d looking out over Lashnagar, where the autumn mists stalked and
mowed at each other and fluttered and jostled and fought.

Before seven o'clock the book-room was full of people, soaked
through with the mist. They were the people Marcella had known all her
life--fisher-folk, farm labourers, crofters--and she felt a momentary
exultant pride to think that, at a word from her father, they had
thronged to his house. There seemed something fitting in their coming on
All Souls' Night into this bare room with the tattered pennant and the
crackling wood fire that flickered on their weather-beaten faces. Their
coming obediently to be talked to by her father for the good of their
souls gave her a sense of savage exaltation for the moment. Then she saw
Hunchback Wullie and Tammas and Jock, and went across to talk to them.

"Is the Lashcairn better, then?" asked Wullie. She shook her head.

"He says he's going to die to-night, Wullie--All Souls' Night," she said
in a low voice.

Wullie nodded comprehension.

Aunt Janet came into the room, her thin face set and grim, her rusty
dress of old black satin all cracking, and her great cairngorm brooch
marking her from the rest in capes and homespun. They drew away from
her; she had never tried to associate with them; in her detachment she
had never been human to them as Andrew had been in his wildness and his
weakness, and now she walked silently across the room and sat down. The
firelight shone out fiercely as she savagely poked the logs, and with a
motion ordered young Jock, who stood near, to throw more wood to the
flames. It shone on gnarled hands gripping gnarled sticks, on rugged,
ruddy faces, on white and sandy hair, on bright blue eyes, old and
young. And then the door opened sharply and Andrew Lashcairn stood
there, leaning on his stick.

Everyone but Aunt Janet stared at him as the firelight flamed up to blue
and purple flame, lighting his gaunt face. But Aunt Janet, like a fate,
sat gazing up the misty side of Lashnagar through the uncovered window.
Andrew stood still, looking from one to the other. Then he took two
steps forward.

"Jamie Mactavish and Andrew Gray are not here," he said sternly, as
though he were a schoolmaster calling the roll. Explanations of the
absence murmured out and he came inside, pushing the door to.

Marcella, standing by Wullie, was shivering with nervous dread, and
suddenly noting his red-rimmed eyes, blazing and wild, she clutched
Wullie's