them cry. O Annie, I hear them crying as a
bairn cries!"

"Lie doon on yer bed like a clever lass," said her aunt gently. "There's
naebody there."

"Or gin there be," said Aunt Barbara from her bed, "e'en let them cry.
Is this a time for decent fowk to be gaun play-actin' aboot?"

So the daylight came, and the evening and the morning were the second
day. And Grace Allen went about her work with clack of gripper-iron and
dip of oar.

Late on in the gloaming of the third day following, Aunt Annie went down
to the broad flat boat that lay so still at the water's edge. Something
black was knocking dully against it.

Grace had been gone four hours, and it was weary work watching along the
shore or going within out of the chill wind to endure Barbara's bitter
tongue.

The black thing that knocked was the small boat, broken loose from her
moorings and floating helplessly. Annie Allen took a boathook and pulled
it to the shore. Except that the boat was half full of flowers, there
was nothing and no one inside.

But the world span round and the stars went out when the finder saw the
flowers.

When Aunt Annie Allen came to herself, she found the water was rising
rapidly. It was up to her ankles. She went indoors and asked for Grace.

"Save us, Ann!" said Barbara; "I thocht she was wi' you. Where hae ye
been till this time o' nicht? An' your feet's dreepin' wat. Haud aff the
clean floor!"

"But Gracie! Oor lassie Grade! What's come o' Gracie?" wailed the elder
woman.

At that instant there came so thrilling a cry from over the dark waters
out of the night that the women turned to one another and instinctively
caught at each other's hands.

"Leave me, I maun gang," said Aunt Annie. "That's surely Grace."

Her sister gripped her tight.

"Let me gang--let me gang. She's my ain lassie, no yours!" Annie said
fiercely, endeavouring to thrust off Barbara's hands as they clutched
her like birds' talons from the bed.

"Help me to get up," said Barbara; "I canna be left here. I'll come wi'
ye."

So she that had been sick for twelve years arose, like a ghost from the
tomb, and with her sister went out to seek for the girl they had lost.
They found their way to the boat, reeling together like drunken men.
Annie almost lifted her sister in, and then fell herself among the
drenched and waterlogged flowers.

With the instinct of old habitude they fell to the oars, Barbara rowing
the better and the stronger. They felt the