Then Ragnor answered, "Tonight I will say neither this nor that on the matter. I will sleep over the subject and take counsel of One wiser than myself. Thou had better do likewise. Many things are to consider." And Ian went away without a word. There was anger in his heart, and as he sat gloomily in his dimly lit room and felt the damp chill of the midnight, he told himself that he had been hardly judged. "I have done nothing wrong," he whispered passionately. "Old McLeod collected his own rents and looked after his own property and no one thought he did wrong. He was an elder in one of the largest Edinburgh kirks and the favourite chairman in missionary meetings, but because I did not go to kirk, what was business in him was sin in me. "As to the gambling houses, I had nothing to do with them but to collect lawful money, due the McLeod estate; and as far as I can see, men who gamble for money are quite respectable if they get what they gamble for. There was that old reprobate Lord Sinclair. He redeemed the Sinclair estates by gambling and he married the beautiful daughter of the noble Seaforths. Nobody blamed him. Pshaw! It is all a matter of money--or it is my ill luck." And to such irritating reflections he finally fell asleep. CHAPTER IX THE BREAD OF BITTERNESS Sorrow develops the mind. It seems as if a soul was given us to suffer with-- Dust to dust, but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came A portion of the Eternal which must glow Through time and change unalterably the same. Our endless need is met by God's endless help. At her room door Thora bid her mother good night. Rahal desired to talk with her, but the girl shook her head and said wearily, "I want to think, Mother. I have no heart to speak yet." And Rahal turned sadly away. She knew that hour, that her child had come to a door for which she had no key and she left her alone with the situation she had to face. Nor did Thora just then realize that within the past hour her girlhood had vanished, and that she had suddenly become a woman with a woman's fate upon her and a woman's heart-rending problem to solve. How it came she did not enquire, yet she did recognise some change in herself. Hitherto, all her troubles had been borne by her father or mother. This trouble was her very own. No one could carry it for her but without any hesitation she accepted it. "I must find out the very root of this matter," she said to herself, "and I will not go to bed until I do. Nor is it half-asleep I will be over the question. I will sit up and be wide awake."