"Some fowk are like swine. They notice nocht that's no pitten intil the trough afore them!" said the Mains indignantly. So they parted, each to his own errand. Day swayed and swirled into a strange night of shooting stars and intensest darkness. The soul of Grace Allen wandered in blackest night. Sometimes the earth appeared ready to open and swallow her up. Sometimes she seemed to be wandering by the side of the great pool of the Black Water with her hands full of flowers. There were roses blush-red, like what he had said her cheeks were sometimes. There were velvety pansies, and flowers of strange intoxicating perfume, the like of which she had never seen. But at every few yards she felt that she must fling them all into the black water and fare forth into the darkness to gather more. Then in her bed she would start up, hearing the hail of a dear voice calling to her from the Rhonefoot. Once she put on her clothes in haste and would have gone forth; but her aunt Annie, waking and startled, a tall, gaunt apparition, came to her. "Grace Allen," she said, "where are you gangin' at this time o' the nicht?" "There's somebody at the boat," she said, "waiting. Let me gang, Aunt Annie: they want me; I hear them cry. O Annie, I hear them crying as a bairn cries!" "Lie doon on yer bed like a clever lass," said her aunt gently. "There's naebody there." "Or gin there be," said Aunt Barbara from her bed, "e'en let them cry. Is this a time for decent fowk to be gaun play-actin' aboot?" So the daylight came, and the evening and the morning were the second day. And Grace Allen went about her work with clack of gripper-iron and dip of oar. Late on in the gloaming of the third day following, Aunt Annie went down to the broad flat boat that lay so still at the water's edge. Something black was knocking dully against it. Grace had been gone four hours, and it was weary work watching along the shore or going within out of the chill wind to endure Barbara's bitter tongue. The black thing that knocked was the small boat, broken loose from her moorings and floating helplessly. Annie Allen took a boathook and pulled it to the shore. Except that the boat was half full of flowers, there was nothing and no one inside. But the world span round and the stars went out when the finder saw the flowers. When Aunt Annie Allen came to herself, she found the water was rising rapidly. It was up to her ankles. She went indoors and asked for Grace. "Save us, Ann!" said Barbara; "I thocht she was wi' you. Where hae ye been till this time o' nicht? An' your feet's dreepin' wat. Haud aff the clean floor!" "But Gracie! Oor lassie Grade! What's come o' Gracie?" wailed the elder woman. At that instant there came so thrilling a cry from over the dark waters out of the night that the women turned to one another and instinctively caught at each other's hands. "Leave me, I maun gang," said Aunt Annie. "That's surely Grace." Her sister gripped her tight.