"O my God, who wast the God of my forefathers, keep Thou my two bairns. They are gone from under my roof, but they are under Thine. Through the storm and the darkness be Thou about them. Let Thy light be in their hearts. Though here we meet no more, may we meet an unbroken family around Thy heavenly hearth. And have mercy on us who here await Thy hand, on this good ministering woman, and on me, alas! Thine unworthy servant, for I am but a sinful man, O Lord!" Then Meysie made down her box-bed in the kitchen, and the minister retired to his own little chamber. He took his leather case out of his breast-pocket, and clasped it in his hand as he began his own protracted private devotions. He knelt on a place where his knees had long since worn a hole in the waxcloth. So, kneeling on the bare stone, he prayed long, even till the candle flickered itself out, smelling rankly in the room. At the deepest time of the night, while the snow winds were raging about the half-buried cot, the dark figure of a young man opened the never-locked door and stepped quickly into the small lobby in which the minister's hat and worn overcoat were hanging. He paused to listen before he came into the kitchen, but nothing was to be heard except the steady breathing of the deaf woman. He came in and stepped across the floor. The red glow from the peats on the hearth revealed the figure of Clement Symington. He shook the snow from his coat and blew on his fingers. Then he went to the door of his father's room and listened. Hearing no sound, he slowly opened it. His father had fallen asleep on his knees, with his forehead on his open Bible. The red glow of the dying peat-fire lighted the little room. "I wonder where he keeps his cash," he murmured to himself; "the sooner it's over the better." His eye caught something like a purse in his father's hand. As he took it, something broad and light fell out. He held it up to the moonbeam which came through the narrow upper panes. It was his own portrait taken in the suit which his father had bought him to go to college in. He had found the old man's wealth. A strangeness in his father's attitude caught his eye. With a sudden, quick return of boyish affection he laid his hand on the bowed shoulder, forgetting for the moment his evil purpose and all else. The attenuated figure swayed and would have fallen to the side, had Clement Symington not caught it and laid his father tenderly on the bed. Then he stood upright and cried aloud in agony with that most terrible of griefs--the repentance that comes too late. But none heard him. The deaf woman slept on. And the dead gave no answer, being also for ever deaf and dumb. II A MINISTER'S DAY _On either side the great and still ice sea Are compassing snow mountains near and far; While, dominant, Schreckhorn and Finsteraar Hold their grim peaks aloft defiantly_.