uld talk, and what stories they would tell.

But her mother would be different--her mother who had always loved
her--crude, primitive love it was, but mother love just the same, and
she felt that she would never be able again to go back and take up her
old life--the old life which seemed so alluring, now that it was left
forever behind.

Thus she tossed and worried, and finally in the gray hours of the
morning her thoughts turned to Robert, who had loved her so well, and
had always been her champion. She saw him looking at her with sad eyes,
eyes which held something of accusation in them and were heavy with
pain--eyes that told he had trusted her, had loved her, and that he had
always hoped she would be his--eyes that told of all they had been to
each other from the earliest remembered days, and which plainly said, as
they looked at her from the foot of her bed: "Mysie! Oh, Mysie! What way
did you do this!"

Unable to bear it any longer, she screamed out in anguish, a scream
which brought good Mrs. Ramsay running to her bedside, to find Mysie
raving in a high fever, her eyes wildly glowing, and her skin all afire.
The good lady sat with her and tried to soothe her, but Mysie kept
calling on Robert and her mother, and raving about matters of which Mrs.
Ramsay knew nothing; and in the morning, when Peter arrived expecting to
find his bride ready, he found her very ill, and his good landlady very
much frightened about the whole matter.

CHAPTER XVIII

MAG ROBERTSON'S FRENZY

"I want to ken what has gone wrong with you?" said Mag Robertson,
speaking to Black Jock, whom she had called into her house one morning
as he returned from the pit for his breakfast.

"There's naething wrang wi' me," he said with cool reserve. "What dae
you think is wrang?"

"Ay, it's a' right, Jock," she said, speaking as one who knew he
understood her question better than he pretended. "I can see as far
through a brick wall as you can see through a whinstone dyke."

"Maybe a bit farther, Mag," he said with a forced laugh, eyeing her
coolly. "But what are you driving at?"

"You'll no' ken, I suppose?" she retorted. "Sanny has told me a' aboot
it this morning afore he gaed to his work. My! I'd hardly hae looked for
this frae you," she went on, her voice suddenly becoming softer and more
soothing as if she meant to appeal to his sense of gratitude if any
remained within him. "Efter what we've been to yin anither, I never
expected