ken to her
words which she knew must be said soon; but when she tried to do so,
Allie held up her hand in entreaty.

"Wait, auntie. Wait a wee while--for oh! I am so spent and weary."

"Yes, my dearie; yes, I ken weel, and you shall rest--but not there!--
surely not there!"

For Allie had opened the door of the room where her father died and
where his coffin had stood, where her mother had also suffered and died.
She would not turn back. "She was tired and must rest a while and
there was nowhere else." And already, before she had ceased speaking,
her head was on the pillow, and she had turned her face to the wall.

In the early morning of the next day the minister's son, the returned
wanderer, stood leaning over the wall which separated the manse garden
from the kirkyard. He was looking at the spot where the grass waved
green over the graves of his mother and his two brothers who slept
beside her. As he stood, a hand touched his, and Allison Bain's
sorrowful eyes looked down upon him. Looked _down_, because the many
generations of the dead had filled up the place, and the wall which was
high on the side of the garden was low on the side of the kirkyard.

"The minister is not up yet?" she asked without a pause. "Was he
over-wearied? I had something to say to him, but I might say it to you,
if you will hear me?"

"My father will be up soon, and he will see you almost immediately if
you will come into the manse and wait a little while."

"Yes, I could wait. But he is an old man and it might spare him
trouble--afterwards--not to know that I passed this way. Are ye Mr
Alex who once took our Willie out of the hole in the moss?"

"Yes; I mind poor Willie well. Poor laddie."

"Poor laddie ye may well say," said Allison, and the colour came to her
pale face, and her eyes shone as she added eagerly: "You will be in
Aberdeen--will you go to see Willie? _I_ canna go to see him because--
one might think o' looking for me there. You are a good man, I have
always heard, and he needs some one to speak a kind word to him, and I
sore misdoubt that he's in ill company yonder."

"I am going to see him soon. My father was speaking about him
yesterday. I shall certainly go."

"And you'll be kind to him, I'm sure," said Allison, wistfully. "He is
not bad, though that has been said. He is only foolish and not wicked,
as they tried to make him out. And ye'll surely go?"

"That I will. Even if you hadn't asked m