late.

Would she rather be at Rundell House as Peter's wife or sitting in a
one-roomed apartment sewing pit clothes perhaps, or washing and
scrubbing in the slavery in which the women folk of her class generally
lived? Ah, yes, as Robert's wife that would have been happiness. But it
was all too late now. She had turned aside--and she must pay the penalty
of it all.

Long she sat, and cried, and at last realizing that she was cold and
shivering, she took off her clothes and crawled off to bed, her last
thought of Robert as he had left her, the pain in his eyes and the awful
agony in his voice: "Oh, Mysie, how I hae loved you! An' I thocht you
cared for me!" rang in her ears as she lay and tossed in sleepless
misery.

In the morning she was in a high fever and unable to rise out of her
bed. She had a headache and felt wretched and ill. In her exhausted
state, weakened by worry and her resistance gone, the drenching, the
chill and the long sitting in her lonely room had overmastered her
completely.

She raved about Robert, crying to him in her fevered excitement, and he,
all unconscious, was at that time at his work, tired also and exhausted
by his terrible night upon the moor.

When he stumbled and fell into the mossy pool, his mind became more
collected and, scrambling out, he stood to consider where he was, trying
to find his bearings in the thick darkness.

The low whinnying of a horse near by gave him a clew and he started in
the direction of the cry, concluding that it was some of the horses
sheltering behind a dyke which ran across the moor from the end of the
village.

He crawled and scrambled along, and after going about twenty yards he
came to the dyke, at the other side of which stood the cowering horses.

"Whoa, Bob," he said soothingly, and one of them whinnied back in
response as if glad to know that a human being was near. He moved nearer
to them, and began to stroke their manes and clap their necks, to which
they responded by rubbing their faces against him and cuddling an
affectionate return for the sympathy in his voice.

"Puir Bob," he said, tenderly, as he patted the neck of the animal which
rubbed its soft nose against his arm. It seemed so glad of the
companionship and reached nearer as Robert put out his other hand to
stroke sympathetically the nose of the other horse, as he also drew
near.

"Puir Rosy," he said. "Was you feart for the wind and the rain? Poor
lass! It's an awfu' nicht