other's death, and again when his wife had left
him, taking the boy to London, and he knew the separation to be final.
His face was very pale, the pallor showing strangely through his tanned
skin, and his mouth was set, and twitching at the corners as beyond his
control.

"Are ye ill, Sandy?" I cried, going toward him hurriedly.

"No," he answered, sitting down at the table and hiding his face in his
hands; "but I've had a blow! I've had a blow!" he repeated. "It's
Danvers," he went on, when he could speak. "He went off to Lanure
yesterday and married Isabel Erskine!"

"Married Isabel Erskine!" I cried, like a parrot.

"Married Isabel Erskine!" repeated Nancy, who stood staring at him as
if she doubted his saneness.

"Married Isa----" I was beginning again, in a highly intelligent
manner, when Huey MacGrath suddenly dropped the tray of dishes he was
bringing in and carried his hands to his face, beginning to moan and
cry like a woman, for it had been the wish of his heart to have these
two children, who in some way he believed to be his own, married to
each other.

The disturbance was a good thing for all, for it broke the unnatural
tension between us, and after MacColl had assisted Huey into the
pantry, where I could see him standing, listening at the doorway, Sandy
continued:

"It was all that talking, grape-eyed woman! It was for that she fetched
her daughter to Arran. It's been going on right under my eye, and I too
blind and taken up with my own affairs to see it The poor laddie," he
cried. "The poor fool laddie!"

Understanding that a discussion of the marriage in her presence was an
impossibility, Nancy left us, with a white face, on some pretense of
business at the Burnside, and Sandy and I talked it out between us.
Midnight found us going back and forth over the matter and arriving at
the same point, that the chances of happiness for a man wedded to one
woman and in love with another are just nothing at all. I could feel
that there was one question in Sandy's mind which he could scarce bring
himself to ask, and I took the suggestion of it upon myself.

"It will bring many changes to us," I said, "and to none more than
Nancy."

"Do you think she cares for him?" Sandy asked, putting his thought
plainly.

"To be frank with ye, Sandy," said I, "it's a matter I've been far from
deciding. I believe that the visit to Mauchline changed her more than
any other event in her life. Before it she'd idealized