nt his head slightly, and Greta pulled the door after her.

CHAPTER X.

The evening had closed in; the watery veil that goes between day and
night was hanging in the air; the wind had risen, and the trees were
troubled. When Hugh Ritson reached the cottage, all was dark about the
house save for the red glow from the peat fire which came out into the
open porch. The old Laird Fisher was sitting there, a blackthorn stick
at his feet, his elbows on his knees, his cheeks rested on his hands.
The drowsy glow fell on his drooping white head. As Hugh Ritson passed
into the kitchen, the old man lifted to his a countenance on which grief
and reproach were stamped together. Hugh Ritson's proud spirit was
rebuked by the speechless sorrow of that look. It was such a look as a
wounded hound lifts to the eyes of a brutal master.

A sheep-dog was stretched at full length before the slumbering fire. The
kitchen was empty, and silent too, except for the tick of the clock and
the colly's labored breathing. But at the sound of Hugh's uncertain step
on the hard earthen floor, the door of the bedroom opened, and Greta
motioned him to enter.

A candle burned near the bed. Before a fire, Mercy Fisher sat with
Parson Christian. Her head lay on a table that stood between, her face
buried in her encircled arms. One hand lay open beside the long loose
tresses of yellow hair, and the parson's hand rested upon it
caressingly. Parson Christian rose as Hugh Ritson entered, and bowing
coldly, he left the room; Greta had already gone out, and he rejoined
her in the kitchen.

Mercy lifted her head and looked up at Hugh. There was not a tear in her
weary, red, swollen eyes, and not a sigh came from her heaving breast.
She rose quietly, and taking Hugh's hand in her own, she drew him to the
bedside.

"See where he is," she said in a voice of piercing earnestness, and with
her other hand she lifted a handkerchief from the little white face.
Hugh Ritson shuddered. He saw his own features as if memory had brought
them in an instant from the long past.

Mercy disengaged her hand, and silently hid her face. But she did not
weep.

"My little Ralphie," she said, plaintively, "how quiet he is now! Oh,
but you should have seen him when he was like a glistening ray of
morning light. Why did you not come before?"

Hugh Ritson stood there looking down at the child's dead face, and made
no answer.

"It is better as it is," his heart whispered at t