he very vagueness of these remarks had given strength to David's
imagination. He had hoped for things larger than his knowledge,
and he had quite forgotten to take into his calculations the fact
that as the years wear on they wear out love and life, and leave
little but graves behind them. At this hour he felt his destiny to be
hard and unlovely, and the text learned as one of the pillars of his
faith, "Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated," forced itself upon
his reflection. A deadly fear came into his heart that the Borsons
were among these hated ones. Why else did God pursue them with such
sufferings and fatalities? And what could he do to propitiate this
unfriendly Deity?

His road was upon the top of the cliff, over a moor covered with
peat-bogs and withered heather. The sea was below him, and a long,
narrow lake lay silent and motionless among the dangerous moss--a
lake so old and dead-looking that it might have been the shadow of a
lake that once was. Nothing green was near it, and no birds were
tempted by its sullen waters; yet untold myriads of sea-birds
floated and wheeled between sea and sky, and their hungry, melancholy
cries and the desolate landscape stimulated and colored David's
sad musings, though he was quite unaware of their influence.

When he came to the group of huts, he paused a moment. They were
the abodes of poverty; there was none better than the rest. But
Barbara had said that Nanna's was the first one, and he went slowly
toward it. No one appeared, though the door stood wide open; but
when he reached the threshold he could see Nanna sitting within.
She was busily braiding the fine Tuscan straw for which Shetland
was then famous, and her eyes were so intently following her rapid
fingers that it was unlikely she had seen him coming. Indeed, she did
not raise them at once, for it was necessary to leave her work at
a certain point; and in that moment's delay David looked with a
breathless wonder at the woman before him.

She was sitting, and yet even sitting she was majestic. Her face
was large, but perfectly oval, and fair as a lily; her bright-brown
hair was parted, passed smoothly behind the ears, and beautifully
braided. Serenity and an unalterable calm gave to the young face
something of the fixity of marble; but as David spoke she let her
eyes fall upon a little child at her feet, and then lifted them to
him with a smile as radiant and life-giving as sunshine.

"Who are you?" she aske