had heard it
then for the first time. They had not heard it all, only bits here and
there of it, but enough to enable them to understand something of the
morbid fear and the sense of utter desolation from which she had
suffered, when she first came among them. Her voice grew firm as she
went on, and she spoke clearly and strongly, so that many words were not
needed. She hesitated a little, when she came to the time when she had
asked John Beaton to befriend her brother, but she went on gravely:

"He did not see my brother. He had gone. I had been months away with
the child, before I heard that Willie was in America safe and well. It
was a friend who wrote to me--Mr Hadden, our minister's son. Willie is
doing well, and some time I am to go out to him--if I can."

She paused, withdrew her hand from Mrs Hume's clasp, and rose, saying:

"Now, I must tell you. All this time I have been afraid that--the man
who married me would find me and take me to his house in spite of me.
But it is I who have found him. It was Mr Crombie who told me about
him. He said he had seen him--on his dying bed, and in God's name he
bade me go to him, and tell him that I forgave him for the ill he did
me. He said it was not between me and the man who had sinned against
me, but it was between me and the Lord himself, and that I must forgive
if I would be forgiven. And if you shall say the same--"

Allison sat down and bent her head upon her hands. Mrs Hume laid her
hand upon the bowed head, but she did not speak. Mr Hume said:

"I do not see how Crombie has had to do with this matter."

Allison looked up.

"I should have told you that it was in our parish that Mr Crombie
buried his wife. He saw the names of my father and mother on their
headstone, and some one there--meaning me no ill--told him about me.
And when he came home again, he thought it his duty to point out to me
that I might be in the wrong. But I think it must have gone out of his
mind, for he never spoke to me again till to-night."

"And to-night he spoke?"

"Yes. To-night he came to me in Mrs Beaton's house, and warned me that
it was my duty to go to a dying man. And if you tell me the same, I
must go."

She let her face fall again upon her hands.

Mr Hume did not answer her at once. He opened again the letter which
he held and read it from beginning to end. It was a letter from Doctor
Fleming, of Aberdeen, telling him of the state in which Brownrig wa