ngry wi' him," he replied brokenly, trying hard to
make his voice sound dearly. "I'm no' angry wi' onybody."

"I'm glad o' that, Rob," she said, her hand caressing his head. "You was
ay a guid hearted laddie--I'm awfu' glad." Then her mind began to wander
and she was back in Edinburgh speaking of her father and John.

"Oh, faither," she rambled on. "Dinna be angry wi' me. There's naebody
to blame. Dinna be angry."

Then Robert was conscious that others were in the room, and looking up
he beheld his mother and Jenny Maitland and behind them with anxious
face and frightened eyes stood Peter Rundell, the picture of misery and
despair.

"She's kind o' wanderin', puir thing," he heard the mother say in
explanation to the others. "She's kind o' wanderin' in her mind."

It was a sad little group which stood round the dying girl, all anxious
and alarmed and watchful. Then after a while she opened her eyes again
and there was a look of startled surprise as if she were looking at
something in the distance. Then she began to recognize each and all of
them in turn, first Robert, who still held her hand, then her mother and
Nellie, and Peter. A faint smile came into her eyes and he stepped
forward. Her lips moved slowly and a faint sound came falteringly from
them.

"Dinna be angry wi' onybody," she panted. "It was a'--a--mistake."

Then raising her hand she held it out to Peter, who advanced towards the
bedside and placing his hand on Robert's she clasped them together in
her own. "There noo--dinna be angry--it was a' a mistake. It was Rob I
liket--it was him--I wanted. But it--was--a' a mistak'. Dinna be--" and
the glazed sunken eyes closed forever, never to open again, a faint
noise gurgled in her throat, and the dews of death stood out in beads
upon the pale brow. A tiny quiver of the eyelids, and a tremor through
the thin hands and Mysie--poor ruined broken waif of the world--was
gone.

"Oh, my God! She's deid," gasped Robert, clasping the thin dead hands in
a frenzy of passionate grief. "Oh, Mysie! Mysie! Oh God! She's deid,"
and his head bent low over the bed while great sobs tore through him,
and shook his young frame, as the storm shakes the young firs of the
woods. Then suddenly recollecting himself as his mother put her hand
upon his bent head saying: "Rise up, Robin, like a man. You maun gang
oot noo." He rose and with tears in his eyes that blinded him so that he
hardly saw where he was going, he stumbled out i