place before their eyes. “Maybe the lad can swim,” said Eben Campbell’s wife--“onyway yonder’s your Colin running races with death to save him. But you maunna sit here--come into Dugald Macfarlane’s house. There’s my man away in another boat and some mair. But we canna let you sit here.” “Eh, my Colin, I canna see my Colin,” said the mistress of Ramore; but they led her away into the nearest cottage, notwithstanding her reluctance. There they all stood clustering at the window, aiding the eyes which had failed her in her weakness. Colin’s mother sat silent in the chair where they had placed her, trembling and rocking herself to and fro. Her heart within her was praying and crying for the boys--the two boys whom in this moment of confused anxiety she could not separate--her own first-born, and the stranger who was “another woman’s bairn.” God help all women and mothers!--though Colin was safe, what could her heart do but break at the thought of the sudden calamity which had shut out the sunshine from another. She rocked herself to and fro, ceasing at last to hear what they said to her, and scarcely aware of anything except the dull clank of the oars against the boat’s side; somebody coming or going, she knew not which--always coming or going--never bringing certain news which was lost and which saved. The mistress of Ramore was still in this stupor of anxiety, when young Harry Frankland, dripping and all but insensible, was carried into Dugald Macfarlane’s cottage. The little room became dark instantly with such a cloud of men that it was difficult to make out how he had been saved, or if there was indeed any life left in the lad. But Dugald Macfarlane’s wife, who had the ferry-boat at Struan, and understood about drowning, had bestirred herself in the meantime, and had hot blankets and other necessaries in the inner room where big Colin Campbell carried the boy. Then all the men about burst at once into the narrative. “If it hadna been for little Colin o’ Ramore”--was about all Mrs. Campbell made out of the tale. The cottage was so thronged that there was scarcely an entrance left for the doctor and Sir Thomas who had both been summoned by anxious messengers. By this time the storm had come down upon the loch, and a wild sudden tempest of rain was sweeping black across hill and water, obliterating every line of the landscape. Half-way across, playing on the surface of the water was a bit of spar with a scarlet rag attached to it, which made a great show glistening over the black waves. This was all that was visible of the pleasure-boat in which the young stranger had been bounding along so pleasantly an hour before. The neighbours dropped off gradually, dispersing to other adjacent houses to talk over the incident, or pushing homeward with an indifference to the storm that was natural to the dwellers on the Holy Loch; and it was only when she was left alone, waiting for her husband,