ere all
too true, and that Moncrieff and I saw sights which will haunt us both
until our dying day.

The silence all round the _estancia_ when we rode up was eloquent,
terribly eloquent. The buildings were blackened ruins, and it was painful
to notice the half-scorched trailing flowers, many still in bloom,
clinging around the wrecked and charred verandah. But everywhere about, in
the out-buildings, on the lawn, in the garden itself, were the remains of
the poor creatures who had suffered.

'Alas! for love of this were all,
And none beyond, O earth!'

Moncrieff spoke but little all the way back. While standing near the
verandah I had seen him move his hand to his eyes and impatiently brush
away a tear, but after that his face became firm and set, and for many a
day after this I never saw him smile.

* * * * *

At this period of our strange family story I lay down my pen and lean
wearily back in my chair. It is not that I am tired of writing. Oh, no!
Evening after evening for many and many a long week I have repaired up
here to my turret chamber--my beautiful study in our Castle of Coila--and
with my faithful hound by my feet I have bent over my sheets and
transcribed as faithfully as I could events as I remember them. But it is
the very multiplicity of these events as I near the end of my story that
causes me to pause and think.

Ah! here comes aunt, gliding into my room, pausing for a moment, curtain
in hand, half apologetically, as she did on that evening described in our
first chapter.

'No, auntie, you do not disturb me. Far from it. I was longing for your
company.'

She is by my side now, and looking down at my manuscript.

'Yes,' she says many times--nodding assent to every sentence, and ever
turning back the pages for reference--'yes, and now you come near the last
events of this story of the M'Crimmans of Coila. Come out to the castle
roof, and breathe the evening air, and I will talk.'

We sit there nearly an hour. Aunt's memory is better even than mine, and I
listen to her without ever once opening my lips. Then I lead her back to
the tower, and point smilingly to the harp.

She has gone at last, and I resume my story.

* * * * *

We, Moncrieff and I, saw no signs of Indians during our long ride that
day. We had gone on this journey with our lives in our hands. The ver