passed us watchers
by, its glory resting on the face that loved to greet it.

"Haud ma haun, guid-wife," his voice upborne by the buoyancy of death.
"I'm slippin' fast into the licht. I see what they ca' the gates o'
deith. The licht has found them oot. They've been sair maligned, I'm
thinkin'. The pulpit has misca'd them, but the believer's deein' lips
can ca' them fair. They're the gates o' deith, nae doot, but the Maister
hauds the keys."

We stood as close to the old precentor as we might, but we were in the
shadow still. For death seldom shares his surprises with the alien and
is selfish with his secret luxuries.

"Hark ye!" the dying man suddenly cried. "Div ye no' hear the sang? It's
graun ayont the thocht o' man. They're a' in white, an' it's 'Martyrdom'
is the tune. Wha's leadin' them? I see Him fine; it's Him wha made the
sang itsel'. It's Him wha's leadin' them. Div ye no' ken what they're
singin'? It's the new sang, the sang o' Moses an' the Lamb. An' hark ye!
it's the same as the psalm my mither taught me. I canna tell the yin
frae the ither."

And the old precentor hurried on to join the choir invisible.

XXII

"_The MILLS of The GODS_"

Margaret was home again. She had been gone from us two immeasurable
days. It was Mr. Blake who rang the bell, for it was his house had
sheltered her when my cruel anger drove her from my own. Need and sorrow
never turned to him in vain.

When the door was opened, Margaret stood before it alone. Her mother it
was who opened unto her, for this is woman's oldest and holiest
avocation, door-keeper unto wandering feet. In all His delicate missions
woman is God's deputy.

Through all my narrative of this sad affair I have said but little of
Margaret's mother, but I know my readers have discerned her presence
amid it all, as one discerns a brooding mountain through the mist. The
great background of every tragedy is a woman's stately sorrow.

I had been visiting the sick, far more for my sake than for theirs, and
was not home when Margaret returned. But a nameless fragrance greeted me
at the door, and in my study I found Margaret in her mother's arms. The
latter quietly withdrew and the compact between father and daughter was
soon complete. It was of mutual surrender, wherein is mutual peace.
Margaret's only word was that she could not give her father up--nor
Angus--that I must say nothing more about her love and that we must
wait--together. Which was all swee