work, and a sense of delinquency in his purposeless
hands.

He found Barbara waiting. She knew that he would not stay at Nanna
Sinclair's, and she had prepared the room of her absent son for him.
"If he can pay one shilling a day, it will be a godsend to me," she
thought; and when she told David so he answered, "That is a little
matter, and no doubt there will be good between us."

He saw then that the window was open, and the sea-water lippering
nearly to the sill of it; and he took off his bonnet, and sat
down, and let the cool breeze blow upon his hot brow. It was near
midnight, but what then? David had never been more awake in all his
life--yes, awake to his finger-tips. Yet for half an hour he sat
by the window and never opened his mouth; and Barbara sat on the
hearth, and raked the smoldering peats together, and kept a like
silence. She was well used to talk with her own thoughts, and to
utter words was no necessity to Barbara Traill; but she knew what
David was thinking of, and she was quite prepared for the first
word which parted his set lips.

"Is my cousin Nanna a widow?"

"No."

"Where, then, is her husband?"

"Who can tell? He is gone away from Shetland, and no one is sorry for
that."

"One thing is sure--Nanna is poor, and she is in trouble. How comes
that? Who is to blame in the matter?"

"Nicol Sinclair--he, and he only. Sorrow and suffering and ill luck
of all kinds he has brought her, and there is no help for it."

"No help for it! I shall see about that."

"You had best let Nicol Sinclair alone. He is one of the worst of
men, a son of the devil--no, the very devil himself. And he has your
kinswoman Matilda Sabiston at his back. All the ill he does to Nanna
he does to please her. To be sure, the guessing is not all that way,
but yet most people think Matilda is much to blame."

"How came Nanna Borson to marry such a man? Was not her father alive?
Had she no brothers to stand between her and this son of the Evil
One?"

"When Nanna Borson took hold of Nicol Sinclair for a husband she
thought she had taken hold of heaven; and he was not unkind to her
until after the drowning of her kin. Then he took her money and
traded with it to Holland, and lost it all there, and came back
bare and empty-handed. And when he entered his home there was the
baby girl, and Nanna out of her mind with fever and like to die,
and not able to say a word this way or that. And Nicol wanted money,
and he went to