tide murmured and the sun glinted brightly through swirling
banks of gray clouds, they carried him to his long home. No one
spoke as he entered it. The minister dropped his kerchief upon
the upturned face, and David cast the first earth. Then the dead
man's friends, each taking the spade in his turn, filled in the
empty place, and laid over it the sod, and went silently away in
twos and threes, each to his own home.

When all had disappeared, David followed. He had now an irresistible
impulse to escape from his old surroundings. He did not feel as if he
cared to see again any one who had been a part of his past. He
went back to the cabin, ate some bread and fish, and then with a
little reluctance opened his father's chest. There was small wealth
in it--only some letters, and Liot's kirk clothes, and a leather
purse containing sixteen sovereigns. David saw at a glance that the
letters were written by his mother. He wondered a moment if his
father had yet found her again, and then he kissed the bits of
faded script and laid them upon the glowing peats. The money he
put in his pocket, and the chest and clothing he resolved to take
to Shetland with him. As for the cabin, he decided to give it to
Bella Campbell. "She was sore put to it last winter to shelter
her five fatherless bairns; and if my father liked any one more than
others, it was Angus Campbell," he thought.

Then he went out and looked at the boat. "It is small," he said,
"but it will carry me to Shetland. I can keep in the shadows of the
shore. And though it is a far sail round Cape Wrath and Dunnet Head,
it is summer weather, and I'll win my way if it so pleases God."

And thus it happened that on the first day of August this lonely
wayfarer on cheerless seas caught sight of the gray cliffs of the
Shetlands, lying like dusky spots in the sapphire and crimson
splendors of the setting sun.

Book Second

DAVID BORSON

BOOK SECOND

CONTENTS

PAGE

V. A New Life 85

VI. Kindred--the Quick and the Dead 107

VII. So Far and No Farther 127

VIII. The Justification of Death 144

IX. A Sacrifice Accepted 169

X. In the Fourth Watch 192

XI. The Lowest Hell 210

XII. "At Last it is Peace" 220

V

A NEW LIFE

Between D