s, that the good days of which he had read
were coming back again, when the Lord used to work openly in the eyes of
all the people, making his Church the instrument of spreading the glory
of his name by the conversion of many in a day. It did not trouble or
stumble him, as it did his sister, that it was not in their church--the
church of their fathers--that this was done. They were God's people,
and it made no difference; and so, while she only wondered, he wondered
and rejoiced.

But about this time news came that put all other thoughts out of their
minds for a while. The mother was sleeping, and Shenac and Hamish were
sitting in the firelight one evening in September, when the door opened
and their cousin Shenac came in. She seemed greatly excited, and there
were tears on her cheeks, and she did not speak, but came close up to
Shenac Bhan, without heeding the exclamations of surprise with which
they both greeted her.

"Did I not tell you, Shenac, that God would never drown them in the
sea?"

She had run so fast that she had hardly a voice to say the words, and
she sank down at her cousin's feet, gasping for breath. In her hands
she held a letter. It was from Evan--the first he had written to his
father since he went away. Shenac told them that her father had
received it in the morning, but said nothing about it then, going about
all day with a face like death, and only told them when he broke down at
worship-time, when he prayed as usual for "all distant and dear."

"Then he told my mother and me," continued Shenac Dhu, spreading out a
crushed morsel of paper with hands that trembled. It was only a line or
two, broken and blurred, praying for his father's forgiveness and
blessing on his dying son. He meant to come home with his cousin. They
were to meet at Saint F---, and sail together, But he had been hurt, and
had fallen ill of fever in an inland town, and he was dying. "And now
the same ship that takes this to you will take Allister home. He will
not know that I am dying, but will think I have changed my mind as I
have done before. I would not let him know if I could; for he would be
sure to stay for my sake, and his heart is set on getting home to his
mother and the rest. And, father, I want to tell you that it was not
Allister that beguiled me from home, but my own foolishness. He has
been more than a brother to me. He has saved my life more than once,
and he has saved me from sins worse than