mistake in
her treatment of the wound--to dress it with an irritating salve instead
of with a healing one? what so easy as to inflame a mind already
stricken by fear and maddened by drink? _Must_ she speak more plainly
the thing that had arisen in her mind?

* * * * *

Day followed day, and soon rumour spread and grew to certainty that of a
surety the dog was mad that had bitten the master. From his room, they
said, came the sound of ravings and of shouts. Folk spoke below their
breath of how it was said he foamed at the mouth, and few dared venture
near.

At last there came a night when Elspeth's son crept stealthily by the
back stairs to aid his mother in holding down the sick man in the
paroxysms of his madness; and the guilty wife, cowering alone in her
room, stopped her ears lest awful sounds should reach them.

* * * * *

Summer was spent, and Tweed murmured seaward between banks ruddy and
golden with autumn's foliage.

In a house in Edinburgh, not far removed from Holyrood, clad in deep
black, there lingered restlessly a Border woman, for whom the months had
dragged with halting foot since a certain spring night near Norham.

"Will he come?" to herself she whispered for the hundredth time. "Surely
he must come."

And as she waited, a flush leapt to her cheek at the sound of a step
nearing her door. A man entered, grave, almost stern, of face, and she
sprang to her feet with a cry, and with outstretched arms, that sank
slowly to her side, as her eyes questioned those of her visitor.

"You have come," she said unsteadily; "you have come. And you know ...
my husband ... is dead?"

"Rumours had reached me," he answered coldly. "When did he die?"

"It was in the spring, five months since. He was bitten by a dog, and he
died ... raving mad."

"Bitten by a dog?" he queried.

"Do you not remember? The dog you brought with you bit him. He never
recovered. And ... and he died mad."

"It was my dog that bit him? And he died mad in consequence of that
bite? I do not understand. My dog is alive and well; he was never mad."

Her eyes fell. What need to plead further! She knew now too well that
his love for her was indeed dead and buried. Had a spark of it yet
lived in his heart, suspicion could have found no place. Gone now was
all pride, all control; at his feet she threw herself, clasping her
knees.

"Have you no pity--no pity? He is dead, I