g to
the Lord, but I maunna weet Willie Mackay's claes."

"It's a sair peety," said Janet, "'at the men fowk disna learn to
weyve stockin's, or dee something or ither wi' their han's. Mony's
the time my stockin' 's been maist as guid's a cloaset to me, though
I cudna jist gang intil't. But what maitters 't! A prayer i' the
hert 's sure to fin' the ro'd oot. The hert's the last place 'at
can haud ane in. A prayin' hert has nae reef (roof) till't."

She turned and left him. Comforted by her words, he followed her
back into the kitchen, and sat down beside her.

"Gibbie 'ill be here mayhap whan least ye luik for him," said Janet.

Neither of them caught the wild eager gleam that lighted the face of
the strange woman at those last words of Janet. She looked up at
her with the sharpest of glances, but the same instant compelled her
countenance to resume its former expression of fierce indifference,
and under that became watchful of everything said and done.

Still the rain fell and the wind blew; the torrents came tearing
down from the hills, and shot madly into the rivers; the rivers ran
into the valleys, and deepened the lakes that filled them. On every
side of the Mains, from the foot of Glashgar to Gormdhu, all was one
yellow and red sea, with roaring currents and vortices numberless.
It burrowed holes, it opened long-deserted channels and
water-courses; here it deposited inches of rich mould, there yards
of sand and gravel; here it was carrying away fertile ground,
leaving behind only bare rock or shingle where the corn had been
waving; there it was scooping out the bed of a new lake. Many a
thick soft lawn, of loveliest grass, dotted with fragrant shrubs and
rare trees, vanished, and nothing was there when the waters subsided
but a stony waste, or a gravelly precipice. Woods and copses were
undermined, and trees and soil together swept into the wash:
sometimes the very place was hardly there to say it knew its
children no more. Houses were torn to pieces, and their contents,
as from broken boxes, sent wandering on the brown waste, through the
grey air, to the discoloured sea, whose saltness for a long way out
had vanished with its hue. Haymows were buried to the very top in
sand; others went sailing bodily down the mighty stream--some of
them followed or surrounded, like big ducks, by a great brood of
ricks for their ducklings. Huge trees went past as if shot down an
Alpine slide, cottages, and bridg