e spiritual voice, soft, clear, sweeter than
the sweetest music, and many a soul that in extremities has touched
the heavenly horizon will understand that she was not mistaken.

In an hour Tulloch sent for her trunk.

"There is no trunk to be sent now; tell Tulloch that Margaret Vedder
will tell him the why and the wherefore to-morrow." Elga was amazed,
and somewhat disappointed, but Margaret's face astonished and subdued
her, and she did not dare to ask, "What then is the matter?"

Margaret slept little that night. To the first overwhelming
personality of joy and sorrow, there succeeded many other trains of
thought. It was evident that Dr. Balloch, perhaps Snorro also, had
known always of Jan's life and doings. She thought she had been
deceived by both, and not kindly used. She wondered how they could see
her suffer, year after year, the slow torture of uncertainty, and
unsatisfied love and repentance. She quite forgot how jealously she
had guarded her own feelings, how silent about her husband she had
been, how resentful of all allusion to him.

Throughout the night Elga heard her moving about the house. She was
restoring every thing to its place again. The relief she felt in this
duty first revealed to her the real fear of her soul at the strange
world into which she had resolved to go and seek her husband. She had
the joy of a child who had been sent a message on some dark and
terror-haunted way, and had then been excused from the task. Even as a
girl the great outside world had rather terrified than allured her. In
her Edinburgh school she had been homesick for the lonely, beautiful
islands, and nothing she had heard or read since had made her wish to
leave them. She regarded Jan's letter, coming just at that time, as a
special kindness of Providence.

"Yes, and I am sure that is true," said Tulloch to her next morning.
"Every one has something to boast of now and then. Thou canst say,
'God has kept me out of the danger, though doubtless He could have
taken me through it very safely.' And it will be much to Jan's mind,
when he hears that it was thy will to go and seek him."

"Thou wert ever kind to Jan."

"Jan had a good heart. I thought that always."

"And thou thought right; how glad thou will be to see him! Yes, I know
thou wilt."

"I shall see Jan no more, Margaret, for I am going away soon, and I
shall never come back."

"Art thou sick, then?"

"So I think; very. And I have seen one who knows, an