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CHAPTER IX

The evening was closing in; now and then the shrill cries of the birds pealed and echoed in the still air; a long, fibrous streak of silver in the sky ebbed away over the head of Hindscarth. Greta hastened toward the pit-brow. The clank of the iron chain in the gear told that the cage in the shaft was working.

It was a year and a half since her life had first been overshadowed by a disaster more black and terrible than death itself, and never for an instant had the clouds been lifted until three days ago. Then, in a moment, the light had pierced through the empty sky, and a way had been wrought for her out of the labyrinth of misery. But even that passage for life and hope and love seemed now to be closed by the grim countenance of doom.

Mercy would be blind forever! All was over and done. Greta's strong, calm spirit sunk and sunk. She saw the impostor holding to the end the name and place of the good man; and she saw the good man dragging his toilsome way through life – an outcast, a by-word, loaded with ignominy, branded with crime. And that unhappy man was her husband, and he had no stay but in her love – no hope but in her faith.

Greta stopped at the door of Hugh Ritson's office and knocked. A moment later he and she were face to face. He was dressed in his pit flannels, and was standing by a table on which a lamp burned. When he recognized her, he passed one hand across his brow, the other he rested on the mantel-piece. There was a momentary twitching of her lips, and he involuntarily remarked that in the time that had passed since they last met she had grown thinner.

"Come with me," she said in a trembling whisper. "Mercy's child is dead, and the poor girl is asking for you in her great trouble."

He did not speak at once, but shaded his eyes from the lamp. Then he said, in a voice unlike his own:

"I will follow you."

She had held the door in her hand, and now she turned to go. He took one step toward her.

"Greta, have you nothing more to say to me?" he asked.

"What do you wish me to say?"

He did not answer; his eyes fell before her.

There was a slight wave of her hand as she added:

"The same room ought never to contain both you and me – it never should have done so – but this is not my errand."

"I have deserved it," he said, humbly.

"The cruel work is done – yes, done past undoing. You have not heard the last of it. Then, since you ask me what I have to say to you, it is this: That man, that instrument of your malice who is now your master, has been to say that he can compel me to live with him, or imprison me if I refuse. Can he do it?"

Hugh Ritson lifted his eyes with a blind, vacant stare.

"To live with him? Him? You to live with him?" he said, absently.

"To live under his roof – those were his words. Can he do it? I mean if the law recognizes him as my husband?"

Hugh Ritson's eyes wandered.

"Do it? Your husband?" he echoed, incoherently.

"I know well what he wants," said Greta, breathing heavily; "it is not myself he is anxious for – but he can not have the one without the other."

"The one without the other?" echoed Hugh Ritson in a low tone. Then he strode across the room in visible agitation.

"Greta, that man is – . Do you know who he is?"

"Paul Drayton, the innkeeper of Hendon," she answered, calmly.

"No, no; he is your – "

He paused, his brows knit, his fingers interlaced. Her bosom swelled.

"Would you tell me that he is my husband?" she said indignantly.

Hugh Ritson again passed his hand across his brow.

"Greta, I have deserved your distrust," he said, in an altered tone.

"What is done can never be undone," she answered.

His voice had regained its calmness, but his manner was still agitated.

"I may serve you even yet," he said; "I have done you too much wrong; I know that."

"What is your remorse worth now?" she asked. "It comes too late."

Then he looked her steadily in the face, and replied:

"Greta, it is well said that the most miserable man in all the world is he who feels remorse before he does the wrong. I was – I am – that man. I did what I did knowing well that I should repent it – ay, to the last hour of my life. But I was driven to it – I had no power to resist it – it mastered me then – it would master me now."

The finger-tips of Greta's right hand were pressed close against her cheek. Hugh Ritson took a step nearer.

"Greta," he said, and his voice fell to a broken whisper, "there are some men to whom love is a passing breath, a gentle gale that beats on the face and sports in the hair, and then is gone. To me it is a wound, a deep, corrosive, inward wound that yearns and burns."

Greta shuddered; it was as if his words stung her. Then with an impatient gesture she turned again toward the door, saying:

"This is the death-hour of your child, and, Heaven pardon you, it seems to be the death-hour of your brother's hopes too!" She faced about. "Do you think of him?" she added, lifting her voice. "When you see this man in his place, wasting his substance and mine, do you ever think of him where he is?"

Her voice trembled and broke. There was a moment's silence. She had turned her head aside, and he heard the low sound of sobs.

"Yes, I think of him," he answered, slowly. "At night, in the sleepless hours, I do think of him where he is; and I think of him as a happy man. Yes, a happy man! What if he wears a convict's dress? – his soul is yoked to no deadening burden. As for me – well, look at me!"

He smiled grimly.

"I have heard everything," said Greta; "you have sown the wind, and you are reaping the whirlwind."

Something like a laugh broke from him. It came from the waters of bitterness that lay deep in his heart.

"Not that," he said. "All that will pass away."

She was on the threshold; a force of which she knew nothing held her there.

"Greta, I am not so bad a man as perhaps I seem; I am a riddle that you may not read. The time is near when I shall trouble the world no more, and it will be but a poor wounded name I shall leave behind me, will it not? Greta, would it be a mockery to ask you to forgive me?"

"There are others who have more to forgive," said Greta. "One of them is waiting for you at this moment; and, poor girl! her heart is broken."

Hugh Ritson bent his head slightly, and Greta pulled the door after her.

CHAPTER X

The evening had closed in; the watery veil that goes between day and night was hanging in the air; the wind had risen, and the trees were troubled. When Hugh Ritson reached the cottage, all was dark about the house save for the red glow from the peat fire which came out into the open porch. The old Laird Fisher was sitting there, a blackthorn stick at his feet, his elbows on his knees, his cheeks rested on his hands. The drowsy glow fell on his drooping white head. As Hugh Ritson passed into the kitchen, the old man lifted to his a countenance on which grief and reproach were stamped together. Hugh Ritson's proud spirit was rebuked by the speechless sorrow of that look. It was such a look as a wounded hound lifts to the eyes of a brutal master.

A sheep-dog was stretched at full length before the slumbering fire. The kitchen was empty, and silent too, except for the tick of the clock and the colly's labored breathing. But at the sound of Hugh's uncertain step on the hard earthen floor, the door of the bedroom opened, and Greta motioned him to enter.

A candle burned near the bed. Before a fire, Mercy Fisher sat with Parson Christian. Her head lay on a table that stood between, her face buried in her encircled arms. One hand lay open beside the long loose tresses of yellow hair, and the parson's hand rested upon it caressingly. Parson Christian rose as Hugh Ritson entered, and bowing coldly, he left the room; Greta had already gone out, and he rejoined her in the kitchen.

Mercy lifted her head and looked up at Hugh. There was not a tear in her weary, red, swollen eyes, and not a sigh came from her heaving breast. She rose quietly, and taking Hugh's hand in her own, she drew him to the bedside.

"See where he is," she said in a voice of piercing earnestness, and with her other hand she lifted a handkerchief from the little white face. Hugh Ritson shuddered. He saw his own features as if memory had brought them in an instant from the long past.

Mercy disengaged her hand, and silently hid her face. But she did not weep.

"My little Ralphie," she said, plaintively, "how quiet he is now! Oh, but you should have seen him when he was like a glistening ray of morning light. Why did you not come before?"

Hugh Ritson stood there looking down at the child's dead face, and made no answer.

"It is better as it is," his heart whispered at that moment. The next instant his whole frame quivered. What was the thought that had risen unbidden within him? Better that his child should lie there cold and lifeless than that it should fill this desolate house with joy and love? Was he, then, so black a villain? God forbid! Yet it was better so.

"All is over now," said Mercy, and her hands fell from her face. She turned her weary eyes full upon him, and added: "We have been punished already."

"Punished?" said Hugh. "We?" There was silence for a moment; and then, dropping his voice until it was scarcely audible, he said: "Your burden is heavy to bear, my poor girl."

Her slight figure swayed a little.

"I could bear it no longer," she answered.

"Many a one has thought that before you," he said; "but God alone knows what we can not bear until we are tried."

"Well, all is over now," she repeated listlessly.

She spoke of herself as if her days were already ended and past; as if her orb of life had been rounded by the brief span of the little existence that lay finished upon the bed. Hugh Ritson looked at her, and the muscles of his face twitched. Her weary eyes were still dry; their dim light seemed to come from far away.

"How I prayed that I might see my Ralphie," she said. "I thought surely God had willed it that I should never see my child. Perhaps that was to be my punishment for – all that had taken place. But I prayed still. Oh, you would not think how much I pray! But it must have been a wicked prayer."

She hid her face once more in her hands, and added, with unexpected animation:

"God heard my prayer, and answered it – but see!" She pointed to the child. "I saw him – yes, I saw him – die!"

Hugh Ritson was moved, but his heart was bitter. At that moment he cursed the faith that held in bondage the soul of the woman at his side. Would that he could trample it underfoot, and break forever the chains by which it held the simple.

"Hugh," she said, and her voice softened, "we are about to part forever. Our little Ralphie – yours and mine – he calls me. I could not live without him. God would not make me do that. He has punished me already, and He is merciful. Only think, our Ralphie is in heaven!"

She paused and bit her lip, and drew her breath audibly inward. Her face took then a death-like hue, and all at once her voice overflowed with anguish.

"Do you know, something whispered at that instant that God had not punished us enough, that Ralphie was not in heaven, and that the sins of the fathers – Oh, my darling, my darling!"

With a shrill cry she stopped, turned to the bed, threw her outspread arms about the child, and kissed it fervently.

The tears came at length, and rained down on that little silent face. Hugh Ritson could support the strain no longer.

"Mercy," he said, and his voice had a deep tremor – "Mercy, if there is any sin, it is mine, and if there is to be any punishment hereafter, that will be mine too. As for your little boy, be sure he is in heaven." He had stepped to the door, and his thumb was on the wooden latch. "You say rightly, we shall never meet again," he said in a muffled voice. "Good-bye."

Mercy lifted her tearful face. "Give me your hand at parting," she said in an imploring tone. He was on the opposite side of the bed from where she stood, and she reached her hand across it. He took a step nearer, and his hand closed in hers. Between them and beneath their clasped hands lay the child. "Hugh, we could not love in this world – something went astray with us; but we shall meet again, shall we not?"

He turned his eyes away.

"Perhaps," he answered.

"Promise me," she said – "promise me."

He drew his breath hard.

"If there is a God and a judgment, be sure we shall meet," he said.

His voice broke. He turned abruptly aside and hurried out of the house.

CHAPTER XI

The night was now dark; there was no moon, and there were no stars; the wind soughed mournfully through the trees. In the occasional lull the rumble of the cataracts drifted heavily through the air.

Hugh Ritson walked in the darkness with drooping head. He was not making for the pit-brow; he had taken the opposite direction. When he reached the village, he stopped at the Flying Horse. Loud peals of laughter came from the parlor, hidden by red blinds from the road.

He stood at the door that opened into the bar. The landlady, her face turned from him, was talking with obvious animation to a daleswoman who stood with a jug in her hand at the other side of the counter.

"What, woman, thoo's surely heard what happen't at the Ghyll this morning?"

"Nay, Bessie, I's been thrang as Throp wife, cleaning and tittivating."

"Well, lass, they've telt me as it were shocking. Two brothers, and such a fratch! It coom't to blows at last, and they do say 'at Master Hugh is nigh amaist dead with a bash the girt fellow gave him."

Hugh Ritson rapped sharply at the door.

"Tell your husband I wish to see him," he said.

The landlady looked up, fumbled with a napkin, and answered nervously, "Yes, sir." Then she hobbled to the door of the parlor and opened it. A wave of mingled noise, vapor, and foul odors came through the aperture. "Tommy!" she screamed above the babel.

The landlord appeared.

"Can you send me a dog-cart at half past four in the morning?" said Hugh.

"Maybe – it's a gay canny hour, I reckon," said the landlord.

He pulled at a long pipe as he spoke, and his face, which was flushed, wore an impudent smile.

"I have to catch the five-o'clock train," Hugh answered.

"To London?" One cheek was twisted into numerous wrinkles.

"I said the five train," said Hugh, sternly. "Can you do it?"

"I's niver said nay – it'll be three half-crowns."

Hugh put half a sovereign on the counter.

"Let it be sent at half past four promptly.

"To the Ghyll?"

The twist of the cheek was a shade less perceptible.

"To the pit-brow."

The parlor door opened again, and Natt stood on the threshold. The stableman's sleepy eyes awakened to a knowing twinkle. Then his flat face disappeared, and a thin titter mingled audibly with the clamor within. In another moment the door was thrown wide open, and Drayton came slouching out. His hair fell back over his forehead, from which his hat was tipped back. A cigar was perched between his teeth; the tips of his fingers were thrust into his waistcoat pockets.

"Come in; I've summat to show you," he said.

Hugh did not stir, but he lifted his head and looked into the room. Half a score of the riff-raff of the dale were seated amid clouds of smoke. On the wooden mantel-shelf above the wide ingle a large book stood open, and the leaves fluttered with the wind that came through the door.

"I hain't forgotten what you said long ago about the parson's book," said Drayton, "so here it is, and a mighty valuable thing I call it. You thought to frighten me with it, but bless yer soul, I like it, I do. Listen."

Drayton stepped back into the room, turned the leaves, and began to read in a lusty tone:

"1847. – November 18. – Thomas said Allan was fresh from Scotland, being Scottish born, and that his wife was Irish, and that they had a child called Paul, only a few months old, and not yet walking."

It was the parson's diary.

"That's good enough, ain't it, Master Hugh Ritson?" said Drayton, with an ungainly bow, and a vast show of civility, followed instantly by a sidelong leer at his cronies about him.

Hugh Ritson held himself stiffly, and merely said:

"Where did you get it?"

At this question there were sundry snorts and titters and muttered responses from the men at the tables. Hugh's eyes passed over them with a steely glance.

"Stolen it, I suppose," he said quietly.

"Ay," said Drayton, "and a neat job too. Natt 'ticed away the Methodee man while I borrowed it."

Drayton seemed to be proud of his share in the transaction, and his friends laughed loudly at the adroit turn he had given to the matter. Natt's drowsy eyes were preternaturally bright at that great moment.

Hugh Ritson's forehead darkened with ire.

"This is your gratitude to the clergyman," he said.

Sundry further snorts and sniggers went round the tables.

"There's not a man of you who is not beholden to Parson Christian," said Hugh, sternly. He twisted sharply round upon one graybeard whose laugh still rumbled between his teeth. "Reuben Rae, who nursed your sick wife? John Proudfoot," to the blacksmith, "what about your child down with the fever?" His quick eye traversed the parlor, and more than one lusty crony was fain to bury his face in his breast. "Yet you laugh, brave fellows as you are, when the good man's house is broken into by a thief."

Drayton took a swift stride toward him.

"Drop it, and quick!" he shouted.

Hugh Ritson governed himself with an effort.

"I'm not here to brawl," he said quietly.

"Pigeon-livered blatherskite! – that's what I call ye – d'ye hear?" said Drayton.

Hugh's face flinched, but he turned on his heel, and was on the road at the next instant.

Drayton followed him out, laughing boisterously. Hugh made one quick step backward and shut the door; then he turned about on Drayton, whose cruel face could be dimly seen in the hazy red light that came through the blinds.

"You have tried to torture me," he said, "just as you would hang a dog by its tail, or draw the teeth of a rat. You have threatened with worse torture a good and loyal woman. You are a scoundrel, and you know it! But even you would hesitate if you knew for certain who or what you are. Let me tell you again, now, when we are alone, and while I have no personal interest to serve: You are the man whose name I gave you – Paul Lowther, son of Robert Lowther – and that lady, my brother's wife, whom for reason of profit you would compel to live under the same roof with you, is your own sister!"

Drayton's loud guffaw rang out above the wind's moan in the trees. His cronies within heard it and listened.

"It's a rare old story, that is. Let me see; you've told it before, I fancy."

"Then it was a lie; now it's God's truth!" said Hugh.

Drayton laughed again.

"And then it was believed, but now it's not. No, no, Master Hugh, it won't pass."

"We will see."

Hugh Ritson had swung about and was gone.

Drayton went back to his friends.

"Hasn't the pluck of a pigeon when it comes to the push," he muttered.

"Ey, he wears a bonny white feather in his cap, for sure," said old Reuben Rae.

"No fight in'im – no'but tongue lather," said John, the blacksmith.

Hugh Ritson walked through the darkness to the pit-brow. The glow of the furnace lighted up the air to the south, and showed vaguely the brant sides of the fell; the dull thud of the engine, the clank of the chain, and the sharp crack of the refuse tumbling down the bank from the banksman's barrow were the only sounds that rose above the wind's loud whistle.

Gubblum was at the mouth of the shaft.

"Oglethorpe," said Hugh, "how many of the gangs are below to-night?"

"All but two – auld Reuben's and Jim South'et's."

"Then they have chosen to work on?"

"Ey, another fortnight – trusting to get their wage afore that, please God."

"They shall not be disappointed."

Hugh Ritson turned away. Gubblum trundled his last wheelbarrow to the edge of the bank, and then rested and said to himself, "He takes it cool enough onyway."

But the outside tranquillity disappeared when Hugh Ritson reached his own room on the pit-brow. He bathed his hot forehead again and again. His fingers twitched nervously, and he plunged his perspiring hands into cold water above the wrists, holding them there for several minutes. Not for long did he sit in one seat. He tramped the room uneasily, his infirm foot trailing heavily. Then he threw himself on the couch, tossed from side to side, rose, and resumed his melancholy walk. Thus an hour passed drearily.

His mind recalled one by one the events of the day. And one by one there came crowding back upon him the events of the two years that had passed since his father's death. A hurricane was upheaving every memory of his mind. And every memory had its own particular sting, and came up as a blight to fret his soul. He tried to guard himself from himself. What he had first thought to do was but in defense of his strict legal rights, and if he had gone further – if he had done more, without daring to think of it until it was done – then it was love that had led him astray. Was it so cruel a thing to be just? So foul a thing to love?

But above the shufflings of remorse, above the stiflings of regret, above the plea of a maddening love, was the voice of revenge speaking loudly in his soul. That man, his instrument, now his master, Paul Lowther, must be brought down, and his time-serving sponsor with him. But how? There was but one way – by denouncing himself. Yes, that was the sole outlet for his outraged and baffled spirit. He must go to the proper quarter and say, "I have perjured myself, and sworn away my brother's liberty. The man who was condemned as Paul Drayton is Paul Ritson. I did it all."

That would bring this vulgar scoundrel to the dust, but at what a price! The convict's dress now worn by his brother would soon be worn by him. And what solace would it be then that the same suit would be worn by the impostor also? Yet why prate of solace in a matter like this? What alternative was left to him? In what quarter of the sky was the light dawning for him? He was traveling toward the deepening night, and the day of his life was done.

What if he allowed everything to take its course? Well, he was a disgraced and ruined man, turned adrift from his father's house, and doomed to see a stranger living there. Did he lack gall to make such a climax bitter? Bitter, eh! and a thousand times the more bitter because he himself had, for ends of his own, first placed the scoundrel where he sat.

No, no, no; Paul Lowther must be brought down, and with him must fall the poor ruins of a better man. Yes a better man, let the world say what it would.

Could it occur that he would not be believed? that when he said "Take me, I am a perjurer," they would answer, "No, your self-denunciation is only a freak of revenge, a mad attempt to injure the relative who has turned you out of his house?" Hugh Ritson laughed as the grim irony of such a possible situation flashed upon him: a man self-condemned and saved from punishment by the defense of his enemy!

There was a knock at his door. In his stupor he was not at first conscious of what the knock meant. At length he recalled himself and cried:

"Come in."

Gubblum Oglethorpe entered.

"The men on the twelve o'clock shift are just about ganging down, and they want to tak' a few mair forks with them. They've telt me 'at the timber is splitting like matchwood under the sandy vein."

Hugh Ritson made an effort to gather the purport of Gubblum's message.

"Tell them to take the forks," he said in a low tone.

Gubblum was backing out, and stopped.

"I reckon thoo's not heard the last frae auld Mattha's," he said in another voice.

"What is it, Oglethorpe?" said Hugh, his head bent over the table.

"Robbie South'et's wife has been up to t' brow, and says that Mercy's laal thing is gone."

Hugh did not lift his eyes.

"Is that the last?" he said.

"Nay, but warse. The lass herself tore the bandage frae her eyes, and she's gone stone blind, and that's foriver."

Hugh's head bent closer over the table.

"Good-night, Oglethorpe," he said.

Gubblum backed out, muttering to himself as he returned to the shaft, "A cool hand, how-an'-iver."

The moment the door closed, Hugh Ritson tramped the floor in restless perambulations. What had he thought of doing? Delivering himself to justice as a perjurer? Had he, then, no duty left in life that he must needs gratify his revenge in a kind of death? What of the woman who had suffered for him? What of the broken heart and the wretched home? Were these as nothing against the humiliation of a proud spirit?

Never for an instant, never in his bitterest agony, did Hugh Ritson lie to his own soul and say that the resolution he had formed was prompted by remorse for what he had done to Paul Ritson; not revenge for what he had suffered from Paul Drayton. To be a saint when sick; to find the conscience active when defeat overwhelmed it – that was for the weak dregs of humanity. But such paltering was not for him.

On the one hand revenge, on the other duty – which was he to follow? The wretched man could come to no decision; and when the fingers of his watch pointed to one o'clock he lay down on the couch to rest.

It was not sleep that he wanted; sleep had of late become too full of terrors; but sleep overcame him, nevertheless. His face, when he slept, was the face of a man in pain; and dreams came that were the distorted reflections of his waking thoughts. He dreamed that he had died in infancy. Calm, serene, very sweet, and peaceful, his little innocent face of childhood looked up from the white pillow. He thought his mother bent over him, and shed many tears; but he himself belonged to another world of beings, and looked down on both.

"It is better so," he thought, "and the tears she weeps are blest."

At this he awoke, and rose to his feet. What soft nothings men had said of sleep! "Oh, sleep, it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole!" Gentle! More tyrannous than death. The melancholy perambulation ended, and he lay down once more. He slept and dreamed again. This time he had killed his own brother. A moment before they had stood face to face – vigorous, wrathful, with eyes that flashed, and hands uplifted. Now his brother lay quiet and awful at his feet, and the great silence was broken by a voice from heaven crying, "A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be on the earth!"

He started to his feet in terror. "Mercy, mercy!" he cried.

Then he drew his breath hard and looked about him. "A dream – only another dream," he said to himself, and laughed between his close-set teeth. The lamp still burned on the table. He rose, drew a key from his pocket, opened a cupboard, and took out a small bottle. It contained an opiate. "Since I must sleep, let my sleep at least be dreamless," he said, and he measured a dose. He was lifting the glass to his lips, when he caught sight of his face in the glass. "Pitiful! pitiful! A mere dream unnerves me. Pitiful enough, forsooth! And so I must needs hide myself from myself behind a bulwark like this!" He held the drug to the light, and while his hand trembled he laughed. Then he drank it off, put out the light, and sat on the couch.

The dawn had fretted the sky, and the first streaks of day crept in at the window, when the lamp's yellow light was gone. Hugh Ritson sat in the gray gloom, his knees drawn close under his chin, his arms folded over his breast, his head bent heavily forward. He was crooning an old song. Presently the voice grew thick, the eye became clouded, and then the head fell back. He was asleep, and in his sleep he dreamed again. Or was it a vision, and not a dream, that came to him now? He thought he stood in a room which he had seen before. On the bed some white thing lay. It was a child, and the little soul had fled. Beside it a woman cowered, and moaned "Guilty, guilty!" Her eyes were fixed on the child, yet she saw nothing; the sightless orbs were bleached. But with her heart she saw the child; and she saw himself also as he entered. Then it seemed that she turned her blind face toward him, and called on him by name. The next instant she was gone. Her seat was vacant, the bed was empty; only a gray-bearded man sat by a cold grate. With an overpowering weight pressing him down, it seemed to Hugh that he threw up his head, and again he heard his name.

He leaped to his feet. Big beads of cold sweat stood on his forehead. "Mercy is dead," he whispered with awe. "She has gone to put in her plea of guilty. She is in God's great hand!"

The next moment a voice shouted, "Mr. Ritson!"

He listened, and in the gray light his stony countenance smiled grimly.

"Mr. Ritson!" once more, followed by the rap of a whip-handle against the door.

"Tommy the landlord," said Hugh, and he broke into a harsh laugh. "So you were my angel, Tommy, eh?"

Another harsh laugh. The landlord, sitting in the dog-cart outside, heard it, and thought to himself, "Some one with him."

Hugh Ritson plunged his head into the wash-basin, and rubbed himself vigorously with a rough towel. "My last sleep is over," he said, glancing aside with fearful eyes at the couch. "I'll do this thing that I am bent upon; but no more sleep, and no more dreams!"

He opened the door, threw a rug up to the landlord, put on an ulster, and leaped into the dog-cart. They started away at a quick trot. A chill morning breeze swept down the vale. The sun was rising above Cat Bells, but Hugh Ritson still felt as if he were traveling toward the deepening night. He sat with folded arms, and head bent on his breast.

"Hasta heard what happened at auld Laird Fisher's this morning?" said the landlord.

Hugh answered in a low voice:

"I've heard nothing."

"The lass has followed her barn rather sudden't. Ey, she's gone, for sure. Died a matter of half an hour ago. I heard it frae the parson as I coom't by."

Hugh Ritson bent yet lower his drooping head.