arm.

"Wullie--look at him!" she whispered.

"He's been at the bar'l," muttered Wullie, and with a cry she started
forward. But Wullie caught her back gently.

"He knows what he's daein', lassie," he whispered, watching Andrew's
face expectantly, and the girl stood petrified beside him. It came to
her very certainly that her father had realized he had not strength to
make what he called his allegiance to God, and that at the last he had
sought the momentary strength of the whisky that he knew would shatter
his glass heart.

"That's why he knew he would die to-day," her voice whispered, choked in
tears. She felt that she was in the grip of things that were bending and
breaking her life as they liked.

And then her father spoke, letting his stick clatter to the ground, and
lifting his swollen white hands.

"Friends," he said loudly, "ye have all known me in the old days. I
asked ye here to-night to tell ye how I went along the Damascus road and
cast my burden on the Lord.... He is not hard to deal with.... There's
beasts in us, all of us. They lift their heads out of us and jabber and
clamour at us; they tear at us with their claws, but if we throw
ourselves on God's strength He crushes the life out of the beasts. We
can do nothing till we stop fighting and lean on Him. He is kinder than
all our hopes, kinder than all our fears--"

His voice stopped with shot-like suddenness and his hands fell to his
side as he swayed. Marcella, Wullie and several others rushed to his
side. He fell, dragging the hunchback with him. His eyes, not blazing
now, but dimming as quickly as though veils had been drawn across them,
sought Marcella as he struggled for breath.

"Father--dear," she said, putting her arm under his grey head as Aunt
Janet walked across the room. "Dear--" she whispered, almost shyly, for
it was a word that she never used except in whispers to her mother.

"I knew we'd have a doing with ye, Andrew," said Aunt Janet, bending
stiffly in her satin frock. He could not hear. He looked at her and
turned to Marcella again.

"If ye--" he began, and suddenly felt very heavy on the girl's
supporting arm.

The people crept away talking quietly then. It seemed right that Andrew
Lashcairn had died in the midst of them all on All Souls' Night.

CHAPTER IV

After her father's death Marcella had more time to become aware of the
really tangible shadows about the farm. In fact, she wakened to a
general awareness