Lady Carse would no longer live in their house, Adam had presently dried
his tears, and began to plan how he would meet the widow sometimes on
the western sands, to pick up the fine shells she had told him of.
Helsa went on to say that she could have cried longer than the boy, for
she was afraid to think of being alone with Lady Carse at times when--

Annie interrupted her by saying, with a smile, "You need not have any
dread of living in this house, Helsa. I have no thought of leaving it.
There is some mistake."

Helsa was delighted with this assurance. But she proved her point--that
the mistake was not hers--that such a plan _was_ daily, almost hourly,
spoken of next door as settled. She was going on to tell how her
mistress frightened her by her ways: her being sleepy in the afternoons,
unless she was very merry or dreadfully passionate, and so low in the
mornings that she often did little but cry; but the widow checked this.
While at Mrs Ruthven's house Helsa should make no complaints to anybody
else; or, if she had serious complaints to make, it should be to
Macdonald. Helsa pleaded that Macdonald would then perhaps take away
the anker of spirits, as being at the bottom of the mischief; and then
Lady Carse would kill her. She had once shown her a pistol; but nobody
could find that pistol now. Helsa laughed, and looked us if she could
have told where it was. In a moment, however, she was grave enough,
hearing herself called by her mistress.

"I shall say I came to learn about the lamp," said she; "and that is
true, you know."

"Why do not you speak English, both of you?" demanded Lady Carse from
the door. "You both speak English. I will have no mysteries. I will
know what you were saying."

Helsa faltered out that she came to see how Widow Fleming managed her
lamp.

"Was it about the lamp that you were talking? I will know."

"If we had any objection, madam, to your knowing what we were saying,"
interposed Annie, "we are by no means bound to tell. But you are quite
welcome to it. I have been assuring Helsa that there is some mistake
about my leaving this house. Here have I lived, and here I hope to
die."

"We must talk that matter over," declared Lady Carse. "We are so
crowded next door that we can bear it no longer; and I _must_ live in
sight of the harbour, you know."

And she went over all the old arguments, while she sent Helsa to bring
in Mr Ruthven, that he might add his pastoral auth