growing as strong a repulsion for one brother as love
for the other. And as she lay quietly on her pillow, endeavouring not
to disturb her companion's rest, a tide of sorrowful regrets swept over
her, even as outside, under the shifting moonlight, the bay, yesterday
so calm, was torn and tossed by the rising north-west wind. Through
all, and interwoven even with her bitter grief, was the memory of that
happy night--surely long ago?--when she had sat in the warm air of the
cynos, and Gethin had danced into her heart. Oh, the pity of it! such
love to be offered her, and to be thrust aside! "That is what I would
say if I were Will!" And all night every sorrowful longing, every
endeavour after resignation, every prayer for strength, ended with the
same refrain, "If he were Will! if he were Will!"

Tick, tack, tick, tack! the old clock filled the night air with its
measured beat. "Surely it does not tick so loudly in the day?" she
thought.

Ten, eleven, and twelve had struck, and still Morva lay wakeful, with
wide-open eyes, watching the hurrying clouds. At last she slept for an
hour or two, and her uninterrupted breathing showed that the
invigorating sleep of youth had at length fallen upon her weary
eyelids. For an hour or two she slept, but at last she suddenly
stirred, and in a moment was wide awake, with every sense strained to
the utmost.

What had awakened her she could not tell. She was conscious only of an
eager and thrilling expectancy.

She was about to relapse into slumber when a gliding sound caught her
ear, and in a moment she was listening again, with all her senses
alert. Was it fancy? or was there a soft footfall, and a sound as of a
hand drawn over the whitewashed wall of the passage? A board creaked,
and Morva sat up, and strained her ears to listen. After a stillness
of some moments, again there was the soft footfall and the gliding hand
on the wall. She rose and quietly crept into the passage just in time
to see a dark figure entering the preacher's room.

Who could it be?

Intense curiosity was the feeling uppermost in her mind, and this alone
prevented her calling Ann. Standing a few moments in breathless
silence, she heard the slow opening of a drawer; another pause of eager
listening, while the stealthy footsteps seemed to be returning towards
the doorway.

At this moment the moon emerged from behind a cloud, and in her light
Morva saw a sight which astonished her, for coming f