er the moonshine; and at her
bow stood my boy, Willie, my eldest boy, and he smiled and beckoned
me. I shall go away with the next tide. Ere I go, thou tell me
something?"

"Whatever thou ask me."

"What came of poor Jan Vedder?"

Then Margaret understood the shadow that had fallen between herself
and her mother; the chill which had repressed all conversation; the
silent terror which had perchance hastened death.

"Oh, mother!" she cried, "did thou really have this fear? I never
harmed Jan. I left him on the cliff. God knows I speak the truth. I
know no more."

"Thank God! Now I can go in peace." Margaret had fallen on her knees
by the bedside, and Thora leaned forward and kissed her.

"Shall I send for father?"

"He will come in time."

A few hours afterward she said in a voice already far away, as if she
had called back from a long distance, "When Jan returns be thou kinder
to him, Margaret."

"Will he come back? Mother, tell me!"

But there was no answer to the yearning cry. Never another word from
the soul that had now cast earth behind it. Peter came home early, and
stood gloomily and sorrowfully beside his companion. Just when the
tide turned, he saw a momentary light flash over the still face, a
thrill of joyful recognition, a sigh of peace, instantly followed by
the pallor, and chill, and loneliness of death.

At the last the end had come suddenly. Peter had certainly known that
his wife was dying, but he had not dreamed of her slipping off her
mortal vesture so rapidly. He was shocked to find how much of his own
life would go with her. Nothing could ever be again just as it had
been. It troubled him also that there had been no stranger present.
The minister ought to have been sent for, and some two or three of
Thora's old acquaintances. There was fresh food for suspicion in Thora
Fae being allowed to pass out of life just at this time, with none
but her husband and daughter near, and without the consolation of
religious rites.

Peter asked Margaret angrily, why she had neglected to send for
friends and for the minister?

"Mother was no worse when thou went to the store this morning. About
noon she fell asleep, and knew nothing afterward. It would have been
cruel to disturb her."

But in her own heart Margaret was conscious that under any circumstances
she would have shrunk from bringing strangers into the house. Since
Jan's disappearance, she had been but once to kirk, for that once had
bee