better, too."

The mother's wasted face reddened for a moment, then turned pale
again, as she held out her hand to me. I looked at her anxiously,
and discerned the welcome signs of recovery, clearly revealed.
Her grand gray eyes rested on me again with a glimmer of their
old light. The hand that had lain so cold in mine on the past
night had life and warmth in it now.

"Should I have died before the morning if you had not come here?"
she asked, softly. "Have you saved my life for the second time? I
can well believe it."

Before I was aware of her, she bent her head over my hand, and
touched it tenderly with her lips. "I am not an ungrateful
woman," she murmured--"and yet I don't know how to thank you."

The child looked up quickly from her cake. "Why don't you kiss
him?" the quaint little creature asked, with a broad stare of
astonishment.

Her head sunk on her breast. She sighed bitterly.

"No more of Me!" she said, suddenly recovering her composure, and
suddenly forcing herself to look at me again. "Tell me what happy
chance brought you here last night?"

"The same chance," I answered, "which took me to Saint Anthony's
Well."

She raised herself eagerly in the chair.

"You have seen me again--as you saw me in the summer-house by the
waterfall!" she exclaimed. "Was it in Scotland once more?"

"No. Further away than Scotland--as far away as Shetland."

"Tell me about it! Pray, pray tell me about it!"

I related what had happened as exactly as I could, consistently
with maintaining the strictest reserve on one point. Concealing
from her the very existence of Miss Dunross, I left her to
suppose that the master of the house was the one person whom I
had found to receive me during my sojourn under Mr. Dunross's
roof.

"That is strange!" she exclaimed, after she had heard me
attentively to the end.

"What is strange?" I asked.

She hesitated, searching my face earnestly with her large grave
eyes.

"I hardly like speaking of it," she said. "And yet I ought to
have no concealments in such a matter from you. I understand
everything that you have told me--with one exception. It seems
strange to me that you should only have had one old man for your
companion while you were at the house in Shetland."

"What other companion did you expect to hear of?" I inquired.

"I expected," she answered, "to hear of a lady in the house."

I cannot positively say that the reply took me by surprise: it
forced me to reflect before I spoke again. I knew, by my past
experience, that she must have seen me, in my absence from her,
while I was spiritually present to her mind in a trance or dream.
Had she also seen the daily companion of my life in
Shetland--Miss Dunross?

I put the question in a form which left me free to decide whether
I should take her unreservedly into my confidence or not.

"Am I right," I began, "in supposing that you dreamed of me in
Shetland, as you once before dreamed of me while I was at my
house in Perthshire?"

"Yes," she answered. "It was at the close of evening, this time.
I fell asleep, or became insensible--I cannot say which. And I
saw you again, in a vision or a dream."

"Where did you see me?"

"I first saw you on the bridge over the Scotch river--just as I
met you on the evening when you saved my life. After a while the
stream and the landscape about it faded, and you faded with them,
into darkness. I waited a little, and the darkness melted away
slowly. I stood, as it seemed to me, in a circle of starry
lights; fronting a window, with a lake behind me, and before me a
darkened room. And I looked into the room, and the starry light
showed you to me again."

"When did this happen? Do you remember the date?"

"I remember that it was at the beginning of the month. The
misfortunes which have since brought me so low had not then
fallen on me; and yet, as I stood looking at you, I had the
strangest prevision of calamity that was to come. I felt the same
absolute reliance on your power to help me that I felt when I


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