up
all the food in the cottage, and the storm might go on for ever, who
could tell? Or who could tell whether, when it was over, and she
got down to the valley below, she should not find it a lifeless
desert, everybody drowned, and herself the only person left alive in
the world?

Then the noises were terrible. She seemed to inhabit noise.
Through the general roar of wind and water and rain every now then
came a sharper sound, like a report or crack, followed by a strange
low thunder, as it seemed. They were the noises of stones carried
down by the streams, grinding against each other, and dashed stone
against stone; and of rocks falling and rolling, and bounding
against their fast-rooted neighbours. When it began to grow dark,
her misery seemed more than she could bear; but then, happily, she
grew sleepy, and slept the darkness away.

With the new light came new promise and fresh hope. What should we
poor humans do without our God's nights and mornings? Our ills are
all easier to help than we know--except the one ill of a central
self, which God himself finds it hard to help.--It no longer rained
so fiercely; the wind had fallen; and the streams did not run so
furious a race down the sides of the mountain. She ran to the burn,
got some water to wash herself--she could not spare the clear water,
of which there was some still left in Janet's pails--and put on her
own clothes, which were now quite dry. Then she got herself some
breakfast, and after that tried to say her prayers, but found it
very difficult, for, do what she might to model her slippery
thoughts, she could not help, as often as she turned herself towards
him, seeing God like her father, the laird.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE WHELP.

Gibbie sped down the hill through a worse rain than ever. The
morning was close, and the vapours that filled it were like smoke
burned to the hue of the flames whence it issued. Many a man that
morning believed another great deluge begun, and all measures
relating to things of this world lost labour. Going down his own
side of the Glashburn, the nearest path to the valley, the
gamekeeper's cottage was the first dwelling on his way. It stood a
little distance from the bank of the burn, opposite the bridge and
gate, while such things were.

It had been with great difficulty, for even Angus did not know the
mountain so well as Gibbie, that the gamekeeper reached it with the
housekeeper the night before. It was