"At any rate I did no wrong! I am glad, Mother." "Wrong! Thou wilt see the Bishop today. Ask him. He will tell thee that the English Church and the English women gave up very reluctantly their homage to Mary. Are not their grand churches called after Peter and Paul and other male saints? Dost thou think that Christ loved Peter and Paul more than his mother? I know better. Please God thou wilt know better some day." "Churches are often called after Mary, as well as the saints." "Not in Scotland." "There is one in Glasgow. Vedder told me he used to hear Bishop Hedley preach there." "It is an Episcopal Church. Ask him about thy dream. No, I mean thy soul's experience." "Thou said _dream_, Mother. It was not a dream. I saw no one. I only heard a voice. It is what we see in dreams that is important." "Now wilt thou come to thy breakfast?" "Is _he_ downstairs yet?" "I will go and call him." Rahal, however, came to the table alone. She said, "Ian asked that he might lie still and sleep an hour or two. He has not slept all night long, I think," she added. "His voice sounded full of trouble." So the two women ate their breakfast alone for Ragnor did not return in time to join them. And Rahal's hopefulness left her, and she was silent and her face had a grey, fearful expression that Thora could not help noticing. "You look ill, Mother!" she said, "and you were looking so well when we came downstairs. What is it?" "I know not. I feel as if I was going into a black cloud. I wish that thy father would come home. He is in trouble. I wonder then what is the matter!" In about an hour they saw Ragnor and the Bishop coming towards the house together. "They are in trouble, Thora, both of them are in trouble." "About Thora they need not to be in trouble. She will do what they advise her to do." "It is not thee." "What then?" "I will not name my fear, lest I call it to me." Then she rose and went to the door and Thora followed her, and by this time, Ragnor and the Bishop were at the garden gate. Very soon the Bishop was holding their hands, and Rahal found when he released her hand that he had left a letter in it. Yet for a moment she hardly noticed the fact, so shocked was she at the expression of her husband's face. He looked so much older, his eyes were two wells of sorrow, his distress had passed beyond words, and when she asked, "What is thy trouble, Coll?" he looked at her pitifully and pointed to the letter. Then she took Thora's hand and they went to her room together. Sitting on the side of her bed, she broke the seal and looked at the superscription. "It is from Adam Vedder," she said, as she began to read it. No other word escaped her lips until she came to the end of the long epistle. Then she laid it down on the bed beside her and shivered out the words, "Boris is dying. Perhaps dead. Oh, Boris! My son Boris! Read for thyself."