‘My friends, I’m here to say a word to you from the Kirk Session. Those that are put over ye in the Lord have taken much thought and counsel together to see what’s best to be done. I am reflecting upon nobody. It’s not my place to tell you who you are to hear, or when you are to forbear. But I appeal to those that are heads of families if there have not been too many of these meetings? The human mind is not equal to such a strain. I’ve studied it all my life, and ye may believe me when I speak. There must be a Sabbath for the body, and the mind’s mair delicate than the body. But any night, every night, have ye no assembled here, to listen to the most agitating addresses, given, I do not gainsay, with what is more touching than oratory, with the whole conviction of the soul. My friends, ye have but a delicate machine to manage. Your minds are no like your ploughs that are simple things to guide. They’re like the new-fangled steam-engines, full of delicate bits of wheels, and cranks, and corners——’

At this moment a figure glided up to him out of the crowd. The Dominie divined at once whose were those swift and noiseless steps, and felt that his oratory and his object were defeated. She came and placed herself beside him holding up her hand, and at that moment the moon burst forth and shone full upon Ailie’s face, which in that light was white as marble, with the full large lambent eyes, almost projected from it, looking out upon the eager spectators.

‘Come na here with your carnal wisdom,’ said Ailie, putting up her hand as if to stop him. ‘Oh come na here! What’s learning, and knowledge, and a’ your science afore the fear of the Lord? And how dare ye stop His servants from constant prayer to Him, and saving souls? Will ye quench the Spirit, O man, with your vain words? Think ye we’re sae little in earnest that we want biggit walls to shelter us, or your fine candles to give us light? The Lord is our light,’ cried the prophetess, stretching out her hand towards the moon that shone full upon her. And there was a rustle and stir in the crowd which told the instant response of the audience.

The Dominie’s own feelings were not beyond the reach of such an apostrophe. He moved uneasily from one foot to another, and began to fumble in his coat-pocket for the key, the last concession which he was prepared to make.

‘I am saying nothing against that, my good lass,’ he said; ‘not a word am I saying, but that for you and the like of you there’s too much of this; and that’s the Kirk Session’s opinion. You shall have plenty of opportunity—plenty of occasion, but, my dear, for the sake of your own life, and for all the rest of them, not every night——’

‘Friends,’ said another voice suddenly from another quarter, ‘it is nothing wonderful if persecution has come upon us. I have expected it from the first. The hand of this world is against the servants of God, and ever will be. We are driven forth like our forefathers to the hill-side. The Church has shut to her doors against us. I told you it would be so. I told you a lukewarm, unawakened Church would never bear that within her bosom that was a reproach to her. And what of that?’ the speaker went on with growing excitement, ‘there is God’s word that they cannot drive us out of, and God’s lights that He has set for us in the heavens, and His ear that is ever open, and His hand that is ready to save. On your knees, my brethren! What hinders that we should pray to Him here?’

Then there arose a murmur among the crowd: ‘It’s Mr. John!’ ‘Eh, it’s the days of the persecution come back.’ ‘We’ll no thole’t.’ ‘Who’s the minister or the Kirk Session either to stand up against the Christian people?’ ‘And quench the Spirit?’ cried a voice above the rest; ‘do they mind that’s the unpardonable sin?’

Mr. Galbraith made vain efforts to speak; the murmurs rose higher and higher, and began at last to direct themselves to him. ‘Is the like of that weirdless Dominie to stand against ye a’, feeble loons?’ cried a woman. ‘Wha’s he that he should daur to stand against us?’ ‘Let me at him!’ ‘Eh, lads, canny, canny, he’s an auld man.’ Such were the cries of indignation and alarm that rose in the stillness. The remnant of people who had been left in the village came rushing forth to see what was the matter. Mr. Lothian was at the other end of the parish, but young Stapylton, who had just returned from a fruitless ramble on the braes, came lounging to the Manse gate. The moon went suddenly behind a cloud, leaving all that darkling mass confused and struggling. Then it was that the Dominie made himself heard. ‘Lads,’ he shouted, his voice reaching the entire crowd though he was himself unseen, ‘I’ve trained ye, and I’m reaping the credit. If it was for your sakes ye might tear the auld man in pieces before you should have your will. Dinna think ye can frighten me. If I give the key to Ailie, it is for the women’s sake; and the bairns. Women, are ye mad that ye bring bairns here?’

‘It’s because their souls are mair precious to us than a’ the world,’ cried some mother in the crowd. ‘It’s little enough you teach them,’ cried another. ‘Where would they hear the Gospel if no in the meetings?’ ‘No in the kirk, wi’ a moderate minister and his moral essays.’ ‘And now when we’ve found the Word of God ye would drive us to the hill-side to seek it.’ ‘They would drive us into the Loch if they had their will,’ cried the crowd.

Isabel Diarmid, with all her sensibilities in arms, humiliated to the dust, indignant, terrified, stood trembling in the midst of this seething, agitated mass, thrust about by its sudden movements, ready to cry or to faint, feeling her self-respect for ever lost, no better than ‘a common lass’ among the crowd. She felt herself drawn along by the movement of the people round her rushing in one body for the door, which, with much noise of the key in the keyhole, had at length been opened. Clinging to her stepmother, vainly resisting, overwhelmed with shame, she felt herself swept out of the fresh air into the dark schoolroom no longer an individual with a will of her own, but a helpless portion of the crowd. When the first pioneers succeeded in lighting one miserable candle to throw a glimmer over the scene, its feeble rays gave no one any assistance, but only cast a wretched twinkle of revelation, showing the struggle—the benches pushed aside by the blind, uncertain crowd; the throng pouring in darkling through the black doorway. By degrees a few other feeble twinkles began to glitter about the room, and the people subsided into seats, with much commotion and struggling.

The strange gloom, the flicker of the candles, the eager look of all those faces turned towards the Dominie’s table, at which stood Mr. John; the thrill of excitement and expectation among them, overcame Isabel’s susceptible nature. All her shame disappeared before the extraordinary fire of popular emotion which she had suddenly caught. If she could be said to have hated any man in the world, Mr. John would have been the man. And yet she sat and gazed at him as if he had been an angel of fate.

‘It’s come at last,’ he said; ‘my brothers, I’ve been looking for it long. None can live godly in Christ Jesus but suffer persecutions. And Satan has found his instruments. Two nights had not gone from your first meeting in this place when the Lord showed me how it would be. But are we to give up our sacred standard because the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing—aye, a vain thing! As well might they bind the Loch that the flood should not come up. Has not the Spirit of the Lord come like a flood upon this parish; and they try to stop Him with a key turned in the lock and a shut door! But the Lord has opened us a door, great and effectual. Praise Him, my friends, that He has given us the victory. The horse and his rider has He overthrown in the sea——’

‘But this is awfu’ irregular,’ cried another personage, who rose suddenly out of the darkness, and was discovered after a time to be Samuel Diarmid the elder. He came out of the front row, which was merely a range of dark heads to the people behind, and stepped before the prophet with a small Bible in his hand. ‘My friends,’ he said, ‘though Mr. Galbraith took upon him to shut ye out o’ this public place belonging to the parish, I am here in my capacity as an elder o’ this parish to preside among ye. I hope there’s none here will dispute my right. We’ll open the meeting in the usual way by singing to the praise of God in the Psalms; and after the meeting’s lawfully constituted, ye shall hear whatever word the Lord’s servant may have to say.’

At this announcement, there arose a sudden rustle and resolute thumbing of the Psalms, which were attached to everybody’s Bible. The audience found the place conscientiously, though only a few could by any possibility see the page. Samuel himself led the singing, standing with his book in his hand, and his figure swaying to and forward with the cadence of the ‘tune;’ and seated in darkling rows, with their books held in every possible slope to reach the light, the audience lifted up their voices and sang one of those strange measures at which musicians stand aghast. Isabel sang it with all her heart. No criticism occurred to her. Her ear was not shocked by the false notes, the curious growls and creaks of utterance around her.

And then she closed her little Testament, and stood up, covering her face with her hands for the prayer. It was the prayer of a man having authority which Samuel Diarmid poured forth; and in that darkness through which no man could make out his neighbour’s face, the crowd stood and listened. His prayer was a kind of liturgy in itself. He prayed for her Sacred Majesty, as is the custom in Scotland, and for the Government and magistrates, and every class of men who could be put together in a general supplication. There was something half-comic, half-solemn in his formality; but it did not strike his audience as anything peculiar. They drew a long breath when it was ended, with conscious but unexpressed relief.

‘He’s ay awfu’ dry and fusionless in his prayers,’ Jean whispered to Isabel, ‘but wait till it’s Ailie’s turn.’

When they had all resumed their seats, the speaker opened his Bible and began to read ‘a chapter.’ For some part of this, all went on with perfect quiet and decorum. You might have been in the kirk, Isabel said to herself, had it not been so dark, and the people so thronged together. The thought was passing through her mind when all at once a crash of sound startled her. She rose to her feet in wonder, gazing where it might come from; but to her amazement no one else moved. Heads were raised a little, the attention of the mass was quickened, but nobody except herself thought, as Isabel did, that something terrible had happened. Who could it be that dared to interrupt the worship? But while she gazed and listened, there suddenly arose another sound; this time it was a voice distinct and musical. And Isabel, relieved, sat down again, and lent an attentive ear. The next moment she was once more on her feet in a confusion too great to be restrained. ‘What is she saying? what is she saying?’ she whispered in her stepmother’s ear. Jean, habituated to the wonder, was scandalised by this excitement. She twitched at Isabel’s cloak to drag her back to her seat. ‘Whisht! sit down. It’s nothing but the tongue,’ she said. The girl strained her eyes upon the listening crowd, but no one was moved as she was. She dropped back appalled into her seat. It was Ailie who spoke; and in the intense silence and darkness poured forth an address full of that eloquence of intonation and expression which is perceptible in every language. ‘Is it Latin? is it Hebrew?’ Isabel asked herself, moved by wonder, and awe, and admiration, into an indescribable excitement. When the voice suddenly paused, and changed and turned into ordinary utterance, there was a little rustle of roused attention among the crowd; but Isabel leant back upon the wall and burst into silent tears. The excitement had been more than she could bear. When she came to herself the same fresh youthful voice was making the room ring, and compelled her attention. It was like bringing down to ordinary life the vague grace of youthful fancies. When she awoke from the surprise of her excitement, and found that Ailie was speaking so as everybody understood her, the wonder and the mystery were gone.

‘O ye of little faith,’ cried Ailie, ‘wherefore do ye doubt? are ye feared to go forth from the fine kirk and the comfortable meeting to the hills and the fields? Where was it He went to commune with His Father, that is our example? was it to biggit land, or lightsome town? No; but to the cauld hill-side in the dark, where nothing was but God and the stars looking down out of the lonesome sky. O the puir creatures we are—the puir creatures! Think ye it’s for the good of this bit corner of the earth that He has given me strength to rise up from my bed, and poured forth the gifts o’ tongues, and teaching and prophesying upon this parish? I was like you. He knows how laith—laith I was to come out of the kirk I was christened in, and open my heart to the weary, wanting world. But I take ye a’ to witness it’s no us that have begun. They have lifted up their hands against the ark of the Lord. They’ve tried their best to stop us in our ministry and in the salvation of souls. They’ve scoffed and they’ve said where are the signs o’ His appearing. Look round ye, friends, and see. Me that never learned more than my Bible—I speak wi’ tongues—I see the things that are to come. Think ye that is for nought? It fell on your sons and your daughters in your very presence and is that for nought? Bear ye witness, friends, that I take up my commission this night. Go forth into the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, that is the command that’s given to me. Throw off your bonds, ye that sleep—arise and let us go forth! It’s no a question o’ a parish, or o’ a village, or o’ a kirk or a meeting, but of His coming to be prepared and the world to be saved.’

Whether this wild but sweet voice had come to a natural pause, or whether it was suddenly interrupted and broken by the same extraordinary burst of sounds which had been heard before, Isabel, terrified out of all her self-control, could not tell. She gave a suppressed scream, as Mr. John stood up with his rigid arms stretched out and his features convulsed with the passion of utterance whatever it was. The sound which had alarmed her came from him, bursting from his lips as if by some force which had no relation to his own will or meaning. The cry came from him like the groanings and mutterings of a volcano, moved by some unseen power. Isabel clung to her stepmother in her terror and hid her face in her hands.

Such sounds echoing through the darkened room, over all those hushed and eager listeners, were impressive enough to overawe any lively imagination; and it was with her head bent down on Jean Campbell’s shoulder, and her eyes closely shut, that Isabel heard the inarticulate horror change into words.

‘Hear the voice of the handmaid of the Lord,’ cried Mr. John. ‘The Lord sent His servant to her with a word from Him, saying, Go forth and convert the world; but she would not listen. She said, Who am I that I should go forth and preach? Thy handmaid is a child, she said. But lo! the Lord himself hath taught her. Not to you only, O people of Loch Diarmid; you have had the first-fruits, but the ingathering is not yet! Like those that have not long to be with you, we turn and cry—Repent! Repent, and be converted. You have waited long. And God has sent you prophets, miracles, and wonders, in your midst. And lo! your moment of privilege is nearly over, and He sends His servants forth. Repent! Oh, that my voice were a trumpet, that it might ring into your hearts! Oh, that it were as a rushing, mighty wind to sweep you to the Lord! We are going forth in His name. We are going out upon the world. Give us first-fruits—first-fruits for the Lord! Let us pray! Let us pray! Let us pray!’

Then the darkling mass rose to their feet, and the enthusiast poured forth his prayer. Isabel could scarcely restrain herself from joining in the subdued outcries round her. By degrees, time and place, and all mortal restrictions, vanished from her excited mind. What roused her was Ailie’s voice, once more soft, pleading, sympathetic. A voice that calmed her wild emotions, and brought her back in some degree to herself.

‘I have wondered and wondered, and asked of the Lord,’ said Ailie, ‘what for His gift of speaking wi’ tongues should have come to me—me that kent nothing, that had so little way of speaking forth His praise. But it has pleased Him to show me what He aye says, that out o’ the mouth o’ babes and sucklings His praise is perfected. Eh, neebors! I ken one that’s like the angels of the Lord! She wants faith, but she wants nothing else. She’s wearying, wearying to be at hame with the Lord, and hasna the heart to rise up off her bed, and come forth wi’ me to the salvation of men. You a’ know her as well as me! Maybe it’s Margaret’s prayers that have brought the Spirit on this parish. Ye know how she has prayed for us up bye at the burn, wrestling wi’ the Lord like Jacob. Eh, freends, if I had Margaret I would go forth light as the air! Lord, give her faith! Lord, raise her up! Lord, send thy blessed creature forth with us! Lord, Lord, listen, and give her faith! Oh, my freends, will ye no pray?’

At this moment Isabel’s emotion became altogether uncontrollable. It seemed to herself as if the inspiration she had witnessed had suddenly come upon her. She held up her hands wildly out of her dark corner where no one could see. Then a scream burst from her lips.

‘No,’ she cried out, in a voice so strained with passion that no one would have recognised it for hers. ‘No, no—not for Margaret; she shall not live, she shall have her will. Leave her in peace, and let her die.’

Isabel fell like a dead creature into her stepmother’s arms, not unconscious, with all her senses still wildly vivid, but trembling like a leaf, and helpless as an infant. Then there was a moment of terrified silence, and heads soon turned timidly round in the darkness to search for the new prophet. Ailie, standing with her arms uplifted in sight of them all, gazed intently into the gloom with her great lambent eyes, waiting and listening for some moments after the voice had ceased. Then the prophetess suddenly sank into the girl by a transition so extraordinary that it caught once more the wavering attention of the audience attracted from her by the new miracle. Her arms fell by her side, a flood of tears came pouring from her eyes.

‘Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord! ye have never refused me before!’ said Ailie, with a wild cry of reproach, and sank upon the floor in a burst of weeping so helplessly natural and girl-like that the excited group around her gazed at each other in dismay.

Her sobs were audible through all the wild supplication that followed. But Isabel, worn out, was conscious of little more until she felt herself drawn into the fresh air, and saw the moonlight lying white upon the braes.

CHAPTER XII

There was little said upon the walk home. Isabel was too much exhausted to make any reply to the questions, and half reproaches, and soothing speeches, made in regular succession by her stepmother.

‘What put it into your head to speak out like yon? And, eh, I’m glad naebody saw it was you. It would break my heart to hear them say the Captain’s Isabel was gane after them. Lean heavier, my lamb. It was naething but the love and the contradiction in your bit warm heart. Ye’ve never been drawn to me, Isabel, but I was aye ane that kent ye had a warm heart.’

Thus they went on clinging to each other along the white line of road between the dark rustling whin-bushes and tough stalks of heather which caught at their dresses as they passed. When the light in her own low window at last appeared, a very fervent ‘God be thanked’ burst from Jean Campbell’s lips. ‘I canna face thae awfu’ lonely roads. Ye never ken wha ye mayna meet, face to face,’ she said as the cottage became fully visible, her soul encouraged by the sight of it.

To go out of the magic, significant night, silent with such excess of meaning, into the absolute stillness of the little parlour, all grey and brown, with its one window shuttered and curtained, and the two candles twinkling solemnly on the table, and Margaret dozing in her chair, was the strangest contrast. The clock was still ticking steadfastly as if it never would stop, through and through the house; little Mary, with very large wide-open eyes, sat on a footstool opposite Margaret, from whom she never removed her anxious gaze. ‘She’s been dozing and waking, dozing and waking,’ said Mary; ‘and eh, but ye’ve been lang, lang!’

‘It was a lang meeting the night,’ said Jean. ‘But what way have ye closed up the window, and Margaret sae fond of the view? I would have gotten an awfu’ fright to see a’ dark if we had come round by the Loch.’

‘It was like as if something terrible might come and look in,’ said little Mary, with a shudder. And then Margaret, roused by the stir, opened her feverish bright eyes and asked what news.

‘You’ve been long,’ she said. ‘And were ye as pleased as you thought you would be, Isabel?’

Isabel had taken off her bonnet and pushed back her hair from her aching forehead. She looked up at her sister with the intention of replying, and then suddenly overpowered, hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.

‘Ah, she may well cry,’ said Jean. ‘If I was ever mair shamed in my life! Isabel, the Captain’s daughter, and a lady born!—she was that led away, Margaret, that she spoke like the rest.’

Isabel gave her stepmother an indignant warning look, and then rose, throwing aside her cloak, and placed herself behind Margaret’s chair out of reach of those eyes which she could not bear.

‘Isabel—spoke—like the rest! I cannot understand,’ said Margaret faintly. ‘Are you meaning that it came upon her—in power?’ And the invalid turned round wistful and wondering. Could it be that God had passed over her in her suffering and given this gift to Isabel? Perhaps, for the first time, there came to Margaret a touch of that strange, wondering envy which all her friends had already felt in her behalf. She had been content that Ailie should have the privilege denied to herself. But Isabel! She turned and sought her sister with her eyes, wandering. ‘It is because I am not worthy,’ she said to herself, but not without a pang.

‘It was them that were speaking of you,’ said Isabel; ‘that you wanted faith; and that we were to pray, and that you were to be made to arise and go forth with Ailie to convert the world. It made me mad. I couldna sit still and keep silence. I cried out—“She shall have her will. It’s not for you to say"—and then Mr. John said it was a lying spirit and not from the Lord; and then I mind no more!’

‘My poor Isabel,’ said Margaret, with a smile of relief and tenderness; ‘it was true love that spoke and nothing else. But she’s not to go there again—neither Isabel nor little Mary. It can do them nothing but harm.’

‘It does me no harm that I ken,’ said Jean. ‘It’s awfu’ exciting whiles; but I never find myself the worse.’

‘You’re different from these young things,’ said Margaret; ‘but, oh! you’ll always mind—both of you—that it’s my wish you should not go there. I’m not uneasy about it from the present. After—when I’ll, maybe, not be here to speak—you’ll both mind.’

‘Go to your bed this moment, bairn,’ cried Jean, with the petulance of grief, ‘sitting glowering at Margaret with thae big e’en! but mind ye dinna waken my poor Jamie going up the stair. It’s getting late, and time we’re a’ in our beds after such a night.’

‘I am very comfortable,’ said Margaret. ‘I am not disposed to move. I’m better here than in my bed, with that glimmer of the fire. I was always fond of a fire. It’s like a kindly spirit with its bits of flames, crackling and chattering. I have it in my mind to speak to you both, if you’ll have patience and listen. Don’t contradict me, Isabel. I know I am going fast, and why should you say no? But it would be a real comfort to speak and tell you what I wish before I die.’

‘Oh, Margaret! anything but that,’ cried Isabel.

The invalid shook her head with an expression of pain. ‘Nothing but this,’ she said; ‘if you want to cross me, and vex me, and drive me to be silent, it’s in your power: but my sister will never do that. I must speak, if you would leave my heart at rest. Dry your eyes, Isabel. I’m selfish, but ye must yield to it. If it was you that were going, would not your heart burn to speak before you left to them you hold dear? and to-night you must think not of yourself, but of me.’

It was a strange group: the room so poorly lighted, with the two candles on the table, the fire smouldering in the grate, dying into dull embers; Margaret laid out on her invalid chair supported by pillows, her pale face absorbing all the light there was; Jean sitting crouched together on the stool with her honest, comely countenance, serious now and full of anxiety, turned to her stepdaughter; and Isabel in her chair apart against the wall, as if she were not one of them—her face visible only in profile—her hands hanging listless in her lap—her eyes cast down. The dying girl, who did not understand it, was wounded by her sister’s withdrawal; and yet what did it matter?—perhaps it left her more free to speak than if Isabel’s tender eyes had been searching out the meaning in her face before she could utter it? Even the irritation and half-estrangement of a grief too poignant to be submissive, Margaret could understand.

‘I am thinking most of Bell,’ she said. ‘I’ve always thought most of Bell. It was natural. There were but the two of us in the world. And I’ve always been a woman, you’ll mind. When she was but a bairn playing on the hill-side, I was like her mother. That was my nature; and now the sorest thought I have is to leave her without a guide in this hard world.’

Isabel could not speak—but she made a hasty, deprecating gesture with her hand.

‘You would say, no,’ said Margaret; ‘but, Isabel, I know best. I am not vaunting myself, but I know best. For a while past you’ve been that you did not understand yourself. Your heart has been breaking to part with me, and yet you could not bear the sight of me. It is wearying to everybody when a poor creature takes so long to die. Oh, Bell, dinna say a word! Do you think I doubt you? I’m speaking of nature. And when I’m gone—so young as you are, and so hasty, and so feeling;—you’ve been a trouble to yourself and a mystery already, and what will you be then, with none near you to turn it all over in their minds?’

‘If there’s only me,’ said Isabel, gazing into the vacant air before her, ‘who will care?’

‘I’ll care wherever I am,’ said Margaret. ‘Oh, you canna think I could be happy in Heaven and my bonnie Bell in pain or sorrow. If you could but harden your heart against the movements that come and go—if ye would but take patience and think before you put your hand to aught. You were aye so hasty and so innocent. Do you mind when Robbie Spence fell into the Loch, and her after him in a boat before a man could move?’

‘Ay, do I,’ said Jean, ‘and our ain Jamie when he broke his arm——’

‘It was Isabel that carried him home, that big laddie!’ said Margaret with pathetic smiles and tears; ‘aye hasty, though she was so young and so slight; but there’s worse danger than that. Ye might take burdens upon you that would be harder to carry. Oh, my bonnie Bell! if I could but have seen you in a good man’s hands!’

‘I’ll not hear you speak,’ cried Isabel, almost wildly; ‘am I wanting any man?’

‘If you would promise to take thought before you made up your mind,’ said Margaret; ‘I’m no myself when I think of my Isabel in trouble. If you would go to your room, and take a while to think. I canna tell what’s beyond the veil, nor what’s permitted yonder; but, Bell, I would aye promise you this—not to appear to be a terror to you. But if you would take time to think, and shut to your door, and say to yourself, “Margaret loved me well. She’s been dead and gone for years and years, but she couldna forget her sister wherever she is. What would Margaret say if she were here?” And, Bell, I promise you this—not to frighten you, or appear like one coming from the dead, but to draw near and let you know what I’m thinking. Always if it is permitted—I canna tell.’

‘Oh, Margaret! Margaret! I will die too,’ cried Isabel, suddenly throwing herself at her sister’s feet; ‘I can bear no more.’

‘No, there’s plenty more to bear,’ said her sister, caressing the head which was buried in her coverings. ‘You cannot get out of the world like that. It is me that has the easy task. I have but to bide quiet and let Him do a’—me that took pride in being the wisest of the two, and able to guide you. And it is you that will have all to bear. But, Bell, it’s a promise—you’ll mind when the time comes? I will not say, Take this one or take that, for the heart is free. But take thought, Isabel!—oh, my darling, take thought; and I’ll always give you my opinion, not in your ear like the living that are bound in the flesh—but into your heart. And now,’ she added, raising herself a little, with a cheerful tone in her voice, ‘I have but two or three more words to say.’

Isabel did not move nor speak. She had her face hid in the coverlid as if she were weeping. But she did not weep. Her eyes were blazing, covered by her hands, like stars, parched with drought, almost fiery in their light; her heart beat with the violence of a creature at the fullest height of life. But no one saw those wild heavings; she knelt there with her face hidden, and only her soft hair, which had fallen into disorder, within reach of Margaret’s hectic hand.

‘You’ll aye take care of her as long as may be,’ Margaret went on addressing Jean. ‘When she’s older she’ll understand. It is just that all should be hers—everything we have; but she’ll not depart from my desire about Jamie, you may be sure of that. And, Isabel, you’ll no rebel, but let her be good to you, all her days. And be a good sister to the bairns. I’m real foolish,’ she went on, with a smile; ‘as if me being away would make such a change—I’m real vain. But you’ll no blame me, you two.’

‘Blame you!’ said Jean, with her handkerchief to her eyes; ‘O Margaret, you’re ower thoughtfu’; but it was that the callant should be bred for a minister? that was what you meant?’

‘If he turns his mind to it,’ said Margaret. ‘And I think that is all. You’ll be good to her, Bell, and she’ll be good to you. And keep little Mary out of the meetings. She’s very keen and bright, brighter than Jamie. You’ll not let her go astray. And be kind to everybody for my sake,’ Margaret said with a smile, which touched the very extremity of self-control, and had a certain flicker almost of delirium in it—‘I am fit for no more.’

CHAPTER XIII

During the week that ensued various events happened in the parish which kept up the local excitement. The prophets, who up to this time had been in external subjection to the authorities, at the first mention of restriction had thrown off all bonds. Mild as was the attempted control it was more than they could bear, and no sooner had they thus emancipated themselves from all habitual restraint than their higher pretensions began to develop.

The intimation that Ailie was about to set out on a mission to the general world could not but be exciting information to the parish; and at the same time there was an arrival of pilgrims from that outer world to inquire into the marvel. Commissions of investigation had already come from the Presbytery of the district, and even from Edinburgh and Glasgow, the news having spread quickly at a moment of general religious excitement; but the inquirers from England, one of whom was soon discovered to be ‘an English minister,’ produced a more marked impression, and thrilled the Loch with indescribable pride.

Margaret was sinking day by day. She had made her last step on the grass, taken her last draught of the fresh mountain air out of doors. From day to day it seemed impossible that she should ever again totter from one room to the other; and yet she managed to do it, retaining her hold upon her domestic place with a tenacity quite unlike the feebleness of her hold upon life. Sometimes, indeed, she had to be carried to the sofa in the parlour, from which she could still gain a glimpse of the Loch, and feel herself one of the family; but she would not relinquish this last stronghold of existence. ‘It will be time enough to shut me up when I’m gone,’ she would say, smiling upon them; and the doctor’s orders had been that she should be humoured in everything. ‘Nothing can harm her now,’ he had said, with that mournful abandonment of precaution, which shows the death of hope. And the parish—nay, ‘the whole Loch,’ held its breath and looked on.

As for Isabel it seemed to her that she lived in a dreadful dream. The vague terror that had been hanging over her so long had settled down, and could no longer be escaped; it seemed years to her since the time when she had believed it might not be—or at least hoped that it might have been delayed.

Perhaps it was because Jean Campbell, too, was in something of the same stupor of exhausted nature, produced by constant watching and want of sleep, that one visitor, whom they had guarded against for days, found his way to Margaret’s bedside. The children had been set to watch on the road, to warn the cottage if the very shadow of Mr. John fell upon the hill, and had repeatedly brought back news of him, which set the watchers on their guard. But, as it happens so often when such a watch goes on for days, there came a moment when the little scouts thought of something else, and when all other visitors were absent, and the road left open for the enemy. Jean had withdrawn to her kitchen while Margaret slept, or seemed to sleep—and had thrown herself, worn out, into the great arm-chair covered with checked linen, where she nodded by the fire. Isabel sat at the foot of the sofa, with her eyes on her sister. And those eyes, too, were veiled by the drooping eyelids, in the fatigue and awful tedium of the protracted watch. Thus the anxious household slumbered at its post, overtaken by weariness and security. How long the doze lasted none of them could tell, but when some faint movement of her sister’s made Isabel start from her insensibility, it froze the blood in her heart, and almost woke her to positive exertion, to see the man they all feared seated by the sofa on which Margaret lay. He had lifted the latch, and come in noiselessly, while they all slept in their exhaustion. There was still light enough to show his dark face, gazing intently upon the white vision on the sofa. All the hectic had gone from Margaret’s cheek. She was as pale as if the end had already come, and lay with her blue-veined eyelids ajar, as it were, the long lashes a little raised from the white cheeks, the pale lips parted with her painful breath. Mr. John sat by the side of the sofa, shadowing over her like a destroying angel. Had it been Death himself in person, the sight could scarcely have been more startling. His countenance was working in every line with suppressed but violent emotion, his lips were moving, his eyes fixed intently upon the face of the sleeper. He had stretched out one hand over Margaret’s couch, not touching her, like one who gave a benediction or enforced a command. Isabel sat and watched, paralysed by the sight. There seemed no power in her to stir or speak. And Margaret still slept, moving sometimes uneasily under that gaze, which seemed capable of penetrating the insensibility of death, but never unclosing her liquid, half-seen eyes, or giving any sign of consciousness. By degrees, half-audible words began to drop from the prophet’s lips.

‘Life, life!’ Isabel could hear him say. ‘My life for hers! My salvation for her life!’

The passion in him gradually became less controllable. It was with God he was struggling, with a vehemence of desire which left no room for reason or for reverence. After a while, he slid downwards upon his knees, always noiseless in the supreme urgency of his passion. He held his hand up over the couch, maintaining the painful attitude with a rigidity beyond all ordinary power.

‘I will not let Thee go, till Thou bless her—till Thou save her!’ Isabel heard him say.

All this appeared suddenly before her, awaking out of her dream. There was not a sound in the house, except the clock ticking through all with its monotonous, merciless beat, and Margaret’s irregular breathing, now louder, now lower, a fitful human accompaniment. At last, the power of self-control could go no further.

‘Rise, rise, woman beloved!’ he cried, hoarsely, springing to his feet. ‘I’ve won you out of the hands of Death!’

The harsh agony of the cry woke Margaret. He was standing between her and the faint light from the window, bending down over her from his great height with outstretched arms: his face invisible in the darkness which was made doubly dark by his shadow. Thus suddenly called back from her temporary oblivion, she woke with a little start. ‘Isabel!’ she said, instinctively. And then in a moment it became apparent to Margaret that another ordeal had come to her worse than the paroxysms of failing breath or palpitating heart in which Isabel could help her. With an instinctive thought for her sister, she raised herself slightly upon her pillows. ‘My dear, my dear, you’re not to blame,’ said Margaret, with a little moan. She had hoped to get out of the world without this trial, but now that it had come it must be borne.

‘She is not to blame,’ said Mr. John. ‘Nobody is to blame. I came stealing in like a thief in the night: they shut me out from you as if I would harm you—I that am ready to give my life for you. Margaret, arise! I’ve won you out of the hands of Death!’

‘Oh, if you would not waste this madness on me!’ said Margaret. ‘Isabel, let him stay. Death thinks no shame and feels no fear. I’m glad that I can speak to him before I go. John Diarmid, dinna drive me wild. This life is no so grand a gift that I should seek it out of your hands. God’s will is more to me than your will. Sit down by my death-bed; and oh, man, be silent, if ye have any heart! It’s for me to speak now.’

‘I will do what you will—whatever you will,’ he said: ‘Margaret! if you will but listen to the Lord’s voice and rise up and live! Can I stand by and see you die?’

A little impatient sigh burst from Margaret’s breast. ‘You stood by,’ she said, ‘once before, and took all the light and all the sweetness out of life. For once I will speak. I have been proud, but it’s not the time for pride now. O, John Diarmid, it is fit it should be your hand to call me back to life as you call it! I would never have upbraided you—no, not by a word. It was a thing settled you were never to come here. But now I will speak before I die.’

‘Speak!’ he cried, going down upon his knees with a crouch of submission in his great frame. ‘Say what you will. I am vile to all and vilest to you. You are as God to me, Margaret, Margaret! But take the life I have won for you and never see me more.’

‘The life you have won!’ said Margaret, with a tone which in any other voice would have been disdain. But her voice was like that of a dove, and had no notes of scorn in it. Yet soft as the approach to contempt was, the dying girl was remorseful of it. ‘I must not speak like this,’ she said; ‘and you must not speak to rouse the ill spirit in me, and me so near the pleasant heavens. Whisht! I canna think shame now, though Isabel is there to hear. John Diarmid, once I was as nigh loving you as now——’

‘You’re nigh hating me!’ he said, with a great sob breaking his voice.

‘No; as I’m nigh being free of all the bonds of this world,’ said Margaret. ‘I was little more than a bairn; I was like Bell. They said you meant me harm; but I never thought you meant me harm——’

As the pathetic voice went on John Diarmid bowed his head lower and lower till at last he sank prostrate on the floor by the side of the sofa. It was her last words that brought him to this abject self-humiliation. He knew better than she did. A groan burst out of the man’s labouring breast. Even Isabel—sitting in a trance at her sister’s feet, roused up out of her stupor, her cheeks burning with a wild flush of jealousy and shame, half-wild that Margaret had descended from her saintly pedestal to avow the emotions of earth, and furious to think that any man had shared her heart—yet felt an unwilling movement of pity for the prostrate sinner. Margaret only continued without any change.

‘I never thought you meant me harm,’ she said, once more smiting with the awful rod of her innocence the man at her feet. ‘But when I heard what you had been, and what you had done, the light died out of the world. I am not blaming you. It was God that gave me my death, and not man; but from that hour I had no heart to live. Why should a woman strive to live, and fight against all the unseen powers, when this world’s so sore-defiled, and not a spot that she can set her foot on,—no one that she can trust? For me I had no heart to struggle more.’

A certain note of plaintive self-consciousness had come into the steady voice, broken only by weakness, with which Margaret told her tale, as if it were a history so long past that all emotion had died out of it. And so it was. Her almost love had faded in her heart; but there still remained a sense of pity for the young forlorn creature whose eyes had been thus opened, and of whom Margaret had half-forgotten that it was herself.

For the moment in her abstraction, in her deadly calm, she was well-nigh cruel. She took no notice of the man who lay abject at her feet, with his face to the ground. Her great spiritual eyes in those pale circles which approaching death had hallowed out, gazed wistfully into the darkness. Perhaps it was the convulsive movement of the prostrate figure by her which roused her at last. Suddenly she stirred, and, putting out a white thin hand, laid it softly on his bowed head. ‘John Diarmid,’ she said, softly, ‘are you walking with God now?’

He seized her hand, raising his head from where he lay, and knelt upright by her, pressing it to his breast, which heaved violently as with sobs. What compunction was in his heart, what sudden knowledge of himself, what remorse, no one could say. It was dark, and they were to each other as ghosts in the gloom. Margaret could see his gestures, but nothing more; if, indeed, anything more could have been learnt from the bent head and hidden countenance. Her voice grew softer and softer when she broke the silence again.

‘I know you’re moved to the heart,’ she said. ‘I am not doubting you now. You are changed, and I see you’re changed. And if you would but tell me there were no more such thoughts in your heart, and that you were walking with God—then I would feel there were some prayers answered before I die.’

‘You have prayed for me, Margaret!’ he cried. The passionate man was subdued to a child. His great frame was shaken by sobs; his eyes were wet with tears. He had not another word to say; his passion, his inspiration, all the prophetic pretensions which clothed him, had vanished like so many cobwebs. He knelt by the purest love of his life with a heart broken and speechless. She dying, and he without power to save.

‘Aye!’ she said, laying her hand once more upon his head; and then there was silence broken only by the groan or sob that came from John Diarmid’s heart.

The next minute familiar sounds and sights broke in. Jean Campbell, with a candle in her hand, came pushing open the closed door. ‘Eh, you’re in the dark, like craws in the mist,’ she said, as she approached.

At the sound of her voice John Diarmid sprang to his feet, rising like a giant out of the darkness. He bent down his head suddenly over Margaret, pressed his motionless lips to her forehead, with a movement of despair, which was no kiss, and passing the astonished woman who held up her candle to look at him, rushed forth like the wind, letting the night and the chill air enter as he plunged forth.

How long Jean might have stood spell-bound by consternation, but for this sudden puff of cold air which blew about the flame of her candle, it is impossible to say; but she was roused instantly by fear of the cold for Margaret, and ran in haste to close the doors.

‘Weirdless loon!’ she cried, as she came back, ‘without so much sense as to think the cauld would harm her. Eh, Isabel, how could you let him in to vex her? It was a’ my fault dovering and sleeping in my chair. My lamb, ye’re weariet to death?’

‘Aye, very near to death,’ said Margaret, with a smile; ‘but there’s nobody to blame; and I’m glad I saw him at the last.’

‘So lang as he didna drive you distracted wi’ his prophecies and his miracles,’ said Jean, looking anxiously with wistful eyes from one to another. Isabel had risen at her stepmother’s entrance, and drying the tears from her cheeks, hastily began to arrange the coverings over her sister; she shrank from Jean’s look, feeling herself somehow to blame, and angry at the thought that had the other watcher been awake this trial would not have come to Margaret. But, as for Margaret herself, she made no effort to avoid Jean’s eye; she lay back on her pillows panting sometimes for breath, with a humid softness about her great shining eyes and a quivering smile on her lips. Very nearly tired to death; and yet ever patient, waiting till a little more should achieve the end.

CHAPTER XIV

When Mr. John rushed from the door of the Glebe Cottage mad with grief and sorrow and a sense of impotence, it was not to return to his home or to enter upon any of his usual duties, even such as might have seemed akin to the passion and excitement in his mind. He went up the hill-side without knowing where he went, rushing into the clouds and rain which were sweeping across the invisible braes.

The dark waters of Loch Goil were glimmering just before him ere he arrested his steps; he had climbed and descended the hill without knowing how; he was drenched to the skin, beaten by the wind, wild, half crazed with the multitude of his thoughts; all his new-born sense of power, all his confidence in his changed condition, were gone. He was a man abandoned by hope, and at the same time a prophet forsaken of the Lord. It had been not quite six o’clock when he left the Glebe. It was nearly midnight now when he forced his way through the tough stalks of the heather, crushing them down with his feet, stumbling into the forests of whins, going wildly through the yellowing brackens. Wild creatures rushed out of their coverts as he crossed the braes; it was too dark to see any path, even had he cared to confine himself to it. All was silent and black when he drew near the first inhabited place, the little cluster of cottages above the Manse to which he directed his steps. It was there that Ailie Macfarlane, his co-adjutatrix and predecessor, lived with her father and mother. Not a light was visible in any window. The little congregation of souls, wrapt in the kind protecting darkness, slept and took no note of all the surrounding mysteries of the night. Mr. John went up to Ailie’s door and knocked, waking echoes which seemed to go over all the parish, and rousing the dogs at Lochhead out of the light sleep of their vigilance. It was some time before he had any reply. Then the lattice window, which was on a level with the door, was softly opened. It was Ailie herself who looked out, her fair locks braided about her head like a saint in a picture.

‘Who are ye? what do ye want?’ she said, with a certain anxiety in her voice. ‘Is it a summons to me too?’

Mr. John was too much pre-occupied to observe what she said, but he discerned the signs of some emotion, and took it for fear.

‘Fear me not,’ he said, ‘I’ve come, from wrestling with the Lord upon the hill—and, Ailie, I have a message from Him to you. Fear me not.’

‘I’m fearing nothing,’ said the girl, with momentary surprise—for even had she not been protected by her exceptional character, to speak with ‘a friend’ from a chamber window, even in the middle of the night, was counted no sin on Loch Diarmid. ‘I’m fearing nothing,’ she repeated, steadily, ‘but my heart’s sore and my een are heavy. Say quick what you have to say.’

‘It must be said to-night,’ he said; ‘I speak not of my will, and I will not ask you what is yours. Ailie, the Lord has revealed to me that you and I must go forth together to His work, bound together like Christ and His Church. You cannot go alone for you’re young and weak. He has appointed me to you for a protector. He has said unto me, O man, fear not to take unto thee thy wife! Ailie, this word is to me and to thee. Prepare! I would go forth, if that were possible, as soon as it is day.’

Then there was a pause. The clouds parted, driven by the angry wind, and the sky lightened faintly with a pale gleam which showed the man’s worn face and wild aspect as he stood before the window.

‘Oh, no, no,’ she cried; ‘we must wait. There will be clearer light. If such a thing as this is to be, it will be established in the mouth of two or three witnesses. I wouldna trust to myself, my lane. Oh, no, no; we must wait for clearer light.’

‘Take heed that ye perish not from lack of faith,’ said Mr. John. ‘Take heed that you despise not the Lord’s message. Ailie Macfarlane, hear the Word of the Lord! and see ye sin not against the Holy Ghost.’

A shudder ran through Ailie’s sensitive frame. ‘No,’ she cried, ‘no, no, never that. I’m His handmaid to do His pleasure. But oh, there’s nought can be done this night. The night’s for rest and thought and prayer. It may be the Lord will show His will to me too. And there’s my father and my mother,’ cried Ailie with a little gush of tears.

‘Let the dead bury their dead,’ said her extraordinary suitor, in a voice which seemed to ring round the house like a groan. And then he added with a tone of authority which struck chill to Ailie’s heart: ‘Hitherto you have been a law to yourself, and no man has been set over you; but the wife must take the Lord’s will through her husband who is her head.’

Ailie fell down on her knees trembling, and held fast by the sill of the window.

‘I am no man’s wife,’ she cried; ‘and I’m feared and bewildered, and see naething clear. Oh, for the Lord’s sake, gang away from me for this night!’

Mr. John turned his eyes which had been fixed on the pale opening in the clouds to her face. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ll go; the flesh can bear no more. Go on your knees to Him, and not to me. And He may make it clear to you if He thinks fit; but in light or in darkness I call on you to obey. Is His servant to stand still because there is no light?’

‘I’ll pray!’ cried Ailie, with a gasp. And he withdrew from the window, stumbling over the little flower-borders in the cottage-garden, and gazing vaguely up into the white break in the sky. His haggard, pale face fascinated her in its abstraction. She rose, and closed her window with nervous hands, still gazing at him; when suddenly another window opened—that of the attic over the cottage door.

‘Wha’s there?’ cried a voice. Instinctively Ailie shrank back, but yet kept her ear at the opening that she might hear. It was the voice of her mother, who had been roused by the conversation below.

‘Wha are ye, disturbing honest folk in the middle of the night, and what do you want here?’

‘It’s me,’ said Mr. John, raising his head listlessly. ‘I was sent to her with a word from the Lord.’

Old Janet Macfarlane uttered a hasty exclamation. ‘I’m meaning no reproach to you, Mr. John; but I wish your words would come in the day.’

Mr. John made no answer. He stepped over the paling once more, and paused at the door immediately under the old woman’s window. Fatigue was beginning to tell upon him: his passion was dying out. He had no longer any strength to defend himself. Perhaps Janet’s heart smote her as she saw his listless step; or perhaps the natural rural impulse of communicating information was her only motive. She paused a moment, searching in her mind something keen and sharp to say to him—but finding nothing, bent out from her window over the leafy, embowered porch.

‘Mr. John,’ she said, with solemnity; ‘nae doubt you’ve heard the news?’

‘What news?’

‘Margaret at the Glebe is wi’ her Saviour,’ said the old woman. ‘She died at ten o’clock. Good night.’

The noise of the window closing rang over all the silent Loch and silent heavens, and went echoing, echoing away into the hollows of the hills. It struck the man in his despair like the thunder of dissolving earth and Heaven.

CHAPTER XV

The death of Margaret Diarmid had been, as people say, sudden at the last. Whether the agitation of that visit had been too much for her, or if Nature at the end, having lingered so long, had succumbed in a moment to some unseen touch, it was impossible to tell. She was dead—that was all that could be said. Things had gone on as usual all the evening through in the dim parlour, where Jean came in from time to time to see that all was safe, and Isabel moved softly about at the appointed hours with her cordials and her medicines. Margaret had been lying, as her stepmother had left her, with her large, humid, wistful eyes fixed, taking less notice of everything around than usual, looking out, as it were, into an unseen world of her own. An intense quietness had fallen upon the house. The children had been sent early to bed; and Jenny Spence, who had volunteered to assist in the watch, was comfortably installed in the big elbow-chair by the fire in the kitchen. ‘We’re better without her,’ Jean had whispered to Isabel; ‘but it’s a real pleasure to her, and she’s a connection; and she’ll no disturb Margaret.’ Jean herself had taken up her position, wrapt in her cloak, just within the parlour door. It was usual for them, at an earlier hour than this, to remove their patient to bed. But Margaret had been so still that they had hesitated to disturb her. ‘By and by,’ she had said to them softly, as she lay there with her white face upturned, and her open eyes. She was not asleep; but so quiet, so smiling, breathing so calmly. Could it be that she had taken ‘a good turn?’ Isabel, seated at the foot of the sofa, her duties over for the moment, kept her watch, praying mechanically, dozing by moments, stupified by grief and weariness. Jean behind backs saw nothing of what was passing. But after a time the stillness became intolerable, and weighed upon her. Her first impulse was to steal out to the kitchen and rouse Jenny Spence, and console herself with a melancholy talk over the fire; and then she bethought herself that it would be cruel to leave Isabel in this atmosphere, which somehow seemed all at once so strangely chilled and silent. Listening intently, it seemed to her that she heard no breathing but her own. Margaret’s hardest paroxysms would have sounded natural and consoling in place of that awful stillness. Jean’s heart began to throb in her ears, and her eyes to dazzle. It was some time before she could move. When she at last summoned her powers and roused herself, it was all clear to her in a moment. The strange silence, the sudden chill, had been death; but thus the long illness, which all the parish expected was to have a triumphant and victorious conclusion, ended softly in the silence, without sound of trumpet or demonstration of exceeding joy.

As for Isabel there was an interval, unfortunately for her a very short interval, in which she was conscious of nothing. Not that the simple, healthful girl, trained in stern Scotch self-restraint, found refuge in any swoon or fit of bodily unconsciousness. But fatigue had so worn and bewildered her, and benumbed all her faculties, that she was incapable of any fresh sensation. The kind women took her to her bed, and the young creature, all broken and worn, slept the heavy sleep of sorrow, that profound, joyless slumber which pain and suffering bring to young eyes. When she woke, it was not with any fresh pang: she had carried the sense of ‘what had happened’ with her throughout her sleep—but with still the same heavy, listless, benumbed sensations. Sometimes, when she started involuntarily at the thought that it was time for Margaret’s wine, or her soup, or her medicine, her heart thus sharply pricked would rouse up, and her eyes gain relief in the measureless tears of youth. But she did not come to herself for days, scarcely until the time of darkness was over, and the procession had gone out from the cottage doors, and her sister was carried away from her, while she herself remained behind. Then her life sprang again out of excess of pain.

It was about a week after the funeral when Jean came in, solemnly tapping at the parlour door, where Isabel sat alone. She was arrayed in her new black gown, and with her freshest cap, and had a certain air of gravity and importance about her. She came in softly and stood by Isabel, half-behind her as she sat at the table. ‘Isabel, my bonnie woman,’ she said, turning her homely voice to its softest cadence, ‘it’s time we were having a talk, you and me, about what we’re to do.’

‘What should we do?’ said Isabel; ‘but sit down and tell me what it is: it’s weary, weary to sit alone.’

‘My lamb!’ said Jean, furtively smoothing the girl’s soft hair. It was seldom she ventured on such a proof of sympathy, for Isabel was proud. But she did not sit down; she stood with some agitation, twisting the table-cover from the table, shifting from one foot to another. At last her burden came forth with a burst. ‘It’s best I should ken; it’s a’ yours now, Isabel; and you were never that fond of me and the poor bairns. I’m your father’s wife, and I’m no a lady born like you; but I’m one that would never thole to be where she wasna wanted. Whisht! whisht; I’m no misdoubting your kindness; for her sake I ken you would aye be kind; but if there was to be a change I would like best it should be now.’

‘Why should there be a change?’ said Isabel, weeping. ‘Oh, is there not change enough to please you? Would you like me to stay my lane in this still house and die? But I could not die—I would go wild; and, maybe, you would not care.’

‘As if I didna care for everything belonging to ye!’ cried Jean, once more timidly caressing her stepdaughter’s bent head. ‘If it was only that, I would be content to be your servant—as near your servant as would be becoming to the Captain’s widow,’ she added, after a momentary pause. ‘But your heart’s touched and tender the noo; and if, after, you should reflect on me for taking advantage of you, or anybody else should reflect——’

‘Who is there that has any right’ cried hasty Isabel, drying her tears with hot and trembling hand. ‘There’s but me now in all the world, and no one that can bid me go or come, or do this or that. Ah, me!’

‘It’s a grand thing to be free,’ said Jean, her voice faltering a little; ‘free o’ them you’re bound to by any bonds but what God has made. When it’s nature it’s different—or when it’s your free choice it’s different; but you and me, Isabel, are free to meet and free to part. I’m no saying but what it would be a sore heartbreak; but if ever there was to come a time when you would reflect——’

‘Oh, dinna speak,’ said Isabel; ‘if it’s your will to leave me, go, and let me take my chance. If I was to go out of my senses or die on the hill-side, what is that to other folk? There is none to care if I was mad or dead to-morrow. If you speak because you’re wearied of me and my silly ways——’

‘Oh, Isabel, my lamb!’ cried Jean, with tears, ‘I’m saying I would be your servant if that was a’. But you maun tell me your will plain if we’re to go or stay. A’s yours. If we live here, the bairns and me, it’s upon you; and that I canna do unless you say plain out—Bide; and let things be as they have aye been.’

‘Is there anything else I could say?’ cried Isabel; ‘maybe you’ve forgotten already what was said to you and me—yon night? But I will never forget. Nothing is changed but one thing. Oh, no, I am saying wrong—the heavens and the earth are changed and all’s different—all’s different!—but not between you and me. And I’ll mind about Jamie,’ she added, once more hotly and tremulously, drying her eyes. ‘He’s to be brought up for a minister, if he has a desire to it. We’ll speak to Mr. Lothian, or Mr. Galbraith, and I’ll not forget.’

Jean shook her head softly behind her stepdaughter’s back.

‘I’m no speaking of Jamie now,’ she said; ‘afore he’s old enough you’ll have a man, Isabel, that may have other meanings. But I’m aye thankful to you for the thought. And a young lass is real solitary by herself. I’ll bide since you say sae; and weel content; but when the time comes that you’re married, my woman, we’ll speak of that no more.’

‘The time will never come,’ said Isabel, hastily. ‘I have had my share of life. I am not like a young lass now.’

‘My bonnie lamb!’ said Jean, with a tender smile, letting her hand rest on the downcast head. It was that last touch of self-pity which broke down Isabel’s reserve. She turned suddenly round, and throwing her arms round her stepmother wept and sobbed on her homely bosom. She clung to her as to her last support, and Jean received her in her motherly arms. Her heart had warmed to the wayward Isabel, all through her faulty youth with a love less reverent, but more familiar than that she had given to Margaret. And now a common grief united them as they had never been united before. She held the girl close, repeating over and over those soft names of homely kindness.

‘My lamb!’ she said, ‘my bonnie Bell! my bonnie woman!’ and bent down her head over her, not with the lavish caress of a lighter nature, but with a strong sustaining pressure. When the sobs grew fainter, and exhaustion mercifully dulled the pain, it was she who smoothed her hair, and dried her wet cheeks, and gave her such comfort as she could bear.

‘Come ben beside the bairns,’ Jean said, drying the tears from her own eyes, ‘and leave this room that is so full of a’ that’s passed. There’s a cheery fire, and the wee things’ faces are aye a comfort. That was her thought: and I’ll make you your cup of tea, and we’ll do our best to bear the burden for her sake.’

There was a cheery fire, as Jean had said, and Isabel was cold with that chill of grief which penetrates into the very heart. The blaze and the warmth gave her a little forlorn consolation; and so after awhile did the sound of voices other than her own, and the care and service that surrounded her.

Jean attended her to her room when it was time for rest, as she would have done had Isabel been her own child, and gave her one of those rare shy kisses, of which the homely Scotch matron was half-ashamed in her intense reticence and self-control. ‘Try and sleep, my lamb,’ she said, ‘I’ll come back and put out the candle.’ And then she returned to her kitchen, to shut her shutters, and put the ‘gathering coal’ upon the fire, and make all snug for the night. When she had ended her silent labours, Jean took her moment of indulgence also, sitting down to think in the elbow-chair, by the side of the dark heaped-up smouldering fire.

‘Na, na,’ she said to herself, ‘I maunna trust to that. If Margaret had set it apart out of her share—but I’m no reflecting upon Margaret. It was a’ the first wife’s siller, and it’s Isabel’s by right; and I dinna doubt her bit warm hasty heart. But if she were to marry that English lad, me and mine would be little to her after; and if she was to marry anybody else—even the minister—he would be for thinking of his ain first, and maybe a family coming. It would be real natural. Na, na! I maunna trust to Isabel; and, maybe, after a’ it’s best for the laddie,’ she said to herself, with a sigh. ‘If the root o’ the matter’s in him, he’ll fight his way to it; and if it’s no, he’ll never try; and when a’ ‘s said and done, maybe that’s the best.’

But it was with a sigh she rose from that moment of reflection and stole back to remove the candle, and saw with affectionate pleasure that Isabel, worn out, had already dropped to sleep. ‘The poor bairn!’ Jean said, in her tenderness, and clambered up to the attic beside her children, with that sense of being the protector and sole guardian of so much helplessness, which fills the heart of a solitary woman with such softness and such strength.

CHAPTER XVI

The next step in Isabel’s solitary new life was the visit of Miss Catherine, whose entrance Jean permitted a few days earlier than decorum properly allowed.

‘After a’, she’s a connection, and the poor bairn’s best support,’ she said, as she went, wiping her hands on her apron, to open the door to the visitor. ‘Oh, ay, Miss Catherine! come your ways ben; she’ll be glad of a kind word. She’s no suffered that much in her health—God be thankit! But whiles my heart breaks to see her in that weary parlour her lane, and nothing to wile her from her ain thoughts.’

‘I had not the courage to come sooner,’ said Miss Catherine. ‘But, Jean, we must not leave her to her own thoughts.’

There could be but one way of meeting for the two. Isabel stood up for an instant with a nervous attempt at composure, and then dropped weeping into her old friend’s extended arms: and there was first the inevitable attempt at consolation, tender words and encouragements. ‘It’s well with her—it’s better for her. We must not mourn, for her sake.’

‘And now tell me, my dear,’ said Miss Catherine, when poor Isabel had wept herself into quietness, ‘how you’ve settled with Jean? You are young, and it will be a strange life for you here by yourself. Is it settled that everything is to go on as it has been?’

‘Why should there be any change?’ said Isabel. ‘It is her house as long as it is mine. Is she not the nearest I have left?—and, oh, she’s kind! though I have never been good to her all my life.’

‘She is not a drop’s blood to you,’ said Miss Catherine, with some warmth. ‘Isabel, I’m not one to bid you run away from grief; it’s a vain thing to do; but you’re young, and you have a sufficiency, and why should you be burdened with the second family? I had nothing to say against it in the past. Jean was aye kind, poor woman. But I cannot bear to think of you staying here in this room after all that’s come and gone.’

Isabel made no answer. She took up her work with trembling fingers, and made an effort to go on with it, while the visitor, for her part, had enough to do to master the sob in her voice.

‘You are so young,’ she said; ‘you cannot know what you want, or what is best for you. I know a poor gentlewoman in Edinburgh, Isabel, that would be very kind to you. A change would be good, though you cannot think it now. Making and mending is grand work for the mother of a family, but for a young creature alone, it is not to be thought of as an occupation. And there are things you might learn that would fit you for your life to come. How can you tell what your life will be? Your blood, my dear, is as good by the mother’s side as mine; and if you saw a little of the world—You’re a proud thing, Isabel, you’ll not allow you want anything; but the change would do you good, and the novelty would divert your mind——’

‘As if I was asking to be diverted!’ said Isabel. ‘Oh! Miss Catherine, if it’s like that you think of me! I am seeking no change. My life, the best of it, is past. What have I to think about but how to be quiet and do my duty, and consider my latter end?’

‘Oh, bairn! that you should be such a bairn!’ said Miss Catherine; ‘if it were not for what you’ve gone through, I could find it in my heart to be angry. Twenty years after this you’ll not be so sure that your life is past, nor think so much about your latter end. What is likely is that you have a long life before you; and by and by you’ll marry, as most women do. I don’t say now—you’re thinking of nothing of the kind now; but when due time has past, and you have shown the respect you ought—You may think me heartless to speak so, but I’m not heartless, Isabel.’

‘I cannot understand what you are saying,’ said Isabel. ‘Oh, let me be! I am at home, and among my ain folk. I neither want change nor diversion—nor to be married—nor a new life! If there is one thing I would like, it would be to work late and early and take care of the house. But I am too old to learn lessons now, and I am not old enough to be always thinking about myself.’

‘Perhaps it’s best for the present,’ said Miss Catherine, finally giving in, ‘though I always think when there are changes to be made it is well to make them at once. You think you can go on for ever like this, and you’ll find you are far wrong; but, for the present, my dear, let us talk of other things. Jean will be good to you, I don’t doubt. If I were not concerned for your mother’s daughter, Isabel, and anxious to see you free from all those common folk, I would not speak——’

‘She is very kind to me, and she’s the nearest friend I have now,’ said Isabel; ‘and if she was good enough for my father to marry——’

Miss Catherine shook her head.

‘You are aye your old self,’ she said, ‘trying to provoke me for all the sorrow in your heart. But we’ll say no more on that subject. I would tell you the news of the country-side, if I thought you would care; but if you would not care——’

‘Oh, I do!’ cried Isabel, with a violent, sudden blush. She was ashamed of herself for caring, and angry to think that the country-side should be anything to her in her desolation. ‘I was meaning,’ she continued, timidly, ‘if there’s any news about friends.’

‘Mr. Lothian has been ill, Isabel; that is why he has not been here.’

‘Has he not been here—I did not know,’ said Isabel, with profound and calm indifference. Miss Catherine gazed at her for a whole minute, without moving, her eyes fixed with a wonder beyond words on the inexperienced creature who could thus balk the most artful attempts to draw her into any path she did not choose herself.

‘My dear,’ she said, rising, ‘you do not know all the love that good man wastes on you. Would you have been as careless as that if I had spoken of the lad under his roof? As if the minister was not worth twenty of him! and you not to see it, you foolish, foolish Isabel!’

‘Miss Catherine,’ said Isabel, rising too, with fine youthful gravity and superiority, ‘is it right to speak like that to me, at such a time?’

These last words took away Miss Catherine’s breath. She was lost in amaze at the curious innocent dignity and cunning and utter unconsciousness of Isabel’s self-dependence. She felt herself rebuked by the girl who stood so pale before her, who was so resolute and superior and certain of what she said. Had the circumstances been different, she would have laughed at the naïve skill with which her attempts were baffled. But it was not a moment to laugh, as Isabel had said.

‘Well, well; you will not hear anything I have to say,’ she said, ‘but there may come a time when you will be glad of my counsel. And when that time comes it shall not be denied you. Come to the House and see me when you’re able, Isabel, for the sake of the past. You need not be afraid. I’ll keep silent and give you no advice.’

‘I will always be thankful for your advice,’ cried the unconscious girl, ‘more thankful than I can tell—for who have I to look to now? I would thank you, on my knees, if ye would always tell me what I ought to do.’

Miss Catherine could not restrain a smile; but Isabel’s earnestness and good faith shone out of her serious eyes.

‘If you bid me counsel you in the general, and then turn away from every single thing I say, how can I help you?’ she said, ‘But, my dear, I’ll not stay now—go out and take some exercise, and do not sit brooding here. Jean will take care of you, and the fresh air will do you good.’

‘I was thinking to take a turn—on the braes—where it’s quiet,’ faltered Isabel. Perhaps she was afraid to meet Miss Catherine’s eye; she swerved aside a little so as not to face her, and paused, and then sought refuge in tears, she could not have told why.

‘Eh, but these bairns are strange creatures,’ Miss Catherine said to herself as she left the cottage. ‘Me to think she would be too broken with her grief to mind what she did. But no! for all so young as she is, as fixed in her ways as if she knew the world from beginning to end like an A B C; going her own gait and thinking her own thoughts, and how to have her own way. And not a fortnight yet since my poor Margaret was laid beneath the sod. These creatures nowadays never know what sorrow means. They think of themselves when we would have broken our hearts. And me that was always so fond of that wilful Bell!’

Isabel had but scarce dried her tears, and composed herself as best she could to her solitary labour once more, when Jean stole in with anxious looks.

‘My lamb,’ she said, ‘there’s the minister coming up the hill. He’s been ill, poor man—and white and wan he looks as I never saw him look before. Will I let him in? It’s better now if you can bear to see him; and, Isabel, if you’re feared for his speaking, I will cry upon the bairns and get out the Book, and he’ll give us a word o’ prayer. I dinna ken what he may think, for he’s newfangled in his ways. But that was aye the practice on such an occasion, as long as I mind. Will I let him in?’

Isabel turned away with a hasty gesture of pain; but she was humbled and penitent, and the solitary parlour looked more solitary, more dreadful than ever to her broken and suffering mind.

‘I do not care who comes,’ she said, with petulance. ‘Let them all come. When they have once been here, and spied upon us how we bear it, maybe they will let us be, and come no more.’

‘Oh, Isabel!’ said Jean, ‘it’s no with that thought the minister comes. You know well what’s in his heart, though he might be your father—and a’ the parish kens.’

For the first time this suggestion was a kind of comfort to the poor girl. She had been feeling so ashamed, so wicked, that there was some balm to her in the thought that all the parish was aware with what feelings she was regarded by the first man in it, and the esteemed of all.

‘Let him come,’ she said, sitting down by the window, where she would have the Loch at least to turn to, away from the reproachful affection in Mr. Lothian’s eyes. ‘If they would but let me alone!’ she said to herself; but in her heart—the impatient, petulant, struggling heart, desired anything rather than to be left alone.

Mr. Lothian came in, looking, as Jean had said, white and wan, yet full of a hushed fever of agitation, with flushes of colour crossing his cheek, as he came up to her, and took into his her half-reluctant hands. Then Nature suddenly, as with a stroke, quenched out all the curiosity that had been in Isabel’s heart. The sight of him woke again the tears in their fountains. She could say nothing to him, but only weep helplessly with her head bowed down, almost choked by the convulsive sob which climbed into her throat. His heart was so melted with love and pity that he laid his hand on her head with half-paternal tenderness.

‘Poor child! poor child!’ he said, bending over her, holding the soft small hand which she no longer thought of withdrawing from him. The sight of her tears was almost more than he could bear.

He was still standing by her when she came to herself, and the first thing that roused Isabel was the instinctive homely politeness which her humble breeding had taught her. As soon as her eyes were so clear of tears that she could see, she would have risen to find a seat for him.

‘Sit still, Isabel,’ he said, ‘I have not come to weary you to-day; I shall not stay. Only one moment, my dear, to tell you—but what can I tell you? you know everything I would say.’

Isabel could make no reply; but somehow on the very borders of that outbreak of her sorrow there came to her the sense that her curiosity was satisfied. The man’s voice, though he was so old, like her father, was eloquent and musical with love.

‘I could not come to you sooner,’ he said, ‘and I have not come now to trouble you with words. It is not the time to speak of what one might wish, or what one might dream. But, my dear, I want you not to forget that there is one heart not far off full of love for you. Not a word—not a word. Isabel, I am asking nothing, my dear. I am going away this minute, as soon as I’ve said what I have to say. Kindness you’ll have in plenty—but love is rare. I thought I would just come and tell you of mine.’

‘Oh, Mr. Lothian, I do not deserve it!’ sobbed poor Isabel.

‘And that there is not a trouble you have, nor a tear you shed, but I would fain bear it for you,’ said the minister; ‘and my thoughts never leave you in your sorrow night or day; that is all. My dear, when you think, you’ll understand. It is not to bribe you to give me anything back—it is but to be a comfort to you.’

‘I do not deserve it,’ Isabel repeated, not knowing what she said.

And then the good man sighed, and laid his hand once more tenderly, reverently, upon her drooping head.

‘I might be your father,’ he said; ‘but I love you. And farewell for this time, my dear. That was all I had to say.’

The next moment it was as a dream to Isabel that he had been there. She cast a timid look round her, and he was gone, and the very sound of his footsteps had already died away from the flags at the door.

CHAPTER XVII

It was some days after this before Isabel actually ventured out upon the braes. One afternoon, standing in the garden, seeing nobody near, a forlorn impulse seized her to visit the birch tree on the braes, which had been so often their trysting-place. Looking up and looking down, the white roads seem to her to extend for miles on every side, without a single passenger upon them. Nobody, then, could criticise or blame her for that sick movement of her heart. Isabel went in softly, feeling her circumstances now too solemn to permit her to run out with a shawl round her as she had once done—and put on her bonnet. And then, with a thrill of excitement, took her way up the hill. Either its steepness or some strange expectation took away her breath. The braes were changed from what they had so lately been. The ferns were crumpled up by the first touch of frost, and tinged yellow. The heather bells were all dry and dead, with the colour and life gone out of them, like so many immortelles. And the turf was wet under Isabel’s feet. The great heather bushes caught her dress, and sprinkled her with showers of rain-drops. She was cold, and her heart sunk within her. Was it maidenly to come and look for him here when he did not seek her? Was it becoming her bereavement to be able now to think of him, to remember anything about the birch, and all the foolish words that had been said under it? She put her arm softly, almost with a sense of guilt, round its silvery stem. There were only young trees on the braes, and this little lady of the woods with its long locks waving, and its graceful, slender stem, was like Isabel. He had said so, moved by the sentiment which sometimes makes the dullest mind poetic. She thought of that as she put her arm round it, and leaned her cheek against the silvery bark. Moved by her touch, the branches dropped a little shower of rain over her. Were they tears? She wept, too, leaning upon her woodland likeness.

‘It is liker me now—far liker me now—for I’m alone! alone!’ said Isabel; and with a pang of exquisite anguish could not tell which she was mourning for—her dead Margaret or her lost love.

But tears will not flow continually, however full the heart may be. They had all dried out of her eyes after a few minutes, and she stood still leaning against the tree, gazing out once more upon that familiar landscape, and wondering if she was to see nothing for ever and ever but the still loch and the roads that stretched away so long and wistful up to the sky on one side, and away to the Clyde on the other, without a living creature upon them to break the stillness—when she heard behind her a rustle as of someone coming. She dared not turn her head to see whom it was, but the sound made her heart thrill and beat with a wild excitement she could not control.

Then, suddenly, an arm was put round her, and a voice sounded in her ear. She had known it must be so. A flood of satisfaction came into her heart. ‘I thought I was never to see him more!’ she said to herself without turning her face to him. But he had come at last, and her mind for the moment required no more.

‘It was a long time before I could make sure that this black figure in a bonnet was you,’ he said, as if they had parted an hour before; ‘I have been gazing and wondering for five minutes who it could be. I ought to have thought of the change of dress.’

Was this all he had to say to her after ‘what had happened?’ Isabel’s heart shrank, with a sense of sudden chill, within her breast.

‘I came out because my heart was sore,’ she faltered. ‘I cannot tell why; I thought I would like to see it again.’

‘Not to see me?’ said Stapylton, coming round where he could see her face.

‘If you had cared for that you might have come before,’ said Isabel, with a little movement of displeasure. How different it was from the conversation she had dreamed of!—the soft words, the tender pity, the assurances of his love.

‘Yes, among all those women that are constantly about you,’ he said, ‘your stepmother, and that old witch Miss Catherine—to see you coddled and kissed and mumbled over! No, Isabel; if I could have had you all to myself, as I have now——’

‘And you never thought. Maybe she wants me sitting there her lane? Oh, Horace! I would not have studied my own pleasure if you had been in trouble.’

‘Well, never mind,’ he said. ‘Of course I am not so good as you are; if I were to show myself so gentle, and patient, and unselfish, it would be taking your rôle. But we must not quarrel now we have met. You are pale, my darling. They have been shutting you up indoors and preaching you to death.’

‘Do you think there is nothing else to make me pale?’ said Isabel, moved once more by a pang of disappointment.

‘Don’t let us speak of that. Why should we dwell on such gloomy subjects?’ said Stapylton. ‘Change of thought is as necessary as change of scene; and, besides, I have other things to tell you of. It is weeks now since I have been able to get near you. Don’t let us be unkind and miserable now that we have met at last.’

Isabel had no answer to make. She was stupified by his tone; and yet how could she, loving him as she did, tell herself that he was heartless? Her startled soul paused and stood still for a moment, and then she said to herself that this must be the way folk thought in England, the custom of the bigger, greater world. No doubt it was only in an out-of-the-way corner like Loch Diarmid that there was time to dwell upon personal grief. She dried her eyes hastily with a furtive hand, and half-upbraided herself with self-indulgence. But she could not reply.

‘I am not very cheerful, either,’ he said. ‘I want you to comfort me, Isabel. I have heard from home since I saw you last, and I have no further excuse to make. I fear I shall have to go away.’

‘To go away!’ cried Isabel, feeling as if the sky had suddenly darkened, and all comfort had gone out of the earth.

‘It is very hard upon me,’ he said, ‘just when I might have had you a little more to myself. But I am not my own master, and the folks at home must be obeyed.’

What could she answer? So much in need of pity, and comfort, and soothing, as she was, so unprepared to encounter any new blow! She gave a little gasp as for breath, leaning again upon the birch-tree. And once more the chill tears from its long drooping branches came down upon them like a shower. Stapylton sprung aside with a little impatience.

‘Hallo!’ he said; ‘mind what you’re about!’ And then, after a pause, ‘Well, it appears you have nothing to say!’

‘What can I say?’ said poor Isabel, shivering with agitation and pain. ‘If you must go, Mr. Stapylton, it cannot matter what I think or what I say.’

‘I knew it would be like that,’ he cried; ‘I knew you would take it as an offence. But, Isabel, look here; I have been dangling after you for more than a year. You are quite willing I should hang about and wait for you here; and perhaps you would let me come down to the cottage and see you, for anything I can tell, now. But as that is all the satisfaction I have ever got, or am likely to get——’

‘What satisfaction would you have?’ said Isabel, under her breath.

‘What satisfaction would I have? that is a charming question to put to me after all that has passed between us. Just look here, Isabel; if it had not been for your ridiculous scruples, think what a different position I should have been in. I’d have written home a penitent letter, saying I was very sorry, and all that, and that I was married, and all about it. There would have been a flare-up, of course; but what could they have done? Whereas, now, what can a fellow say? I cannot moon on here for another six months, or another year, or perhaps more than that. Neither my people, nor anybody’s people, would listen to it for a moment. When I speak plainly you are affected; and yet it is all your own fault.’

‘If I look like that to him, what must I look to other folk?’ Isabel said to herself. Her pride was not roused, but broken down. Even the thought of answering him was absent from her mind. She had to receive the expression of his will; but what could she reply to it? She had nothing to say.

‘So,’ he continued, after a pause. ‘I am to be left to make the best of it, I suppose. You have no answer to give me even now.’

‘You have asked me no question, Mr. Stapylton,’ said Isabel, faintly. ‘You have but found fault with me. It was never my meaning to keep you hanging on, as you say. What you asked me was impossible—then; and if I am aye to be reproached and blamed for what happens, maybe it is best that it should always be impossible. I would not be the one to keep you back—from your own folk—or waste your time—or——’

‘What more?’ said her lover, irritated. ‘Say something more! say you’ve been making game of me all the time. I can believe it. Perhaps that canting hypocrite at Ardnamore would please you better. I hear he was in the cottage not long ago; or the minister——’

Isabel’s heart swelled as if it would burst. She raised her drooping head with what remnants of pride she had left in the utter overthrow of all her strength.

‘I cannot tell,’ she said, with a gasp, ‘what right any man has to say such things to me.’ And she disengaged herself from the birch-tree which had been her prop and support—but softly still, poor child, not to throw upon him the rain with which it was laden—and made a step or two away. Then she paused, finding it hard work to stand alone, and harder work still to restrain the convulsive sobbing which struggled in her breast. ‘If we are to part,’ she said, softly, taking breath between the words, ‘you know best—I am not saying a word; but if we are to part, may not we part friends at least?’

And with a woeful smile she put out her hand to him. She was too weak for pride; she seemed to herself to be dying, too, like Margaret, and dying folk should be kind, she said in her heart. He was but a man, and perhaps knew no better; and she was too much crushed and wounded to be angry. The only anxious desire she had was to be done with this, and to get home to the fire, to feel some sensation of warmth in her once more; and then die.

‘I think you want to drive me mad,’ he said; and then he seized the proffered hand with sudden haste, and drew her almost roughly to him. ‘This is a woman’s way of doing things, I suppose,’ he said, ‘but not mine—crying; you seem to me to do nothing but cry. Look here, once for all, Isabel, you had a reason before, but you have none now. Will you come with me now?’

‘Where?’ she said, in a whisper, not having breath enough or heart enough either for resistance or utterance.

‘Where? what does it matter where? It might be here for anything I care; but all this ridiculous set would object, and there would be time lost, and the news would be sent home. Come with me now—come to-morrow. What does it matter? You have no invalid to keep you back. What! offended again? How is a plain man to understand all your fancies? If you like to be gloomy and cry I can’t help it, Isabel; but what is the good of dwelling on the past? You did all you could be expected to do, and more. Surely you may think of yourself now.’

‘It is you that does not understand,’ said Isabel, with a sudden movement of indignation, withdrawing from him. ‘What can I say that will make you understand?’

‘I don’t want to understand!’ he cried. ‘Come, Isabel, don’t keep me in pain. If you’ll meet me here to-morrow I’ll arrange everything to-night. We’ll go to Kilcranion and get the steamer there, and reach either Glasgow or Edinburgh in the evening. Isabel! no, you shan’t go away! You can leave a note for your stepmother. Surely, I am more to you than she is. You will make me happy, and make everything possible. It is best to write and tell them after it is done. We’ll go and see everything together; and you never were out of your parish before. Isabel, it will bring back the roses to your cheeks again.’

He held her hand, though she struggled away from him, and bent forward gazing into her face. Isabel’s pale cheeks grew crimson with a violent blush; all at once life and force and strength seemed to pour back into her heart with this wild temptation which shook her to the very depth of her being. The stream had sunk so low that this sudden tide swelled all her veins to bursting, and brought noises to her ears, the sound of awakening, confused hum and buzz of every pulse, of her breathing and her heart. Escape out of this grey atmosphere into the ideal light—out of this chill into the warmth of love—out of this stillness into movement and music and sunshine, and all the stir of common life. But again with equal suddenness a sense of the chill, the grey landscape, the falling night, the heavy evening dew came back to her, quenching out the light and stilling the sounds. She uttered a heavy sigh, she clasped her hands together as if relinquishing all outside aid. ‘And Margaret not three weeks in her grave!’ That was all she could find to say.

‘What has that to do with it?’ said Stapylton, ‘you sacrificed yourself to her when she was living—and are you to make no use of your freedom now she is dead? She can’t feel it now: what will it matter to her whether you are here or with me? You are free now; go where you like, it can’t affect her any more.’

He had taken her hand again, but she wrung it out of his almost with violence; a dull flush came over her of nervous passion. ‘You neither understand her nor me,’ she said, with a pang in her heart. ‘Oh, how dare you speak—how dare you speak?’ and in her anger she stamped her foot upon the yielding turf.

‘Now I’ll tell you what, Isabel,’ he said, ‘I am not to be trifled with any more. It must be made an end of one way or another. The steamer leaves Kilcranion at three——’

‘It shall be made an end of,’ cried Isabel, ‘when you can speak to me like that in my trouble—when you can speak of her like that—oh, say no more! It shows me you do not know what love means—not what it means. I bade you farewell, and you would not take it—but now I say, Go, Mr. Stapylton, go! You have said enough—oh, too much, too much! I cannot bear it. Free! and nothing to her! O man, man, have ye a heart within ye? and can you think I would be glad of that?’

‘I can’t speak your cant,’ cried Stapylton. ‘Isabel! this is the last attempt I will ever make——’

He followed her as he spoke, for she had turned from him, making her way towards the highroad. For a few minutes he went on with her, keeping close by her side, speaking rapidly.

‘This is the last time I will speak. The steamer leaves Kilcranion at three; I will be here waiting for you at two o’clock. I will take every precaution, and make every arrangement. Think it over, Isabel, you never made such an important decision. If you do not come to me at two to-morrow we may never meet more in our lives.’

She stopped and stood gazing at him as he came to this conclusion. For his part he had grown pale and breathless with excitement. He looked at her menacingly from beneath his lowering brows. ‘Never in our lives if not to-morrow!’ he repeated, looking intently in her eyes as if to look her down.

But Isabel was roused, too; she met his eyes without flinching, though every particle of colour had left her face.

‘You threaten me!’ she said, with unconscious scorn. ‘If it was me, I would go to the end of the earth for one I loved—not frown at her, and break her heart to do a thing that’s impossible. Oh, how could you ask me to do it? It will have to be never—never! if that is your last word——’

And even then poor Isabel’s maidenly soul was so faithful, so incapable of believing he could mean the cruel things he said, that her eyes grew wistful and woeful looking at him, for one final moment appealing still.

‘I will wait for you all the same,’ he said, with a half-laugh. ‘When you think it all over, you’ll change your mind. At two o’clock I will be here.’

For yet one more moment they stood confronting each other; he with a smile of affected calmness; she with a gaze that gradually clouded into despair. Then she turned with a little wave of her hand, and left him. He did not attempt to follow. He stood on the same spot watching her as she wound her way through the heather. Once or twice he moved a step in the same direction as if to go after her, but immediately stopped himself.

‘If I give in now all’s lost,’ he said to himself, trying to force his lips into a cheerless whistle. ‘She’ll have thought better of it before to-morrow,’ he said unconsciously aloud. After all, a sister is only a sister, a sort of secondary relationship in life. What girl (he thought) would lose a husband for the sake of a dead woman who could interfere with her comfort no more? ‘She’ll think better of it,’ he repeated to himself in his heart.

CHAPTER XVIII

Isabel went softly down the hill in a concentrated calm, such as only excitement knows. There was a vague, indescribable force in her; a flush of hysterical strength, an exaltation of feeling and bearing and step. Jamie had been sent out by his mother to look for her, and met her some hundred yards from the cottage, stopped short, amazed by her looks, ‘Oh! Isabel, what is it?’ he cried; but Isabel swept past him unaware of his presence. She went in through the parlour to the innermost retirement of her own room, and there sat down to think; but she was not capable of thought. She sat down with her bonnet and shawl still on by the side of the bed on which her sister had lain in the last silence of death, and leaned her head against the chill pillow to still and calm herself.

It was thus that Jean found her half an hour later, when, having heard Jamie’s report of Isabel’s return, she went to seek her wayward charge. Jean’s first glance informed her that the crape on her stepdaughter’s dress was limp, and spoiled with the damp, and that her feet were wet.

‘Oh! Isabel, my bonnie woman, it’s no good for you. You’ve been in the kirkyard again,’ cried Jean putting her apron to her eyes. She could make nothing of the cry, ‘Oh! no, no, not there,’ that came from Isabel’s white lips. Where could she have been but at the grave? It was perhaps a little hard that she should deny it, as if Jean could not enter into her feelings; but no doubt it was natural. Jean took the forlorn creature into her motherly arms.

‘Come ben to the fire, my lamb,’ she said, ‘your crape’s damp and a’ ruined, and your feet are as wet as the moss itself. I canna have ye ill to break my heart. My darlin’, put off your bonnet and come ben to the fire. I’ll change your feet and make ye a cup of tea. Oh, Isabel! it’s an awfu’ loss and an awfu’ trial—but ye maun mind, it’s God’s will and canna be wrong.’

Isabel turned away from her with a cry of despair, which Jean misunderstanding set down but to the renewed vehemence of grief rekindled to its fullest by the melancholy visit which she supposed her stepdaughter to have just paid. When she got her at last into her own elbow-chair by the kitchen fire, and knelt before her chafing the girl’s little white feet in her rough but kindly hands, ‘Isabel, my bonnie woman, you must promise me no to go again,’ she said, surrounding her with kindly ministrations.

‘Oh, let me be!’ sobbed Isabel, ‘let me be;’ and sighing, Jean left her in her own especial sanctuary, by the warm light of the kitchen fire. Unawares her eyes closed, her hands, which had been strained together with a painful pressure, unclasped, her head fell softly back upon the blue and white covering of the high-backed chair. Jean was so moved by the sight when she returned into the kitchen, coming and going at her work, that she turned even little Mary, just coming home from school, out of the darkling place. ‘Can ye no see that Isabel’s sleeping?’ she said sharply to her own flesh and blood.

‘But, oh, what makes her sleep in the day?’ said Mary, following into the parlour with a frightened face, ‘Is she to die too like Margaret?’ and big tears sprang to the child’s eyes.

‘The Lord forbid!’ said Jean, ‘but, whisht now, and be as quiet as a mouse—she’s worn, and wearied, and grieved at her heart. When ane ‘s in sair trouble sleep is sweet.’

‘I wonder if she ay dreams of Margaret like me,’ said little Mary. ‘Eh, mother, Margaret comes and stands by my bed every night!’

‘Oh, bairn, whisht, and no break my heart!’ cried Jean, uneasily. ‘Ye were ay the one for dreams.’

‘But I’m no feared,’ said little Mary, ‘whiles she speaks, but I never can mind what she says. It’s just the same to me as if she was living. Then I used to see her a’ day, and now I see her a’ night—and she has ay light round like an angel out of Heaven.’

‘Oh, whisht, with your dreams!’ cried the mother with a tone of anger, which belied the sudden tremor in her heart. ‘Have ye nae lessons to learn like Jamie? He’s away on the braes, the poor callant! with his book.’

‘He’s making a whistle out of a rowan-tree branch,’ said Mary; ‘I cried upon him as I passed, but he wouldna come in, and he’ll cut his fingers, for it’s getting dark.’

‘Eh me, he’s an awfu’ laddie!’ said poor Jean, rushing to the door. What with her precocious daughter, and her backward son, and Isabel whose heart it was so hard to keep, she had, as she herself expressed it, ‘a bonnie handful.’ But fortunately the one anxiety kept the other in check, and uneasiness about the cutting of Jamie’s fingers dulled in her mind the painful impression of Mary’s dreams; and then night fell, and the children came in, and Isabel awoke to a sense of warmth and comfort. She did not even propose to retire into her dignity in the parlour, but stayed in the elbow-chair, and even smiled as she had scarcely done before. She was glad to take refuge among them—glad to avoid the inevitable encounter with her own thoughts; and indeed her mind had taken refuge in a kind of insensibility. She had felt so much that for the moment she could feel no more.

Thus it was that Isabel did not return to the events of the afternoon during the whole course of the night. The emotions that had been so strong in her seemed to have been somehow lulled to sleep. She made an ineffectual attempt to recall them when she went to her own room, but fatigue and sleep got the better of her. A curious sense of escape came over her. She had expected to be rent asunder with indignation, and that madness which devours the mind when we are wroth with those we love. A hundred terrible questions had seemed on the eve of sweeping down upon her like so many birds of prey to be resolved and settled in a moment. And yet nothing of the kind had happened: instead, a soft insensibility had crept over her mind. She was too weary for anything; and slept, like a tired child, quieted and composed and wrapped in physical warmth and consolation.

These were her feelings when she fell asleep. But Isabel awoke, in the middle of the night, as she thought, in the deep darkness and stillness, broad awake in a second, without any twilight interval between the deep blank of repose and the tremendous struggle of existence.

She turned from side to side in her weary bed, sometimes hoping that out of the gloom there might reveal itself a sudden figure, all blazing with awful brightness, to show her what was needful to be done—counting the steadfast, unbroken, terrible tickings of the clock, feeling the darkness affect her, a thing which weighed down her eyes and oppressed her soul. When the first shade of grey trembled into the dusk, it was to Isabel as a messenger from Heaven. Her heart bounded up with a sense of relief; and as the dawn grew, revealing in a mist the whitening hill-side, and the reflections in the Loch, she found it possible to sleep again and forget her troubles. She fell into a heavy slumber, which still lasted when Jean came softly into the room to rouse her.

‘I dinna like thae long sleeps,’ Jean said to herself, with a sudden pang: ‘Eh, if she should gang too, like Margret!’ and stood by the bedside reluctant to awake her, gazing at the sleeper’s pale face, at the unconscious knitting of her brows, and tremulous movements of her hand. She grew more and more anxious as the morning advanced, and Isabel, trained in the habit of early rising, never woke. The good woman stole repeatedly to her stepdaughter’s bedside, laying her hand softly on Isabel’s forehead, and touching the white arm which lay on the coverlet to discover whether she was feverish. When she opened her eyes at last, Jean was gazing at her with an anxiety which she did her best to dissimulate as soon as she perceived that Isabel was awake.

‘I thought you were never to wake mair,’ she said, with attempted playfulness. ‘Lazy thing! It’s ten o’clock in the day, and half the work of the house done. But, now you’re so late, bide a wee longer, and I’ll bring you your tea.’

‘But I am quite well,’ said Isabel, raising herself with a little start.

‘I canna think it, or you wouldna sleep like that,’ said Jean. ‘You, that were never lazy in the morning. You’ve gotten cauld on the braes.’

Jean did not know what meaning there could be in her words which brought that cloud on her stepdaughter’s face. She looked at her very anxiously, but could make nothing of it.

‘I shouldna have said a word of where ye were,’ she exclaimed, with sudden compunction. ‘It’s me that’s a thoughtless body, never minding. But we must submit to God’s will, my bonnie woman; and I’ll go, and bring ye your tea.’

‘This will never do,’ Jean said to herself, as she left the room. It will never do. She must have some change. I’ll go and speak to Miss Catherine about it this very day.’ And when she went back, with the tea on a little tray, the suggestion framed itself into speech. ‘What would ye say to going to Edinburgh, and seeing a’ the sights? But—eh! bless me, is the lassie daft?’ cried Jean, thunderstruck by the effect of her words.

‘I will not listen to you,’ said Isabel, with sudden passion. ‘Never! Go to Edinburgh! How dare ye put such things in my head? Go away, and play myself, and be happy—and my Margaret not three weeks in her grave!’

‘My bonnie lamb!’ said Jean, with streaming eyes. ‘To see you happy—or if no happy, a wee cheerful—taking some good of your life—Margret would have given half hers. Do you think she’s mair selfish, mair hard, no so thoughtful now?’

Isabel could but gasp at her with startled, wondering eyes. Was Jean, too, pleading for him? Was she taking his part consciously or unconsciously? She put away the food her stepmother had brought her, with nervous, trembling hands.

‘I cannot lie here,’ she said. ‘I am quite well. Let me get up, and then I will know what to do.’

‘Lie still, my dear,’ said Jean, anxiously. ‘You’ve been waking through the night, and greetin’ sore; and you’ve got cauld on the wet grass. Lie still this day, and rest.’

‘But I cannot rest,’ said Isabel. ‘I cannot breathe. My heart is like as if it were bound with an iron band. I want to rise, and to get the air.’

‘Nae air the day except the air from the window,’ said Jean. ‘I can be positive, too. Na, na; I have the charge of you, and decline’s in the family. You shanna cross the door this day.’

Isabel fell back on her pillow with the strangest sense of relief. She, who had never yielded to her stepmother in her life, felt a certain consolation in this exercise of authority.

‘It is not as if it was my own doing,’ she thought in herself, and kept still, satisfied for the moment with her relief from all responsibility. The manner in which she subsided into sudden listlessness and quiet frightened Jean still more. Had it been anyone else, she might have accepted it as the result of natural weakness or weariness, but nothing of the kind had ever been seen before in wilful Isabel. Nor did it last long. When Jean returned, an hour later, her charge was again struggling with excitement.

‘I am going to get up,’ she said, with two brilliant spots of colour on her cheeks. ‘I feel as if I were in my grave here. I must get out to the fresh air!’

Jean’s answer was to draw away the curtain from the window. Then Isabel saw, looking out on the hill-side, the falling of the noiseless rain. It was no white violent blast with actual colour and solidity, but the fine impalpable dropping which penetrates through every covering, and which the experienced West Highlander looks at with hopeless eyes. ‘To gan out into that wet would be as much as your life is worth,’ said Jean, solemnly. ‘The braes are nae better than a shaking moss, and the roads are running like burns. It’s an awfu’ saft day. Ye may get up and sit by the fire, but across the door ye’ll no go, or else you’ll quarrel with me.’

This time it was with a kind of despair that Isabel listened. He would never think of it—he could not expect her, nor would he go himself on such a day. His departure would be put off, and with it the crisis, and time would be left to think. A little time to think, even an hour more she felt would be something gained. She had another moment of tranquility, gazing out from where she lay through the low window, upon the melancholy braes.

After a temporary lull, however, her fever returned. This time she rose and dressed herself hastily, putting on, in a half-dream, not her new ‘mourning,’ with the crape on it, but a thick winter dress, black enough to indicate any depths of sorrow. Always like a walker in a dream—that was the only explanation she could have given of her own feelings. Clothed for her journey, yet without any intention of taking the journey, she wandered drearily about her sister’s room. One o’clock, struck by the solemn eight-day clock, which gave a kind of mechanical soul to the house, knelled upon Isabel’s ear, as she held her white trembling hands over the fire. It shook her like a convulsion of nature. But one hour more—and all to be decided in that hour—and her mind no nearer the solution, scarcely so near as last night.

‘You’re looking real weakly, my dear,’ said Jean; ‘shaking like a leaf. I’m no sure you should have risen out of your bed. Take this shawl round you, and I’ll give you some broth to warm you. You’ve eaten nothing the whole day.’

‘I could not eat!’ said Isabel, wrapping round her with a shiver the soft warm shawl. Tick, tick, tick! Would nothing arrest these inexorable moments? As they went on her thoughts seemed to rise round her like a whirlwind sweeping about and about her bewildered soul; every beat brought nearer to her the last moment when her fate should still be in her own power. And yet she was like one paralysed, and could not move. The minutes pressed and trod upon each other’s heels, and yet were so slow in their confused procession, that it might have been an age instead of an hour. At last, while Isabel sat striving to break the spell which bound her, the door flew open and then closed violently after Jamie rushing in wet and muddy from school.

‘It’s no raining now!’ cried the boy as he dashed forward to the side of the fire. Isabel started as if a shot had struck her. Just then the clock gave its little whirr of warning that it was about to strike the hour. She sprang up to her feet with a sudden cry—then sank down again—her pale head falling back against the chair, her hands falling listless on its arms. Jean, rushing to her, believed for the first moment that Isabel was dead. She was as one dead, her eyes half-closed and ghastly; her colour completely gone; her very lips deserted of all colour. The struggle had been too much for her. She lay insensible in a dead faint before her stepmother’s affrighted eyes.

CHAPTER XIX

Stapylton sought the trysting-place on the hill on the decisive day with all the excitement natural to the crisis, but with little fear of the result. He had taken none of the precautions of which he had spoken to Isabel. What need was there of precautions? she would wear a veil of course, and a cloak. The road to Kilcranion was little frequented, especially on such a day; and by the time Kilcranion was reached, they would be, to some extent, among strangers, not liable to recognition at every step as here. He made up for himself a small bag of necessaries, put the money he had just received to carry him home in his pocket, buttoned his greatcoat, and took his way through the drizzling rain to the hill-side.

He had loitered there for about half an hour watching for traces of Isabel’s approach, and gradually beginning to be angry, when the rain suddenly stopped, and the sky cleared ever so little. That was so far good. He put down his bag, and lighted a cigar to comfort himself as he waited. Below where he stood, just within sight, the thatched roof of the Glebe Cottage rose like some natural growth out of the heather. No doubt she must have waited for this moment; though why she should have waited, keeping him in the rain, he could not imagine. However it was a pardonable sin if she came now. This thought went through his mind just at the moment when Isabel, rising to go to him, fell back and fainted in her chair. He paced up and down the wet turf, and smoked his cigar, and looked for her, calculating in his own mind how long the weather would ‘keep up,’ and whether there might be time to reach Kilcranion before it came on to rain again. Another half-hour, it might be, was spent in these speculations; and then he took out his watch suddenly, and woke to the consciousness that he had been waiting for an hour on the moor, that the steamer must be gone from Kilcranion, and that the way of escape unobserved was closed to them for that night.

It would be difficult to describe the rage which rose in a moment in his mind. She, whom he thought so entirely subject to him, whom he had felt to be delivered over to him bound hand and foot when she was deprived of her sister—had Isabel rebelled against his influence? Had she cast him off? It did not seem possible. He would—but was that Isabel? It seemed to him he could hear sounds from the cottage; the noise of doors opening and shutting—a babble of tongues. Could they be detaining her by force? But then no one in the world had any right to detain her—she was absolutely free. Still there was some agitation about the Glebe. He snatched up his bag, not without a private imprecation upon Isabel for making him thus ridiculous, that he should have to drag it about from one place to another; and then he turned rapidly down the hill. Someone came out of the cottage as he got full in sight of it—someone whom he easily divined to be Mr. Lothian. ‘Confound him!’ said the young fellow; what was he doing there just at the moment when Stapylton’s fate was being decided? Could she have consulted him? Was it through the minister’s plotting that his purpose had thus been brought to nothing? The young man hurried down, carrying in his hand, and cursing the troublesome bag, which but for her—— it was a small matter, but it exasperated him more than a greater. He had half a mind to fling it at the cottage door, and order Jamie to carry it for him for sixpence, by way of driving the stepmother out of her senses. But surely there was something strange going on at the Glebe. Jenny Spence had just come out with another woman, and stood in audible colloquy with her at the door. ‘You’ll tell the doctor she’s come to hersel,’ said Jenny. ‘It lasted an hour, Jean thinks. But time looks awfu’ long when folk are feared, and maybe it wasna an hour. She’s come to hersel, and very quiet, and there’s nae such haste as we thought. But for a’ that, tell him he’s to come on here as soon as he can.’

‘And will I say what was the cause?’ said the messenger, while Stapylton listened eagerly.

‘He’s mair likely to tell us,’ said the other; ‘the first thing she asked was, What o’clock was it? And when she heard gave an awfu’ sigh, and syne lay as quiet as a wean—though what the clock had to do with it Gude kens. I hope it’s no her head; that would be worse of a’.’

‘But she’s ay been real healthy and strong. A body in trouble may faint, and yet no be that ill after a’.’

‘But ye see decline’s in the family,’ said Jenny Spence, and then they parted, the one returning to the house, the other speeding on her mission. The bag grew less oppressive in Stapylton’s hands. His clouded brow cleared a little. After all, she had not meant to leave him in the lurch. If she was ill that was a different matter. After a pause he went and knocked at the door, and asked how Miss Diarmid was?

‘If you’re meaning Isabel, she’s no that weel,’ said Jenny Spence; ‘she was out yesterday in the damp, and she’s gotten a cauld.’ This was all the information she would condescend upon to a stranger and a ‘young lad.’

‘But what did I hear you say about a faint?’ said Stapylton eagerly.

‘Lord!’ said Jenny, who, like most of the villagers, disliked the Englishman, ‘how can I tell what ye might hear me say? I say plenty whiles that I canna mind myself; but Isabel’s gotten the cauld. It’s natural at this time of the year.’

‘Cold? and nothing more?’ asked the young man.

‘Ane can never tell—it might turn into an influenza,’ said Jenny; ‘but that’s a’ the noo, for a’ that I can see.’

And then she closed the door upon him, with a certain malicious satisfaction. Stapylton was no favourite in the parish; perhaps because of a sneer which was always lurking behind the few civilities which he had ever been known to offer. Jenny had no confidence either in his friendship or his love.

‘Yon’s the lad that would beguile a young lass, but be dour as iron and steel to his wife as soon as she had married him. I hope there’s naething amiss between him and Isabel,’ she said to Jean, when she described this visit; and Jean felt a little thrill go through her, as if this new event threw light on something, though she could scarcely tell what.

‘Do you think our Isabel would be thinking of any such nonsense at such a time!’ she said, indignantly. But still a sensation as of some discovery darted through her own heart.

Stapylton, however, shut out as he thus was from all approach to Isabel, was not to be so easily put off. He hastened down the road at his quickest pace, determined to find out, at least, from the minister what had happened. Mr. Lothian was standing at the door of the doctor’s house when the young man made up to him.

‘Is it you, Stapylton?’ he said, with an evident struggle to be friendly. ‘It has been a dreadful day.’

‘Not cheerful,’ said the young man; ‘but only, after all, “a wee saft,” as you say in these parts. You have not been consulting the doctor, I hope, for yourself?’

‘No,’ said Mr. Lothian, fixing his eyes upon his interrogator, and adding nothing to the syllable. Stapylton’s spirit of natural rivalry woke up at once.

‘I saw a messenger for the doctor coming from the Glebe,’ he said. ‘I hope I might be mistaken—or if there is anyone ill there, that it is only one of the children. Children are always ill.’

‘It is not one of the children,’ said Mr. Lothian. ‘It is—Isabel.’ He uttered the name with a sigh. He was so anxious, that he was glad to speak, even to Stapylton, of the subject that lay nearest his heart.

‘What is the matter?’ said the young man, himself feeling somewhat breathless.

‘She fainted to-day,’ said the minister, ‘without any reason, so far as we know. She had been out yesterday, at her sister’s grave, and I fear she caught cold; but a fainting fit shows a state of weakness which—I cannot but be alarmed at it,’ he added, hurriedly, with a faltering voice.

‘So she said she had been at her sister’s grave!’—Stapylton thought within himself. He liked her all the better for having lied to keep their meeting secret. He had not thought she had so much spirit. And after all it would have been a wretched day for a journey. To-morrow would still leave time enough. He must send her a note somehow, to say so; and, well or ill, she must pluck up her forces and do it at last. He looked at the glass as he went to his room, and found that it was rising; and already it had ceased to rain. Dry clothes and a fine day would make all the difference. And Isabel, who could no longer assume any superiority over him—who had been as sly about it as any ordinary girl—would have given herself to him by that time, and be altogether in his power. The young man whistled in sheer lightheartedness as he changed his dress. After this she could never mount her high horse, and show her superior sentiments, as of yore. The first thing he did when his toilet was accomplished was to write her a note. It was the first communication of the kind which had ever passed between them, but the fact did not excite him as it does most young lovers. Poor Mr. Lothian, on the eminence of his fifty years, would have written to Isabel with very different feelings; but Stapylton took it calmly, not being of an imaginative turn. His letter was as follows:—

‘Dearest Isabel,—I was in an awful state of mind when I found you did not turn up to-day at the usual spot. I felt furious I can assure you, and called you a jilt and a dozen other names. But I hear you’ve been ill, and I forgive you, my darling. Of course it never would have answered to set out in the rain on such a frightful day if you were ill. I got soaked to the skin waiting for you, which I hope you will be sorry to hear. But, Isabel, remember to-morrow is the last day. Go I must to-morrow. If you can’t pick yourself up and get well, and join me at the same place and the same hour, I shall go mad, I think, for I must go. My people are writing letters upon letters. There’s one waiting for me now, but I have not opened it, for they’re all pretty much the same thing over again. They’ve written to Mr. Lothian, and to Smeaton at the farm, for information as to what detains me; and I must not risk it any longer. But of course, when you know it’s so necessary, I can trust to your spirit to get well, and join me as I arranged. We’ll have a run into Edinburgh and do the business, and then I can write home. I don’t care much about seeing sights myself, but it will all be new to you, and you’ll enjoy it. So get well, my pet, as fast as ever you can, and remember to-morrow at the old place at two o’clock. I’ll have a trap waiting on the hill: but for Heaven’s sake don’t be late.

‘You may think me joking, but I never was more serious in my life. That is my way, as you know. I can’t look solemn and use big words like you Scotch. But I mean it all the same. If you don’t love me enough to come to me to-morrow, I’ll take it for granted you don’t love me at all. I will go right away by myself, and I can’t hold out any hope to you that I will ever come back. Now don’t mistake me, or think I am threatening you. I have waited long enough, and you must not make a fool of me any longer. If I am once driven away, the chances are I can never return to Loch Diarmid—or to you. Come then now. It is our only chance. I will wait for you to-morrow as I did to-day. I shall be there at half-past one, and I shall wait till a quarter after two. No longer. You must be punctual. It’s for you to decide if we are to be together for ever, or separated for ever. I can do no more. To-morrow at the old place, or most likely never in this world.

‘Come, Isabel, my darling, come! Don’t fail me. If you do, I will never see you more.

‘Yours, if you will have me,
‘H. S.’

When he had finished this epistle he read it over with a little complacency. If anything would do it, surely this would do it; though, indeed, there was no reason to believe that Isabel required any special entreaty. As he thought it over, it occurred to him that probably she had fainted out of sheer aggravation and passion when she found she could not go to him; and that was easily comprehensible. When he had folded his note, and got up to find some wax to seal it (for envelopes were not common articles in those days), he found the letters Mr. Lothian had told him of on the table, and tore the first that came uppermost open, suddenly, holding still his love-letter in his hand. His face grew heavy as he read, and pale. He went back to his chair and hurried through it, and the other which accompanied it. They were written on the same day, and to the same purpose. His father was ill. One of the letters was from his sister, the other from the doctor.

‘Come for mamma’s sake,’ wrote the first. ‘Papa is fearfully angry, and threatens to change his will. For your own sake don’t waste a moment.’

‘Your father is dying,’ said the doctor. ‘There is not a moment to lose. He is clamouring for a lawyer. Everything that I can do to postpone this you may be sure I will. But come! you may yet be in time.’

Young Stapylton wiped the heavy moisture from his forehead and stared into the air as if he had been staring at himself. ‘Clamouring for a lawyer!’—‘threatening to change his will!’ Horace was not a devoted son, but such words as these penetrate the most callous heart. After the first shock he set himself to consider with a promptitude that did him credit. There was not a moment to lose. After all, it was just as well he had packed his bag. He would borrow the miller’s horse and the minister’s old gig, and there was still time perhaps to get to Glasgow before the English mail should be gone. But there was not a moment to lose. It was only when he sprang up to prepare for immediate departure that he found the note to Isabel crushed in his hand, and bethought himself of her. He sat down again hastily and added a few words to it: and he was in the act of sealing it at Mr. Lothian’s writing-table when the minister came in. Even then a spark of malice crossed his mind. Here was the best messenger he could find to carry his love-letter—and it would be a Parthian arrow, a farewell blow at his adversary.

‘My father is ill,’ he said; ‘I must go instantly. There is just time to catch the coach for Glasgow if Andrew White will lend me his mare. I am going to ask him now.’

‘Going—instantly?’ said the minister, stupified, looking at the two letters on the table. Stapylton gathered them carefully up and nodded in reply.

‘I shall see you again,’ he said. ‘I must rush up now to the mill. I may have the gig, I suppose? But look here,’ he continued, coming back from the door. ‘There’s one good turn you can do me, if you will. If not I’ll send it by someone else; will you take this note for me to the Glebe when you go?’

The minister started slightly and coloured high, but he made a little ceremonious bow at the same time and held out his hand. ‘I will take it,’ he said gravely; and then, perhaps out of the softening of his heart towards the young fellow, who was thus torn away at such a moment, leaving him master of the field—for to be left master of the field is very softening and consolatory to the soul—he laid his hand upon Stapylton’s arm. ‘The doctors says it is but grief and agitation—you’ll be glad to hear it,’ he said.

‘Yes, yes,’ cried Stapylton, scarcely taking in the words; ‘and I may have the gig? There is not a moment to lose.’

CHAPTER XX

Next morning Mr. Lothian went to the Glebe as early as he could permit himself to go, though his heart had been on the way for hours before he permitted his reluctant footsteps to follow. He found Isabel lying on the sofa in the parlour, in the very spot where Margaret had died, and naturally the association of ideas struck him profoundly. ‘Why have you laid her there?’ he said to Jean, turning back from the door. There went a chill to his heart as if he had seen the tragedy all acted over again, and heard that the end was already approaching.

Jean Campbell stared at him, only partially comprehending what he could mean. ‘Where else could I put her,’ she said, ‘unless it was ben in the kitchen with me? and the doctor says she’s to be kept quiet. And it’s mair cheerful there than in a bedroom, where she could see nobody.’

‘Cheerful!’ echoed the minister.

‘Eh aye real cheerful,’ said Jean, in whose mind perpetual use and wont had subdued the force of melancholy associations. ‘When I’ve put the sofa she can see the road, and the Loch, and the steamboat, which is real diverting—and I’m aye coming and going to keep her cheery myself. She’s no to call ill. It’s but the sorrow and the weakness and a’ her trouble. We’ve no need to be alarmed about her health, he says.’

Mr. Lothian, silenced by this matter of fact treatment of the subject, went into the parlour, feeling even his own apprehensions a little calmed down.

‘I am very glad to hear you are better,’ he said.

‘Oh, yes. I never was ill to speak of. I know I never was ill,’ said Isabel, turning away her head.

‘Then perhaps the rest and quiet is all you want?’ said the minister, not knowing in his agitation what to say. And then there was a pause. There were a hundred things which he had longed to say to her, but could not when the moment thus came. He felt as if some cruel necessity was upon him to think of Margaret—to remind her that Margaret had died just where she was lying—to beg her to change her attitude, and look, which made his heart sick with terror. He had to restrain himself with an effort from suggesting to her this strange topic. And perhaps the other things he was tempted to say would have been less palatable still. At last, after a perplexed and painful pause, he brought out of his pocket the letter of which he was the unwilling bearer.

‘I have a letter for you,’ he said, ‘it was left with me last night.’

‘A letter!’ said Isabel, growing pale, and then she turned it about in her hands, and looked at it. ‘It has no address.’

‘It was put up in such haste,’ said Mr. Lothian. ‘Isabel, will you read it now, in case I can give you any explanation?—or shall I go away?’

‘It is from——’

‘Horace Stapylton. I gave my promise I would bring it—though against my will.’

Isabel gazed at him, for a moment growing pale. She held the letter helplessly in her hand. What could he mean? It had been left with him last night. He could perhaps give some explanation. What could he mean? Her pulse began to beat again as it had not done since her faint. She made Mr. Lothian a little sign with her hand to stay, for he had risen, and stood quite apart from her in the centre of the room. Then with a hasty hand she tore open the letter. When the minister gave a stolen glance at her, he could see that her cheeks were growing more and more flushed and feverish. The colour on them was no passing glow of delight and modesty, but the burning red of excitement and sudden passion. She went over it all rapidly, and then she uttered a low cry. Mr. Lothian glanced at her, but, seeing that the cry was unconscious, betook himself again to the window with what calmness was possible. Isabel had come to the postscript. He did not look round again for what seemed to him an age. What roused him at last was the rustle of the paper falling to the ground, and turning round hastily, he found Isabel with her face buried in her hands in a passion of tears. This was hard to bear. He went back to his seat beside the sofa, and picking up the letter laid it gently on her lap; and then he touched her shoulder softly with a fatherly, caressing hand, and said, ‘My poor child! my poor child!’ in a voice that came out of the very depths of his heart.

Then Isabel uncovered hastily her passionate, tear-stained face.

‘It is not that!’ she cried—‘it is not that! Oh, I think shame! Am I one to be spoken to so?—is it my doing? I think my heart will break! Take it and read it, and tell me if it is my doing, before I die of shame.’

He could only gaze at her, wondering if her mind were unhinged; but hasty Isabel, all ablaze with passion and misery, could not stop to think. She took up the letter—her lover’s letter, and thrust it into his rival’s hand.

‘If it is my doing—oh, never speak to me again!’ she cried. Shame and anger, and disappointment and anguish, were all tearing her asunder. And she had no Margaret to go to, to relieve her. Someone must give her that support and solace which her heart demanded, or she felt she must die. She hung upon his looks as he read it, reading his expression.

‘Could it be my fault?’ she cried. ‘Oh, Mr. Lothian, was I such a light lass? Was it anything I did that made him write like that to me?’

‘No, Isabel,’ he said, with a blaze of rage in his eyes, taking her feverish hand. ‘No, Isabel. My dear, think no more of it. It is that he understands neither yours nor you.’

And then instinctively, in an instant, hasty Isabel felt the mistake she had made, and felt that she could not bear any criticisms upon her lover even now. She took back her letter as suddenly as she had given it, and folded it up with trembling hands.

‘He does not understand,’ said Mr. Lothian, altogether unconscious of this rapid revolution. ‘You speak a language he cannot comprehend. The women he knows are a different species. Isabel, I have never said a word against him——’

‘No,’ she cried, hurriedly. ‘No; I am always a fool, and never know what I am doing. No. Dinna say a word now.’

Then he stopped suddenly, the very words arrested on his lips, and gazed at her wondering, not knowing what she could mean.

‘You don’t understand me either,’ cried Isabel. ‘Oh, not a word—not a word! You cannot judge him right; you never saw him like me. He was bewildered with the news; he never meant that.’

‘If I were to say the like, would you ever forgive me?’ said the minister, shaking his head. She answered only by weeping, a mode of reply which took all power of remonstrance or protestation away from the spectator. A hundred contradictory emotions were in Isabel’s tears. Shame and pain over the letter; shame still sharper, if not so deep, that she had offered it to the criticism of another; wrath against Stapylton; rage at herself; and a certain bitterness against her companion for not taking her lover’s part to her, for not contradicting her, and pleading his rival’s cause. She could not have spoken all this wild jumble of pain and passion; but she poured it all forth in tears.

It was the postscript which had specially excited her, and which ran as follows:—

‘I have just heard that my father is ill, and I must go. I would have waited till to-morrow even now, but I hear he might alter his will, which would never do. It is all your own fault. I was ready, waiting for you—as you know. What could a man do more? If you will come, and meet me somewhere on the Border, as soon as this business is settled, you will find me as ready then as I was to-day. No time to say a word more.’

Mr. Lothian once more left her side, and went back to the window in his perplexity.

‘I should not disturb you,’ he said, with his back to her. ‘I should go away. But it is grievous to me to see your tears. I would give my very blood to save one tear falling from your eyes. And he would wring tears of blood out of your heart; and yet he is chosen, and I am rejected. What more can I have to say?’

‘Nothing! oh, nothing!’ cried Isabel. ‘Oh, will you not understand? I would like to hide myself in the depths of the earth. I was going to him yesterday, when I fainted. I have kept it a secret, and it was like a lie burning in my heart. Now I have told you; I would have gone with him if I had kept in life. What better am I than him? He is free to speak, for he sees I am no better. It is my fault, and not his. And now you know,’ cried the girl, clasping her passionate hands together, ‘and you may despise me! I let him tempt me; I could not bear the awfu’ quiet. I’ll cure you at least, if I shame myself. It was me that was to blame.’

‘But I am not cured. I’ll never be cured, my dear, my dear!’ cried the grey-haired man, coming back to her, with tears in his eyes, and taking her hands into his own. ‘It was your innocence, and your grief. Do you think I do not know of the struggle that was in your heart?’

She left her hands indifferently in his, not seeming to care for, nor scarcely to perceive, his emotion. She fixed her eyes vacantly upon the air, with great tears rising in them.

‘And Margaret knows it all,’ she said; two piteous tears, the very essence of her pain, dilated her eyes into two great globes, but did not fall. Self-abasement could go no further. Margaret, in Heaven, would not despise her sister. But what could she think of the variable, miserable creature who, fresh from her own death-bed, could be tempted by such a poor temptation, and think such thoughts as these?

CHAPTER XXI

While all this had been going on at the Glebe, a drama of a different kind was evolving itself among scenes of strange devotion, and plans as wild as enthusiast ever formed, at the other corner of the Loch. Mr. John’s madness had come to a height on the night of Margaret’s death. The sudden announcement of that event falling on him at a moment when he had already worked himself into a kind of frenzy, had brought to a climax this supreme crisis of his being. He went away from Ailie’s cottage, vaguely wandering across the gloomy moor to the Glebe, and throwing himself down there on the wet heather, watched through the starless, solitary night within sight of the melancholy house which held his dead love.

The result of this terrible watch was an illness against which he fought with feverish passion, never resting nor stopping one of his ordinary occupations. He was in the churchyard on the day of Margaret’s funeral, shivering and burning, and scarcely able to sustain himself, but keeping up by force of will, grasping at the cold tombstones, stopping the melancholy train, as it dispersed, to hear ‘the word of the Lord.’

‘You have closed her up in her grave,’ he cried, his voice hoarse with sickness and passion; ‘but when He comes, think you, your green turf and your cold stones will hide His saint from giving Him a welcome.’

‘Come home! come home!’ said the minister, approaching the haggard prophet, with a compassion, in which there was some touch of fellow feeling, ‘you are too ill to be out of your bed, much less here.’

‘By God’s grace I will never yield to what you call illness,’ said Mr. John; ‘is it for me to rest and let them leave the place where they have laid her, with hearts like stones in their bosoms? Is she to have lived—and is she to die, in vain?’

‘Mr. John, this is worse than folly,’ said Mr. Lothian; ‘no one here will let Margaret’s dear name be made an occasion of strife. For her sake, go home and take thought, and rest.’

‘For her sake, I will rest no more till He comes, or till I die,’ cried the inspired madman: ‘but I shall not die, I will live and declare the works of the Lord.’

There were many of the wondering party thus accosted who believed that Mr. John had been betrayed by his grief into a new vice, the most common failing of the country-side. ‘He’s been drinking,’ they said among themselves: ‘puir fellow!—to make him forget.’ ‘Na, na, it’s no drink, it’s grief,’ said others. ‘And wha are ye that speak like them in Jerusalem,’ cried a third party, ’"they’re drunk with new wine,” when it was the Spirit of the Lord?’

And then, a few days later, it became known in the parish that he had bidden Ailie Macfarlane in the name of God to become his wife, and excitement rose very high on Loch Diarmid. Something in the passionate, haggard face, which looked like that of a man on the point of death, and yet was to be seen more than ever at kirk and market, awed the common mind and threw a certain light of reality upon those desperate and tragic motives which had led him to such a proposal.

‘He’s lost Margret for this world; and now he thinks to force the Lord to come afore His ain time and get her back,’ said Jenny Spence.

‘And Ailie—poor thing!—is to be his tool that he’ll work with. I see his meaning—a’ his meaning, as clear as daylight. He’s out o’ his wits about Margret Diarmid; and he’s ta’en to the drink for consolation,’ said another gossip, ‘and he hasna strength to stand it. It’ll be his death, and that you’ll see.’

Poor Ailie, however, on her side, was of a very different mind. When ‘the word of the Lord’ had burst upon her on that night of Margaret’s death, her very heart had failed in dismay and consternation. She had implicitly believed all that had been revealed to herself of her own mission, and was ready to set out at any moment without staff or scrip, with all the simplicity of a child. But her faith failed her when Mr. John’s strange proposal fell on her ear. ‘Is this a time for marrying or giving in marriage?’ she asked, with something like indignation, when, with infinitely greater vehemence, he renewed his commands to her as the handmaid of the Lord. ‘Is not the time of His appearing near? and are we to be burdened with earthly ties and earthly troubles when the Lord comes to His ain work? Oh, man! I’m no made to be ony man’s helpmeet. There are plenty round you that are better for that; it’s my meat and my drink to serve God. I couldna think of the flesh to please my husband, but of the Spirit to please the Lord.’

‘And yet you contradict His Spirit and refuse His message,’ said Mr. John, ‘which I brought to you out of the darkness of the night—out of a mind rent and torn with pain, not lightly, or with common thoughts, but from His presence. Will you please Him by rejecting His word?’

‘But it might be a lying spirit,’ said Ailie. ‘It might be to tempt us—as if you and me had need of alliance in the flesh.’

‘We have need of alliance for the work,’ he said, with his great, heavy, passionate eyes fixed upon her. ‘Men have gone before, but never man and woman. The Lord has said to me, Go in to the prophetess. Fear not to take unto thee thy wife. If you disobey, the sin be upon your head.’

‘But it has never been revealed to me,’ cried Ailie, her cheeks crimsoning with shame, and whitening with terror. ‘When there have been messages concerning this life, they have been revealed to them that were to profit, and no to another. And in the mouth of two or three is every testimony to be established. If the word comes to me I’ll no resist the Lord.’

‘The head of the woman is her husband,’ said Mr. John, loftily, ‘it is the sign of God’s will towards you. If you are to be given to me, your instructions, your directions, must come through my hands. It is to me it is revealed, for I am the head. Listen to the Lord’s voice. Want of faith has laid one head low that should have shone above us all. Will you let it overcome you now that have triumphed in your time? Ailie, beware! The blasphemy that cannot be pardoned, and the sin that may not be forgiven, is the sin against the Holy Ghost.’

‘But I canna see it! I canna see it!’ cried poor Ailie, bursting into tears. Her dignity seemed to have deserted her, and all her spiritual gifts. She kept indoors, shut up in her room, spending her time in feverish prayers and divinations from the Bible. ‘I will do what the Lord wills,’ she said to herself and others twenty times in a day; but when any text which seemed to favour Mr. John’s cause caught her eye on opening ‘the Book,’ she would shut it again hastily, and try again, without any acknowledgment. All her partizans, and indeed the entire parish, took an interest in the question which no previous features in the movement had elicited to such an extent. The matter was discussed everywhere, involving as it did the interest of a personal romance along with the intense charm of the religious excitement, and calling forth a hundred different opinions. There were some who thought that Ailie—‘set her up!’—had won what she aimed at in making herself so conspicuous, and that her reluctance was pretence. And there were some who, without going so far, still felt that the promotion of a gentleman’s hand thus offered to her, was enough to make the prophetess forget her calling. Miss Catherine, who was of a sceptical mind, and had never given in to Ailie’s pretensions, was so much moved by her kinsman’s madness, that it almost broke down the barrier which had divided them since the time when Mr. John’s evil ways had finally closed her doors against him. She even hesitated at the church-door whether she would not pause and accost him, and see what reason could do to turn him from his fatal intention; but was deterred by the haggard look, the watery bloodshot eyes, the parched and feverish lips, which struck her like a revelation. ‘I understand it all now,’ she said, so much agitated by the supposed discovery, that she went in tremulous to the Manse, to recover herself. ‘It is not a common failing among us Diarmids of the old stock—but that accounts for everything. And as for arguing with a man in that state——’

‘You mistake,’ said the minister; ‘indeed you mistake.’

Miss Catherine shook her head. ‘Well I know the signs of it,’ she said; ‘it is not a failing of the race, but when it comes it is all the worse for that. The unhappy lad! One would think that the words of Scripture came true, and that such a man was delivered over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.’

‘He has been wrong, no doubt; but not in that way,’ said Mr. Lothian. ‘It is grief—despair if you like; and all this excitement, and agitation, and sickness, which he will not give in to—but not what you suppose.’

Once more Miss Catherine shook her head. ‘He is but a distant cousin, thank God,’ she said to herself. But yet he was related nearly enough to throw upon the house of Lochhead a certain share of the responsibility. ‘I am glad his poor mother is safe in her grave,’ she added; ‘ye preach, and ye preach, you ministers, but ye never will persuade the young what a weary wilderness this world is, nor the old that there’s anything but tribulation and sorrow in it. Will ye marry them when all is done and said?’

This question was asked so abruptly, that Mr. Lothian was startled. ‘Marry whom?’ he asked.

‘Those I am speaking of: John Diarmid and that lass. Is it a thing you can bless, you that are an honest man, and know your duty, and have some experience in this world?’

‘My dear Miss Catherine,’ said the minister, ‘you have too much experience yourself not to know that if they’ve made up their minds it will make little difference what I do or what I think. I have no right to say they are not to marry if they please.’

‘No; I wish you had,’ said Miss Catherine, rising: ‘and I wish there was some kind of a real government, or some control, that men should not be left to make fools of themselves and put shame upon an old name whenever they please.’

‘She is not his equal,’ said Mr. Lothian, ‘but there is no shame.’

Miss Catherine marched out of the Manse gates strenuously shaking her head. ‘A lass that has preached and prayed and ranted in a public place!’ she said, with a mixture of lofty indignation and contempt, shaking out her great shawl and rustling her silk gown, so that the minister felt himself buried and lost in their shadow. And she continued to shake her head as she went majestically alone down the slope and took her way home through the village.

When the minister was left by himself at his own gate a sudden impulse seized him to interfere in this delicate matter; or perhaps not to interfere—but at least to exercise that privilege of curiosity or interest which a clergyman, like a woman, is permitted to feel. He went up the brae towards the little line of cottages where Ailie lived, with kindness in his heart to the visionary girl, notwithstanding all her recent denunciations of his lukewarmness and interference with his business. Half way up, he met Mr. John coming down in his rapid, excited, breathless way. The two men paused and came to a stop opposite to each other, without for the first moment any attempt to speak. Mr. Lothian was half alarmed when he saw the ravages which so short a time had wrought on the enthusiast’s face. He himself looked young and ruddy beside John Diarmid, who must have been at least a dozen years his junior. There were deep lines under his eyes and about his haggard mouth; his cheeks were hollow, his eyes seemed increased in size as well as in fire; and a beard, a wonder in those days, the only symptom by which he had betrayed the languor of the fever which had been consuming him, covered the lower part of his face. This beard had been visible at church that morning for the first time to the general public, and the parish had involuntarily looked with distrust upon its prophet when they saw that symptom of eccentricity on his chin. But Mr. Lothian was not so easily shocked. Nevertheless, it was Mr. John who was the first to speak.

‘You will soon be free of us,’ he said, in his deep voice; ‘the time of the visitation of Loch Diarmid is nearly at an end. Him that is unworthy let him be unworthy still. We’ll hand them back to you and your sermons. A greater work is opening before us now.’

‘If you will tell me what it is, I will be glad,’ said Mr. Lothian. ‘I have heard, but vaguely. Where are you going? and with whom? and to whom? You are not a villager, like the rest, Mr. John, but know the world.’

‘I have bought my knowledge dear,’ he said; ‘but I’ve offered it all up on the altar with the rest. I make no stand on my knowledge of the world. Henceforward we know no man after the flesh. I answer you, we are going to the world; the Lord will direct us where.’

‘But will you start,’ cried the minister, ‘and with a young woman unused to such fatigue on no better indication than that?’

‘The same indication that Israel had—the pillar of cloud by day and the banner of light by night. But I cannot discuss it with a carnal mind. The Lord will direct where we are to go.’

‘And that is all?’

‘That is all; if you had fathomed Heaven and earth, could you know more than that, or have a guidance more sure?’

‘Mr. John,’ said Mr. Lothian, with a certain impatience; ‘you know so much better than the rest. Whatever they take into their heads they will believe in: but you, who are a man of the world——’

Mr. John gave a sweep of his hand as if it were to say, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan,’ and passed his questioner. ‘I am the servant of the Lord,’ he said. There was in the man’s look, in his nervous movements, in the extraordinary absorbed expression of his face, such a sense of the reality of his extraordinary purpose that the minister found not another word to say. He paused and looked after the wayfarer making his way, absorbed and intent upon his own thoughts, down the hill. It was no vulgar enthusiasm at which a man of higher training might smile. By whatsoever process Mr. John had arrived at it—whether it was all honest throughout, or if there had been any deception to begin with, it was sufficiently true now. He at least believed in his own mission. Mr. Lothian turned and continued his way with a sigh. There is something in such fervour of conviction which moves the mature, experienced man of thought to a certain envy. No inducement in the world could have moved the minister to such straightforward, downright belief in any mission of reformation. ‘Therefore, I will never move a multitude,’ he said to himself, ‘and who knows——’

Who knows? I am a fool for Christ’s sake, said Paul who was no fool. Was not there something divine in the conviction, even if that were all?

When the minister reached the cottages on the brae, the first thing that caught his eye was Ailie standing at the open door, her face contracted as if with pain, and her hands clasped fast in each other with a certain beseeching gesture like a silent prayer. There was no conviction in Ailie’s face. In the Sabbath quiet, when all the world had retired into their houses, the prophetess stood—‘as if it was an every-day,’ her mother said, who felt the dereliction keenly—at the open door. The girl’s face was full of doubt and trouble and nervous disquietude. The man who claimed to share her fate had just left her. He had been fulminating into her ear once more ‘the message of the Lord.’ He had upbraided her for her doubt, her love which was failing from the love of espousals, her strength which was growing weary in the way. ‘That lack of faith with which she had reproached Margaret Diarmid was now imputed to herself. And Mr. John had left the prophetess who was to him ‘the sister, the wife,’ of apostolic precedent, quivering all over with wounded pride and feeling. Poor Ailie did not know it was pride. She believed it was the tenderness of conscience, the tenderness of heart, which could not bear to feel itself guilty of the ingratitude imputed to her. But she was sore and wounded, not knowing how to bear it, fighting blindly against what it was more and more evident must be the will of God and her fate.

‘Ailie!’ said Mr. Lothian, looking at her with kind, fatherly eyes. It was true he was Isabel’s lover, strange even to himself as such a position was; but in presence of every other woman in the world, he was a man growing old, a man calm and sobered, fully sensible of his age. ‘Ailie, I have come to ask for you, though it is long since I have seen you of your own will. You have higher pretensions nowadays; but still you are one of my flock——’

Ailie lifted upon him her lucid, visionary eyes which were full of a certain despair. ‘Oh, aye, oh, aye!’ she said; ‘I’m but one of the flock. I thought I had the Spirit of the Lord. But the oracle’s dumb and the books are closed. Oh, minister, you’re no a man of light, but I think in your heart you’re a man of God. If you were required to walk in a new path, and had nae instruction given to your ain soul, what would ye do—what would ye do?’

Mr. Lothian was brought to a stand-still by the eagerness in her eyes, and the pathos in her voice. He was in earnest, it is true, in wishing her well, and yet in pursuing his own religious way. But he was not in such deadly earnest as this. It was not a matter of life and death to him to come to a certain conclusion on any one point that remained to be considered in life. And in the calm of his age he could scarcely understand the young creature’s passionate eagerness. He faltered a little in his answer. ‘Ailie,’ he said, as any other man of his years would have done, ‘I would consider which was best.’

Ailie, who had been gazing wistfully at him, as if with some new hope, turned away her head suddenly, throwing up her hands with an expression of despair. ‘The best!’ she cried; ‘God’s way is aefold, and no many. His will is one, and has to be done. Oh, ye that think ye can shift and dally to please Him this way or that way. Am I asking which is best? Can ye no wake out of your sloth and open the eyes of your spirit and tell me what’s the will of God?’

She had expected no answer, and indeed turned from him leaning her head against the portal of the humble door. But the minister felt himself called upon to speak.

‘Nature is God’s servant as well as you and me,’ he said, ‘and Nature is speaking against this, Ailie—speaking loud. Whatsoever leads ye from your natural duties and affection, you may be sure is not the will of God.’

Ailie raised her head and looked at him, wondering beyond expression to find herself so admonished. ‘I’ve nae duties but to follow God’s will,’ she said; ‘to follow Him to the end of the earth. Oh, if I could but open the way of the Lord to you and the like of you. Nature’s but a poor handmaid of His grace, no a mistress nor a guide. Oh, man, with your grey head, that should ken what God’s service is, how can you speak of nature to me?’

‘And what if it were that you wanted to consider above all else?’ said the minister, laying his kind hand on her shoulder. Ailie put him aside without a word. A little shudder seemed to run through her at his touch. If it was her ecstasy that was coming upon her, or if it was merely a movement of the nature which she defied, Mr. Lothian could not tell; but she passed him thus, taking no further notice, and glided across the road like a ghost to the heathery braes which stretched away into the distance.

‘As if it were but an every-day,’ said her mother, who appeared in the passage behind, ready to pour out a flood of troubles into the minister’s ear. The Sabbath-day was a more rigorous institution in Scotland then than now, and the inhabitants of the surrounding cottages, most of whom would have considered a Sunday walk, which was not a work of necessity, to be something like a crime, looked on perturbed, and not knowing what to make of it, when Ailie, thus driven by the intensity of her feelings, sought solitude and counsel on the hill.

‘There’s Ailie away across the braes,’ cried a weary young prisoner in one of the neighbours’ houses. ‘It canna be a sin. Oh, let me go too!’

‘Are ye a prophet of the Lord like Ailie?’ said the mother with fierce contempt. The Holy Maid was above those laws which weighed so rigorously upon ‘common folk.’

CHAPTER XXII

Ailie went forth, not to seek counsel of flesh and blood, but to lay, as she would have said, her ‘burden before the Lord.’ Her eyes were bent upon the ground, for her heart was heavy; her mind was full of a wandering chaos of thoughts, through which she sought in vain for anything which she could take as an indication of the will of God.

The braes lay lonely under the faint occasional glimpses of a watery sun. It was Sabbath all over the silent country; something exceptionally still marked the exceptional day. The little steamer that fumed and fretted up the Loch every afternoon about this hour was of course invisible, and so were the boats which for use or pleasure dotted the water on week-days, and added one characteristic sound to the usual noises. The people going home from church had all disappeared. Nothing moved except the blue smoke from the cottage-roofs, and sometimes a shy rabbit or invisible wild creature among the high heather. And yet by and by even Ailie, absorbed as she was, became aware that she was not the only wanderer on the hill-side. Under the birch-tree, someone sat crouched together, whose heart was full, like her own, of many thoughts. There was but one creature on the Loch who was likely to seek such a hermitage. Perhaps had Ailie’s thoughts been at their usual strain she would never have remarked her companion; but earthly things had come in to confuse the current of her imagination; and a certain sense of companionship, and even of possible help, came to her. ‘She’s but a simple thing,’ was her first idea, and then, ‘She’s Margret’s sister,’ the young enthusiast added to herself. Ah, blessed Margaret! maiden Margaret! whom Ailie had striven to keep out of that quiet, sheltering grave and to deliver to all those cares of life which for the first time had now come upon herself. She drew close to Margaret’s sister with a faint throb of expectation. ‘Am I to judge whence the word may come?’ she said to herself. ‘Is it not out of the mouths of babes and sucklings that He perfects praise?’

Isabel had not yet made her appearance at church to her stepmother’s infinite distress, though it was one of the unalterable etiquettes of rural life ‘after a death.’ The wilful girl had declared with tears that she could not bear it. ‘With everybody looking, and looking, and all the folk going past, that used to stop and say, How is she? It would break my heart,’ said Isabel. And she had stolen out to the braes when Jean and the children returned from church, feeling the silence a consolation to her.

At that moment she was more absorbed in her thoughts than Ailie, being hopeless and expecting no consolation or deliverance; and when the rustle of the heather caught her ear, and looking up she saw Ailie’s slender figure standing over her, a movement of impatience woke in Isabel’s mind. Nobody could give her any comfort, could they not then leave her alone? It was all she asked. To be left to brood over the ending of her early, lonely life and all her dreams. This was all that now remained to her. To others, life renewed itself, changed its fashions, put forth new blossoms, extended, full of light and hope, into the future; but hers was over. Could they not have the charity to leave her at least alone?

‘Is it you, Isabel?’ said Ailie, coming to her side.

‘Aye, it’s me. I thought I was sure to be alone here. Do you take your walks all the same on the Sabbath day?’

‘To me a’ days are the same,’ said Ailie. ‘If I ken mysel I have nae desire but to ay be doing my Master’s business. Sabbath or every day, I make no difference. And the silence is fine, and the air sweet to-day, like every day.’

‘It is not silence now,’ said Isabel, with the fitful, hasty temper for which, as soon as the words were said, she was sorry and penitent.

‘No,’ said Ailie, from whom the great perplexity she was in had taken much of her solemn aspect. ‘It’s no silence now, and whiles there are better things than silence. Isabel, when I saw ye among the heather, I felt that the Lord sent ye to give me an answer in my trouble. It’s like drawing the lot; and I’ve done that o’er and o’er by myself, and I canna see it. But you, you’re innocent, and ken nothing about him or me. I’ll draw the lot at you, Isabel. I’m no saying it to make you vain. It’s because you’re young, and soft, and no learned in the ways of this world, but like a little bairn. Isabel,’ said the young prophetess, kneeling down suddenly at her side, and gazing into her face with those visionary eyes which were wild in their pathos, ‘am I to do what he bids, or no?’

The question raised Isabel out of her personal brooding. She was startled—almost frightened by the vehemence of the appeal. ‘Oh! how can I tell you, or what do you want me to say?’ she said, clasping her hands; and then she remembered what she had heard about Ailie and Mr. John, and shrank at the thought of the responsibility thus placed in her hands.

‘Tell me aye or no,’ said Ailie, gazing so into her face, into her eyes, that Isabel’s very soul was moved. She bore the look as long as she could, and then she covered her face with her hands.

‘Your eyes go through and through me,’ she said, ‘and I cannot judge for you. I am not like her that is gone. I am but Isabel. I cannot guide myself. And you that have more light than all the rest—how should I help you?’

‘I am giving no reasons,’ said Ailie, ‘it’s no a time for reasons. It’s out of the mouth of babes and sucklings—Isabel, say aye or no?’

‘Then I’ll say aye,’ said Isabel, suddenly lifting her head with a gleam of her old impatience. It was far from being spoken like an oracle of God. It was uttered hastily, with a certain nervous distaste to being thus questioned. But when she saw the effect her words produced, her heart failed her. Ailie sank down helplessly on the road. She did not faint, as Isabel, being somewhat pre-occupied by her own first experience of bodily weakness, thought. She sank down in a heap without making an effort or a struggle. Every tint of colour fled from her face. Her eyes, which alone seemed to have any life left in them, were raised with a look of such reproach as made her hasty adviser tremble. But Ailie did not say a word. She lay with the air of one stunned and helpless among the heather. Then after the first minute a sob came from her lips. Isabel was overcome by her own fears.

‘Oh, Ailie!’ she cried, ‘I meant nothing. Why should you put such weight on what I say? I was impatient, and I said the first word that came to me. I did not mean it. I meant No instead. Oh, Ailie, will you listen now to what I say?’

‘When I’m come to myself,’ said Ailie, waving her hand. Her voice was so low as scarcely to be audible. Then her pale lips moved, though no sound came from them at first; and her eyes turned upward with such an expression of submission and pain, as Isabel had never seen. ‘No my will,’ Ailie murmured, with her hands holding her breast, ‘no my will, but Thine.’ It was a voice as of despair, when a little thrill of renewed vigour made it audible. Awe stole over her companion, whose careless words had done it. Isabel, in her self-reproach, rose up from her seat in haste. She took off the shawl in which she was wrapped, and kneeling down beside Ailie endeavoured to place it under her. She put her arms round her with a remorse that made an end of pride. ‘Oh, Ailie, I meant nothing! It was my hasty way,’ she cried, bending over her, kissing her even in her eagerness. Ailie did not resist the soft caress. She laid her head down upon Isabel’s shoulder, and closed her eyes, which were strained and painful with so much emotion. ‘My soul is poured out as water—my strength hath He weakened in the way,’ she said, leaning back with closed eyes. The struggle was over. She had resisted long; but in this fantastic way at last she had satisfied herself, and would struggle no more.

And thus the soft air breathed on them, and the still moments passed over those two young creatures, clinging to each other among the silence of the hills, with the sorest ache in their hearts which each had ever known. Isabel in her fright had almost forgotten hers. She sat embracing Ailie who leant upon her, and wondering what it was which had moved the girl so strangely to the exclusion of her own thoughts, which had been bitter enough. Once before Isabel had spoken in her haste, and her voice had been taken for an oracle of God. She had never forgotten the awful sense that, had she but held out and struggled against utterance, Margaret’s life might have been spared; she had given way to her feelings then and again now; and what was it that she had done this time?—something which she had never anticipated and did not yet understand. In her trouble she spoke, with a voice that trembled, closely in her companion’s ear.

‘O Ailie, you are not to mind! I was not thinking what you meant or what it was. I said the first thing that came into my head, as I am always doing. Ailie, tell me what it is and then we’ll think—we’ll try and see what is best.’

‘No,’ said Ailie, faintly, ‘it wasna that I wanted. I wanted but one word, the first that came into your head. It was drawing the lot. If you had kent what I meant it would have been different. No, it’s a’ past. I’ve struggled and fought in my mind like a profane person. It has ay been the same in the Book itself; whiles one word, whiles another; but ay saying, “Yes, yes"—ay about the bridegroom and the bride. But I said to myself, the next time it will be different. And now there’s you. I thought She’ll say No, the innocent thing. She’ll divine by my eyes that my heart’s broken. And you didna look at me, Isabel, to let yourself be turned away, but said what was put into your mind.’

‘Is it about you and Mr. John?’ said Isabel, bending down to her ear.

A shudder ran through Ailie’s frame. ‘Ay,’ she said, with a long sobbing sigh. ‘But if it’s the Lord’s will, nae man shall hear me say a word more. And, Isabel, if it come to pass, and ye see him and me together as we’ll have to be, you’ll not take any notice; what I must do I will do to the full, and no in part.’

‘But, O Ailie! you’ll never do it; you must not do it—if you don’t love him!’ said Isabel.

She shrank and hesitated to say the word. It seemed to her a kind of blasphemy.

‘Could I have said it to Margaret?’ she asked herself. And was not Ailie, too, like Margaret, a dedicated virgin, above such suggestions of this common earth?

‘Oh, whisht!’ said Ailie, with a wild, sudden flush of colour flaming over her face. ‘Whatever the Lord’s will may be, I am His handmaid to do it. But, eh! how I’m punished now! I wouldna let your Margaret be. I would bid her back to earth when she was at Heaven’s door—no thinking what was waiting for myself. Though I’m no murmuring against the Lord.’

And then there was a moment of silence, on the one side full of eager revolt and determination to oppose; on the other of that stunned submission which comes after a great blow.

‘Oh, no—no! it cannot be,’ cried Isabel, clasping in her arms the girl for whom, up to this moment, she had felt so little sympathy. ‘I will never believe it is God’s meaning. If you did not love him you would hate him. How could you help it? It cannot be—it must not be!’

‘Whisht—whisht!’ said Ailie, with a faint momentary smile, ‘you’re ay so earnest. Oh, if ye would come with us, Isabel, for her sake, and put yourself on the Lord’s side. Whisht!—What’s God’s doing can never harm His servants. I’m no rebelling now, that’s a’ past. The worst is I canna see my work, nor what remains for me in this world,’ she added, with a piteous gentleness, ‘for the spirit of prophecy is ta’en from me as would be fit, when I’m under another, and no free in my ain power. Or, maybe, it’s my een that are blinded,’ she said, putting her hand up to them with a close pressure, as if they ached. But it was not because they ached. It was because they were full to overflowing with a stinging salt moisture. She would not yield to that common mode of relief. ‘Why should I greet when the Lord’s will is manifest?’ she said, all at once. ‘It would more suit me to greet if I knew not what that was.’

‘But it cannot be God’s will and you so sore—sore against it,’ cried eager Isabel, ‘in your heart.’

‘I’m no such a rebel,’ cried Ailie, with a start. ‘Oh, I’m no so ill as you think—me that am set to be a sign to His people. Now it’s all past,’ she added, raising herself up. ‘And, Isabel, though you dinna understand, you’ve been real good to me, and I’ll never forget it. Oh, will ye no come and open your heart now to the Lord, as long as the day of visitation lasts? I canna bide to think that Margret’s sister should be on the world’s side, and no on the Lord’s.’

‘I never was on the world’s side,’ said Isabel, with something of her natural impatience, rising, as Ailie did so, to her feet.

‘He that is not with us is against us,’ said the young prophetess. ‘O Isabel! Dinna trust in the good that’s just nature. The day is near past—the night is at hand. And you thinking of love, and pleasure, and the delights of this life, and no of that awfu’ day.’

‘Delights!’ said Isabel, holding up the heavy crape on her dress to the intent eye which remarked no such homely particulars; and then she turned hastily and went away—partly irritated, partly weary. She had forgotten her own burden to minister to the other. And she had need of consolation and encouragement herself, not of weariness and excitement. She turned, as was her hasty way, and left the visionary creature standing behind her on the hill. Ailie stood and gazed after the rapid, retreating figure, not offended as in a different region of society she might have been. This parting sans façon was not extraordinary among the homely country folk. She stood and looked after her with a wistful interest, stronger than any human sentiment which perhaps had ever before crossed her mind. A girl free to live her natural life, free to make her natural choice, bound by no mysterious rules, prepared to no awful office as God’s ambassador to man—

There was a meeting the same night. Ailie shut herself up for all the afternoon of this memorable day. She went into the little room, at the window of which, in the middle of the night, Mr. John’s extraordinary proposal had been first made to her, and placed her open Bible on her bed, and knelt down before it. There she remained, fasting, in one long trance of prayer and reverie, while the short autumn day came to an end, and the twilight closed round her. Had her fate been to go to the stake on the morrow, her preparation for it would have been triumphant in comparison. But the stake could not have been a more supreme proof of her devotion to the service of God than was this act of submission to what she believed His will. She accepted the bitter cup from God’s hand, and made no further struggle against her fate.

When the hour for the meeting came, Ailie wrapped herself in her plaid and went out alone down the dark road. Her mother was in weak health, and, with that strange diversity which is so often met with in life, was a homely, sober woman, who thought there were ‘far ower mony meetings,’ and was more scandalised than flattered by the prominent position taken by her daughter in them. There was a little controversy between them before Ailie went out, over a cup of tea, which the anxious mother importuned her child to take. ‘O Ailie! do you mean to break my heart and murder yourself?’ she said. ‘Neither bit nor sup has crossed your lips since morning. You’ve been ower nigh death to be that careless of your health—if it were but for your puir auld faither’s sake, that canna bear ye out of his sight.’

‘I couldna swallow it,’ said Ailie; ‘and he’ll have to bear the want of me. I must forsake father and mother for the work of the Lord.’

‘Oh, lassie, ye make my heart sick,’ said the mother: ‘as if the Lord couldna do His ain work without the help of a bit lass like you.’

But Janet’s mind did not dwell on the words. Such words were usual enough in the highflown, religious phraseology of the moment, and the ‘work of the Lord’ might mean no more than a series of meetings, or retirements to her room for prayer. Neither was the mother alarmed by Mr. John’s proposal. It was ‘an awfu’ compliment;’ but in her heart she felt that even a special revelation could not make such a mésalliance possible; and that rather than suffer such an extraordinary downfall, the aristocracy of the clan Diarmid would procure some powerful remonstrance with Heaven itself against such a removal of all natural boundaries. ‘Na, na, Miss Catherine will never allow it,’ she had said when she heard; though a thrill of natural pride went through her. ‘If she would take a little pains with herself, and put up her hair like the rest, our Ailie is a bonnie lass,’ the mother had added to herself, not without complacency, ‘But, na, na, it couldna be.’

The meeting was to be held that night on the south side of the Loch, in a barn reluctantly granted by Mr. Smeaton for the accommodation of the prophets. Before entering it, Ailie went into the cottage of the shepherd who lived close at hand. There she found Mr. John seated by the fire, along with several leaders of the movement. There was no other light in the room, and he sat with his dark head, relieved against the blaze, leaning on his hands. The others were talking around him, arranging their little services, exchanging experiences; but Mr. John sat silent and took no part among them. Ailie went up to him, penetrating through the group. She held out her hand to him, standing before the fire.

‘It shall be as you say,’ she said with a voice which almost failed her at the last.

Mr. John turned round and gazed up at her for a moment, the ruddy light shining in his face, as it did in hers. He was dark and haggard in that illumination, she very pale, and with a look of exhaustion on her face. He took her hand and held it for a moment, and then he let it drop out of his.

‘You acknowledge the Word of the Lord, at last?’ he said, almost with severity. And then he sprang up and interposed in the order that was being arranged for the services, with a nervous hurriedness which struck her strangely. She had thought that, perhaps, he at least would be glad. But he was not glad. He rushed into the discussion which he had retired from with an unwonted eagerness. Thus Fate had caught them both in her net. And though Mr. John had set his heart on this thing, it filled him with such an acute pang now he had gained it, that only instant movement and occupation prevented him from betraying himself. But the meeting of that night was such an ‘outpouring’ as few people present had ever known before. A feverish earnestness filled them, born of the very excess of pain.

‘Eh, but Ailie was awfu’ grand to-night,’ the people said. ‘Eh, if you had but heard Mr. John!’ They were both in a half-craze of misery, speaking like people in a dream. And thus, as the assembly foresaw, everything was settled that night.

CHAPTER XXIII

It was an event of which the country-side remained incredulous, until the very last moment. The strange pair were ‘cried’ in church, both being present when the banns were proclaimed, in defiance of all superstition: but still no one believed it could be. Ailie sat passive in her seat while her name was read out, not a passing flicker of colour, not an indication of embarrassment being visible about her. And, to the amazement of the parish, no attempt at interference was made. Miss Catherine sat still within her ancestral palace, the homely mansion-house of Lochhead, like an offended queen. She absented herself from church on the Sunday of the banns, and was not seen of human eye until all was completed; but she made no attempt to interfere. Neither did Mr. Diarmid of Clynder on the other side of the hills, Mr. John’s uncle. The opposition which everybody had expected never made itself visible.

Meanwhile Isabel, profoundly moved by her interview with Ailie, and by all that had since occurred, had made up her mind to one final remonstrance ere the sacrifice should be accomplished. When she had said to Jean, ‘I am going to see Ailie,’ the good woman’s consternation had known no bounds. Not only was the condescension unparalleled, but it was not to be expected that Isabel, as a lady born, and entitled to the possession of feelings more delicate than those of ‘common folk,’ should yet be able to pay any visits even among her equals. ‘Ailie!’ she remonstrated energetically; ‘and wha’s Ailie, that you should gang to see her at such a time? She’s no John Diarmid’s wife yet; and if she was——’

‘That is why I must see her,’ said Isabel. ‘She must never marry that man!’

Upon which Jean uttered the usual comment half in scorn and half in indignation. ‘Set her up! I would like to ken what right she has to ony such man.’

‘She does not want him,’ said Isabel. ‘She’ll go and marry him and break her heart. Oh, I must go! If they were cried yesterday there is no time to lose.’

‘They’re to be married the morn,’ said Jean. ‘And if that is what you have set your heart on, wait till I’ve gotten on my Sunday bonnet. I’ll gang with ye myself.’

‘It is not necessary,’ said Isabel.

‘Bell, my bonnie woman,’ said her stepmother, ‘I ken better what is needful than you do. It’s no a moment to have you wandering on the road your lane.’

And thus it was that Jean found herself in the midst of the village group, while Isabel penetrated into Ailie’s cottage. The young prophetess was seated, silent, with a sombre fire in her eye, dejected yet excited, when Isabel was ushered in by her anxious mother. Janet had begun to take alarm about her daughter’s aspect; but such an honour as the visit of the Captain’s Isabel, no doubt paid to the prospective Mrs. Diarmid of Ardnamore, was a foreshadowing of greatness to come which went to her heart.

‘Ailie, my woman!’ she said. ‘Here’s Isabel from the Glebe. It’s most kind of her to come and see you, and I hope you’ll let her see you think it kind.’

‘Isabel!’ said Ailie, dreamily; she was sitting on the side of her bed, pondering over her little Bible. ‘Oh, aye, mother, I’m glad to see her; if she’ll come ben.’

‘Let me speak to her alone,’ Isabel had begged at the door; and the mother, half pleased yet half doubtful, withdrew with wistful looks. If perhaps the mission of the mourner might be to reconcile Ailie with the wonderful match she was making; and yet, again, a fanciful young girl might do her harm.

‘I’ve come to speak to you before it is all over,’ said Isabel. ‘O, Ailie, you mind what you said to me? You are not happy. You are not looking happy; and yet they say you’re to be married——’

‘The morn,’ said Ailie, mechanically.

‘To-morrow!’ repeated Isabel, carefully choosing her words, to be more impressive; ‘and yet you are not happy. Ailie, Ailie, it must not be!’

‘What’s God’s will must be,’ she said; ‘happy is neither here nor there;’ and began again to turn over the leaves of the small Bible she held in her hands.

‘He is going to take you away,’ said Isabel, ‘where none of your friends perhaps will ever see you more; where you will be all alone with none but him, and no love for him in your heart. Oh, Ailie, listen! you will hate him if ye cannot love him. I could not rest; I’ve been in no strange house till now since—but I could not rest. Oh, Ailie, God would not have you to be miserable; that can never be His will. You are wiser than me, but you have ay been thinking of other folk, and not of what was in your own heart.’

‘Little but deceitfulness and wickedness,’ said Ailie, musing, ‘well I know; and a root of bitterness in the best. But, Isabel, there’s no a word to say. It’s no in my own hands. It was settled and ordained before you or me were born.’

‘And nothing will make you change your mind?’

‘It’s no my mind I’m speaking of,’ she said, with a half-despairing smile; ‘if it was me to decide! But whisht! whisht! and say no more; my mother is coming. I’ve had ill thoughts and thankless thoughts, and you’ve seen them, Isabel; but I’m the handmaid o’ the Lord, and it’s no to His glory to betray my weakness—no even to my mother.’

‘I’ll not betray you,’ cried Isabel, with a little natural heat. Ailie turned wearily away, with a sigh of languor and heaviness; and just then her mother came bustling in, carrying a white muslin dress on her extended arms.

‘It’s no to call grand,’ said Janet, ‘but I thought you would like to see it. As for Ailie, she takes nae mair notice than if a wedding was a thing that happened every day.’

‘She’s so full of her own thoughts,’ said Isabel, instinctively attempting an excuse.

‘Thoughts are grand things,’ said Mrs. Macfarlane, ‘and our Ailie, as is weel kent, is a lass far out of the ordinar. But her wedding-gown! A woman made out of stone would take an interest in that! I would be real thankful if you would put some real feeling in her mind.’

‘She has done her best,’ said Ailie, still bending absorbed over her book; ‘but I’m thinking of the Lord’s will, and no of men’s pleasure. My black gown that I wear every day is good enough for me.’

‘Hear to her!’ said the mother; ‘but eh, Isabel, you that’s young yoursel, ye might tell her this earth is nearer than Heaven, and that we maun take some thought for the things of the flesh.’

‘Do you think she’s happy?’ said Isabel, wistfully, feeling the full misery of this indifference, and yet bound by honour not to reveal what she knew of Ailie’s mind.

‘Happy!’ echoed Janet, ‘with Ardnamore waiting to make a lady of her? What would she get better in this world? And I hope you’ll no put nonsense in her head. It would just break my heart.’

‘I’ll put no nonsense in her head,’ said Isabel. And then, surmounting her irritation, she added, ‘But oh, think if she were to be unhappy, and away in the world with nobody to comfort her.’

The mother turned away with a little laugh. ‘Simple thing!’ she said, under her breath, ‘you’re like hersel; ye take it a’ for gospel, every word they say.’

‘Are they not going away?’ asked Isabel in amaze.

‘Oh, aye, they’re going away; but think ye the world’s like Loch Diarmid, Isabel? They’ll soon tire o’ their preaching and their wandering among fremd folk. She’s a’ spirit and little flesh, my poor lamb. And her heart will fail her, and he’ll be sick o’t a’, and syne they’ll come cannily hame. And I’ll see my bairn at kirk and market, with her bairns about her—no a common body like me,’ said Janet, wiping her eyes with her apron, ‘but a leddy of Ardnamore.’

‘But she’ll break her heart,’ said Isabel.

‘I’m no feared for her heart,’ said the mother. ‘She’s a loving thing, though you wouldna think it. Her heart will turn to her husband when she has nane but him.’

This was Janet’s programme of the strange romance. Isabel, though she was not used to contrasts of this description, went down the hill in a maze of reflections, wondering over the difference. Ailie’s tragic purpose of going forth into the world to save it, her first step being upon her own heart, and all its maiden hopes; and her mother’s frightful, sceptical, middle-aged prescience of the effects of weariness and failure—the inevitable disappointment, the sickening of heart, the giving up of hope, the despairing flight homeward to seek peace at least and quietness—stood before her side by side like two pictures. Would the two enthusiasts content themselves with common life and comfort after their high dreams, or was there, after all, nothing in the dreams for which Ailie was making so awful a sacrifice? Isabel was too inexperienced to come to light on the subject; but Janet Macfarlane’s cheerful unbelief struck her with mingled horror and pain. She did not ask herself whether all that was beautiful and wonderful in the hopes and beliefs of beginning life was thus looked upon by the calm eyes of the elders as so much delusion to be dispersed by the winds and storms. But that suggestion of insecurity, unreality—and of the better-informed spectator, who realised and knew the downfall that was coming—appalled and terrified her. The sight of Mr. Lothian, who came out from the Mansegate as she passed, was, perhaps for the first time, a relief to Isabel. She was glad to have him come to her, to hear his sympathetic voice, to feel that there were people in the world who were not sceptical. ‘I have been seeing Ailie,’ she said, accounting half-apologetically for the little shiver of nervous excitement which she could not restrain.

‘And now you’ll come and see Miss Catherine,’ said Mr. Lothian. ‘You cannot help the one, but you can help the other, Isabel.’

‘Me help Miss Catherine? No, Mr. Lothian,’ said Isabel, with a little air of dignity. ‘She is never pleased, whatever I do. She would like me to pretend to be somebody else, and not myself.’

‘And I am so foolish,’ said the minister, with a smile, ‘as to like yourself best of all; and so does she, Isabel, if you saw her heart. You’ll come and see her with me.’

‘To please you,’ said the girl not meaning any coquetry, nor thinking of the tenderness with which words so unusually soft moved this man, who might have been her father. Even as she spoke her eye caught some passing figure in the distance, which was like that of the lover whom she fancied she had abjured; and her heart sprang up and began to beat furiously against her breast. She knew very well it was not Stapylton—but the merest vision that reminded her of him, how different was the feeling it awakened within her! She walked on leisurely by Mr. Lothian’s side, making him soft answers, which, in spite of all his better knowledge, filled him with a sweet intoxication. And all the time her object was to lead him artfully with all the youthful skill of which she was mistress to some allusion to her lover. ‘Are you glad to be alone?’ she said at last, stooping as she did so, to pluck off a thorny branch which had caught her dress. And he did not even perceive what that leading question meant, so wrapt was he in the delusion which—half-intentionally in her unconscious selfishness for her own purposes—she had been weaving round him.

‘I would not be glad to be alone if I could have the company I like best,’ said the deluded man; and so, deceiver and deceived, they went along the quiet rural way.

CHAPTER XXIV

When Isabel found herself once more in the drawing-room at Lochhead, it wrought the most curious change upon her. She sat almost silent, while Miss Catherine and the minister talked, but with a mind awaking to all the influences about her—the grace, the superior softness, the refinement of the place. Life here must, it seemed to Isabel, be a different thing from the life she had always known. There were books of all kinds about, and her appetite for books was great, though as yet it had been but scantily supplied. The ample window gave an amount of atmosphere and breadth to the room, which Isabel perceived by instinct, without knowing how it was. It was very nearly the same view as that from the parlour window at the Glebe, and she could not tell what made the difference; unless indeed it was the superior grandeur, splendour, amplitude of the life. There were a hundred resources within, which were impossible at her lower level of existence, and a much widened perception of the world without. She had no notion that it was the old furniture and the great windows which impressed this so strangely upon her. It was something in the atmosphere, the expanded breathing, and hearing, and seeing of a larger life.

And as the minister accompanied her home, Isabel, unawares, fell into a little self-revelation. ‘You can see the same view out of the village windows,’ she said, ‘and from the Glebe; but the Loch is grander and the braes are higher, and away down to Clyde is like a picture—I don’t know how it is.’

‘You like it better than the Glebe?’

‘I cannot tell,’ said Isabel; ‘it is so different; and so many things to fill your life. I think I would never tire reading; but then I know my books off by heart, and reading them is little good. And there’s always a seam. I know a seam is right,’ said Isabel, with decision; ‘I did not mean that.’

‘But sometimes you would like something else,’ he said, growing foolish as he looked at her; and finding something half-divine in her girlish simplicity.

‘I don’t know,’ she said; ‘I have made up my mind to be content. But still one has eyes, and one can see it is different. I never thought—of such things—before.’ And a rush of tears came to her pensive eyes.

Mr. Lothian left her finally at the door of the Glebe, and found himself in such a state of attendrissement that he rushed in once more upon Miss Catherine as he passed the house. ‘Life is beginning to stir within her,’ he said with excitement; ‘she is feeling that all is not over and past. The sight of you has done her good.’

‘The sight of me is not difficult to be had,’ said Miss Catherine, ‘though it’s early yet, after a death, to get good from the like of that.’

‘She is so young,’ said the minister, ‘her mind goes quicker than yours and mine. Not that she grieves less; but everything goes quicker—the days, and the events, and the beats of the heart.’

‘I doubt if you would take as much trouble to understand the beats of my heart,’ said Miss Catherine. ‘Minister, you’re a sensible man in other things——’

Mr. Lothian retreated from her look, and turned to the window. In comparison with himself, Miss Catherine was an old woman; but still, when he was brought to task for it, he had nothing to advance in defence of his love.

‘You need not turn away your face,’ she said, with a smile, ‘as if I had not seen it grow red and grow pale many a time at the lassie’s glance. And she’s but a bairn when all is said. It’s a mystery to me. A woman of your age would think as little of a lad of hers, as of an infant. And yet you, an honest man, that might be her father, let such a lassie fill up your very heart. No! you are a man and I am a woman; you might explain till ye were tired, and I would never understand. A man is a queer being, and, so far as I can see, we must take him as he is till his Maker mends him. And about Isabel, if that lad does not come back——’

‘Whether he comes back or not,’ said Mr. Lothian, hotly; ‘he has disgusted her so much that she will never think of him again.’

Miss Catherine shook her head. ‘Make what progress you can while he’s away,’ she said. ‘Keep him away if you can; but don’t you trust to her disgust. He is her first love?’

‘I suppose so,’ said the minister, with a very rueful face.

‘Then she’ll forgive him all,’ said Miss Catherine, with perhaps a thrill of painful knowledge in her voice; there was a vibration in it which made her companion glance round at her with keen momentary curiosity. But her face betrayed no story. ‘She’ll forgive him all,’ she repeated; ‘and to undeceive her would take a long time. Perhaps it’s only by dint of marrying him that a woman finds out what’s wanting in her first love. And you would not like her to go through that process. But if he keep away——’

Mr. Lothian’s face had gone through as many alternations of hope and fear as though he had been on trial for his life. ‘He loves her,’ he said under his breath, ‘as well as he knows how.’

‘But he loves himself better,’ said Miss Catherine; ‘and if he has to hang about at home for fear of being disinherited he’ll save you some trouble here. And there is no other man about the parish to come in your way——’

‘Her thoughts are differently employed,’ he said, with a little annoyance. ‘What does she know of the men in the parish—or care——’

‘That’s very true, no doubt,’ said Miss Catherine, gravely. ‘There was never one like her on the Loch, nor a lad worthy of her, since Wallace Wight. But yet Isabel has eyes like her neighbours. And there is nobody in your way. My word! if I were a comely man like you, little the worse for your years, and not another suitor in the field, she should be Isabel Lothian before the year was out!’

Mr. Lothian coloured like a girl with excitement and gratification. Scarcely on Isabel’s own cheeks could there have risen a purer red and white. He was, as Miss Catherine said, ‘little the worse for his years.’ He was as erect and elastic in his step as if he had been five-and-twenty—his colour as fresh, and his eyes as bright.

‘If it depends on me’—he said, with a sparkle in his eye.

‘And who else should it depend on?’ said Miss Catherine. ‘Take your courage by both hands, and, take my word, you’ll not fail.’

Thus the house of Lochhead rained influence on this eventful day. Isabel went home with a vague longing in her mind for wider air and a fuller life. But when the minister had left the door, going back with his mind full of tenderness, and just touched by hope, she sat down by the parlour window, and took out Stapylton’s letter, and began to read herself into satisfaction with it. The careless words which had struck her like stings at the first reading, she set herself to smooth and soften. ‘He meant them to cheer me,’ she said to herself; ‘to be cheery himself and to cheer me;’ and then she would make an effort and swallow the sentences to which no such explanation could be applied. ‘It was all his love,’ she said again. Words change their character when thus studied. Out of what seemed almost an insult this tender casuistry brought but another proof of the confidence and certainty of love. ‘He did not choose his words,’ Isabel said at length, with a certain indignation against herself; ‘he felt I would understand—how should I miss understanding when I knew his heart?’ And then there were other apologetic murmurings, less assured, but not less anxious. ‘After all, he is but a man—he does not think like the like of us;’ and—‘That will be the English way; he always said it was different.’ Thus the fanciful girl went on with her letter, until at length she kissed and put it away among her treasures, all anger having gone out of her heart.

Through all the interview between Miss Catherine and the minister, in which so very different an aspect of her affairs was discussed, Isabel sat gazing on the Loch as it faded to evening, with a vague smile about her mouth, and liquid soft eyes, and dreamed. She saw how it would all happen as well as she saw the boat on the Loch making its way from Ardnamore. Perhaps he might not come for three or even six months. His friends would tell him what time must pass before Margaret’s sister could consent. His mother would tell him, for surely even in England mothers could not be so far different. And he would come asking pardon with his lips, claiming more than forgiveness. And Margaret would bless her sister—would plead up yonder for a blessing. And the two would stand side by side on the spot where Margaret had died, and plight their troth as it were to her, in her very presence, to love each other for ever and ever. She sat and dreamed while the minister, with unusual light in his eyes, went home to dream on his side of how different an ending. And neither the one nor the other saw aught but boundless happiness, the very climax of life and love, and perfection of human existence in the visionary future that lay beyond.

And then a great quietness came over the Loch. The marriage of Mr. John and Ailie Macfarlane was a nine days’ wonder, but that died out by degrees; and even among his relatives or hers, little, after a while, was said of the pair. They had gone out ‘into the world,’ like Adam and Eve, seeking the unknown region in which their Tongue would be intelligible, and themselves received as the bringers in of a new dispensation. But in the meantime they disappeared from Loch Diarmid, and the lesser prophets they had left behind soon failed to interest the crowd which was used to excitement. Things fell into their former quietness: worldly amusements began again to be heard of.

All was very quiet at the Glebe. Day after day, week after week—nay, month after month, Isabel had sat silent, expecting, looking for the letter which never came, for the familiar step and voice which she had made so sure would come back to her. And neither letter nor visitor had come to break the wistful silence; no one knew the longing looks she cast from her window, as the winter twilight darkened night by night, over the gleaming surface of the Loch. She felt sure he must write, until the time was past for writing; and then a strange confidence that he would come seized upon her. And she had no one to whom she could say a word of her expectations, to whom she could even whisper his name. If Jean perceived her eager watch for the postman, her shivering start and thrill when any footstep was audible by night, or knock came to the door, she mentioned it to no one. Three months and not a word—then six months, the year turning again unawares, the snow melting from the hills, the snowdrops beginning to peep above the surface of the soil—

It would be impossible to describe all the alternations between fear and hope which moved her as the months went on. Spring came, stretching day by day, more green, more warm, more cheery and sunny on the hills. The poor girl, in her loneliness, sat watching, holding on, as it were, to the darker season which melted away under her grasp, taking comfort in every gloomy day, saying to herself, ‘It is winter still!’ The birds warbling in all the trees about was a trouble to her. No; not spring again—not so far on as everybody thought; only a little lightening of the cold, or gleam of exceptional weather. She kept this thought steadily before her mind, through March and April, refusing to understand what months they were. But in May she could no longer refuse to perceive. The trees had shaken out all their new leaves from the folds. The hill-side was sweet with wild flowers, the primroses were over. ‘Everything is so early this year,’ Isabel said to herself with a sick heart.

‘No so early either,’ said Jean, with profound unconsciousness of her stepdaughter’s sentiments; ‘no that early. I’ve seen the lilac-tree in flower a fortnight sooner than now.’