p, but he did not speak.

"Are you no' well, Davie? Why did you no' come to your breakfast?"

"I'm coming," said Davie, but he did not move.

His grandfather touched his burning hand and his heart sank.

"Come awa' to your grandmother."

"Yes, we'll go to grannie," said Davie.

Blinded by the sunlight, he staggered on, and his grandfather put his
arm about him. Mrs Fleming met them at the door as they drew near.

"What can ail the laddie?" asked his grandfather, with terror in his
eyes.

They made him sit down, and Katie brought some cold water. He drank
some and put some on his head, and declared himself better.

"It is some trash that he has eaten at that weary picnic," said grannie.

"No, grannie, I hadna a chance to eat."

"And you have eaten little since. Well, never mind. You'll go to your
bed, and I'll get your mother to make you some of her herb tea."

"And I'll be better the morn, grannie," said Davie, with an uncertain
smile.

He drank his mother's bitter infusion, and tossed and turned and moaned
and muttered, all day and all night, and for many days and nights, till
weeks had passed away, and a time of sore trial it was to them all.

He was never very ill, they said. He was never many hours together that
he did not know those who were about his bed, and young Dr Wainwright,
who came every day to see him, never allowed that he was in great
danger. But as day after day went on, and he was no better, their
hearts grew sick with hope deferred. Grannie alone never gave way to
fear. She grew weak and weary, and could only sit beside him, little
able to help him; but he never opened his eyes but her cheerful smile
greeted him, and her cheerful words encouraged him. His mother waited
on him for a while, but she was not strong, and had no spring of hope
within her. Katie worked all day and watched all night, and scorned the
idea of weariness, but the Ythan water that trickled around her
milk-pans in the dairy, carried daily some tears of hers down to the
Black Pool.

"It is grandfather I'm thinking about," said she one day when she burst
out crying in Miss Betsey's sight. "I am afraid I shall never be able
to keep from thinking that God has been hard on grandfather, if anything
should happen to Davie."

"But God is not hard on your grandfather and there is nothing going to
happen to Davie," said Betsey, too honest to reprove the girl for the
expression of thoughts which she had not been