it!"

"And 'deed it's that, lass! Gin the hairst be gaein to the moles and
the bats, it's time we war awa hame; for it'll be a cauld winter."

"Ay, that it will! The minister was sair owercome at the prospec',
honest man. It was a' he cud do, to win at the en' o' his discoorse ohn
grutten ootricht."

"He sees into the will o' the Almichty. He's far ben wi' Him--that's
verra clear."

"Ay, lass, ay."

And hence, by slow degrees, in the middle of the vague prophecies of
vengeance gathered a more definite kernel of prediction, believed by
some, disbelieved, yet feared, by others--that the harvest would be so
eaten of worms and blasted with smut, that bread would be up to famine
prices, and the poor would die of starvation.

But still the flowers came out and looked men in the face and went in
again; and still the sun shone on the evil and on the good, and still
the rain fell on the just and on the unjust.

And still the denunciations from the pulpits went on; but the human
souls thus exposed to the fires seemed only to harden under their
influences.

CHAPTER LVII.

Before the period of Kate's visit arrived, a letter from Professor
Fraser, to the purport that if Mrs Forbes did not mind keeping Kate a
little longer he would be greatly indebted to her, came to Alec like a
reprieve from execution. And the _little longer_ lengthened into the
late harvest of that country.

The summer shone on, and the corn grew, green and bonnie. And Alec's
love grew with the corn; and Kate liked him better and better, but was
not a whit more inclined to fall in love with him.

One night, after the house was quiet, Alec, finding he could not sleep,
rose and went out to play the ghost a while. It was a sultry night.
Great piles of cloud were heaped up in the heavens. The moon gleamed
and vanished by fits, looking old and troubled when she sighed herself
out of a cloud.

"There's a storm coming," said Alec to himself; and watched and waited.
There was no wind below. The leaves of the black poplar, so ready to
tremble, hung motionless; and not a bat came startling on its unheard
skinny wing. But ere long a writhing began in the clouds overhead, and
they were twisted and torn about the moon. Then came a blinding flash,
and a roar of thunder, followed by a bellowing, as if the air were a
great dram, on which Titanic hands were beating and rolling. Then the
rain poured down, and the scent of the earth rose into the air. Alec