l, he had me on fire. I was ready to deny anything he asserted,
especially about hell, for thou knows, Rahal, that there are hells in
this world and no worse needed. So when he asked if I believed in the
Calvinistic idea of hell, I answered, 'I deny it! My soul denies
it--utterly!' I reminded him that God spoke to Dives in hell and
called him son and that Dives, even there, clung to the fatherhood of
God. And I told him this world was a hell to those who deserved hell,
and a place of much trial to most men and women, and I thought it was
poor comfort to preach to such, that the next world was worse. There
now! I have told you enough. He asked me to lunch with him, and I did;
and I told him as we ate, what a fine fellow Ian was, and he listened
and was silent."

"Then you saw Ian's mother and sister?" asked Thora.

"No, I did not. They had gone for the winter to the Bridge of Allan.
Mrs. Macrae is sick, her husband seemed unhappy about her."

Rahal hoped now that her home would settle itself into its usual calm,
methodical order. She strove to give to every hour its long accustomed
duty, and to infuse an atmosphere of rest and of "use and wont" into
every day's affairs. It was impossible. The master of the house had
suffered a world change. He had tasted of strange pleasures and
enthusiasms, and was secretly planning a life totally at variance with
his long accustomed routine and responsibilities. He did not speak of
the things in his heart but nevertheless they escaped him.

Very soon he began to have much more regular communication with his
sons in Shetland, and finally he told Rahal that he intended taking
his son Robert into partnership. Such changes grew slowly in Ragnor's
mind, and much more slowly in practice, but Rahal knew that they were
steadily working to some ultimate, and already definite and determined
end in her husband's will.

The absent also exerted a far greater power upon the home than any
one believed. Ian's letters came with persistent regularity, and the
influence of one was hardly spent, when another arrived of quite a
different character. Ian was rapidly realizing his hopes. He had been
gladly taken into a surgical corps, under the charge of a Doctor
Frazer, and his life was a continual drama of stirring events.
Generally he wrote between actions, and then he described the gallant
young men resting on the slopes of the beleaguered hill, with their
weapons at their finger tips, but always che