where, she had reason to believe, they had fire and light. As for
herself, when Annie saw the torch that Macdonald carried, her eyes
glistened in the blaze, and she said once more in the depth of her mind,
"Surely God has His own ways."

Macdonald was very wrathful when he learned by questioning Annie how it
was that her house was dark. As he hastily kindled the peats he brought
in from the stack, he muttered that it seemed to have pleased God to
afflict the island again with a witch, after all the pains that were
taken twenty years before, as he well remembered, to clear the place of
one. This woman must be a witch--

"Nay," said Annie. "I take her to be sent to us for good. Let us wait
and learn."

"Good? What good?"

"It is through her, you see, that I find how kind a neighbour you are,
at need," replied Annie; not adding aloud what she was thinking of,--how
this night had proved that God brings help at the least likely moments.

"She is a witch," Macdonald persisted. "No power short of that could
have quenched your lamp, and drawn away your only son from honouring his
parent to be a slave to a stranger."

As Annie could not at the moment speak, Macdonald went on raising a
flame meantime by flapping the end of his plaid.

"It is the chapel, I know. Things have never gone well for any length
of time here since the chapel fell completely down, and the bleat of the
kid came out from where the psalm ought to sound. We must apply
ourselves to build up the chapel; and, as there is a minister coming, we
may hope to be released from witches and every kind of curse."

"There will be little room for any kind of curse," thought Annie, "when
the minister has taught us to `be kindly affectioned one to another,'
and not to make our little island more stormy with passions than it ever
is with tempests of wind and hail."

"There, now, there is a good fire for you," said Macdonald, rising from
his knees; "and I won't ask you. Annie, what was in your mind as the
blaze made your eyes shine. I won't ask you, because you might tell me
that I am in need of the minister, to make me merciful to a banished
lady. Ah, your smile shows that that is what you were thinking of. But
I can tell you this: she is a wicked woman. Her father committed
murder, and she is quite able and willing to do the same thing. So I
must go and find her, and take care that her foot is set in no boat but
mine."

"Yours?"

"Yes. I must ca