etter was, from one of Rose's way of
thinking, inexplicable. From that time there was a marked change in
Tom; Erica was very unhappy about him, but there was little to be done
except, indeed, to share all his interests as much as she could, and to
try to make the home life pleasant. But this was by no means easy. To
begin with, Raeburn himself was more difficult than ever to work with,
and Tom, who was in a hard, cynical mood, called him overbearing where,
in former times, he would merely have called him decided. The very best
of men are occasionally irritable when they are nearly worked to death;
and under the severe strain of those days, Raeburn's philosophic calm
more than once broke down, and the quick Highland temper, usually kept
in admirable restraint, made itself felt.

It was not, however, for two or three days after Haeberlein's funeral
that he showed any other symptoms of illness. One evening they were all
present at a meeting at the East End at which Donovan Farrant was also
speaking. Raeburn's voice had somewhat recovered, and he was speaking
with great force and fluency when, all at once in the middle of
a sentence, he came to a dead pause. For half a minute he stood
motionless; before him were the densely packed rows of listening faces,
but what they had come there to hear he had not the faintest notion. His
mind was exactly like a sheet of white paper; all recollection of the
subject he had been speaking on was entirely obliterated. Some men would
have pleaded illness and escaped, others would have blundered on.
But Raeburn, who never lost his presence of mind, just turned to the
audience and said quietly: "Will some one have the goodness to tell me
what I was saying? My memory has played me a trick."

"Taxation!" shouted the people.

A short-hand writer close to the platform repeated his last sentence,
and Raeburn at once took the cue and finished his speech with perfect
ease. Every one felt, however, that it was an uncomfortable incident,
and, though to the audience Raeburn chose to make a joke of it, he knew
well enough that it boded no good.

"You ought to take a rest," said Donovan to him when the meeting was
over.

"I own to needing it," said Raeburn. "Pogson's last bit of malice will,
I hope, be quashed in a few days and, after that, rest may be possible.
He is of opinion that 'there are mony ways of killing a dog though ye
dinna hang him,' and, upon my word, he's not far wrong."

He was be