All about there grew up in her ears a sound of sweet music, as of the many singers at the kirk on still, warm Sabbath days, singing the psalms which she remembered long ago in Ormiland, only they sounded very far away. And at times the brickyard reeled and dazzled, the arid trodden ground and steaming bricks fell back, the cracked walls opened out, and she saw the sun shining upon golden hills, the like of which she had never seen before. "What is this? Oh, what's this?" she asked herself aloud, and the sound of her own voice was in her ears as the roaring of many waters. It seemed to her to be almost time now. She leaned forward wearily to call her son to help her. But he was sitting on a throne in the midst of his castle, dressed as Robin Hood, with all his merry men about him. He looked so happy, and he laughed so loud, that Isbel said again to herself— "I can manage yet for half an hour, and then I shall cry to him." But her son caught sight of her at the window. He was so elated that he did not mind noticing his mother, as a common boy would have done. He waved his hand to her, calling out loud— "Mither, mither, I'm biggin' a bonny hoose for ye to leeve in!" Isbel smiled, and it was as if the sun which shone on the hills of her dream had touched her thin face and made it also beautiful for the last time before sundown. "My guid boy—my nice boy," she said, "the Lord will look till him! He said he was biggin' a hoose for his mither. Let him big his hoose. In an hour I shall cry to him—my ain laddie!" Yet in an hour she did not cry, and it was the only time she had ever broken her word to her son. But that was because Isbel Kelly had journeyed where no crying is. Neither shall there be any more pain. ADVENTURE V. THE BRIGANDS OF THE CITY. Cleg Kelly's mother lay still in her resting grave, and had no more need of pity. Cleg abode with his father in the tumble-down shanty by the brickfield at Easter Beach, and asked for no pity either. Cleg had promised his mother, Isbel, that he would not forsake his father. "Na, I'll no rin awa' frae ye," so he told his father, frankly, "for I promised my mither; but gin ye lick me, I'll pit my wee knife intil ye when ye are sleepin'! Mind ye that!" And his father minded, which was fortunate for both. Cleg was now twelve, and much respected by his father, who fully believed that he was speaking the truth. Tim Kelly, snow-shoveller, feared his son Cleg with his sudden wild-cat fierceness, much more than he feared God—more, even, than he feared Father Donnelly, to whom he went twice a year to ease his soul of a portion of his more specially heinous sins. Yet Tim Kelly was a better man, because of the respect in which he held his son. He even boasted of Cleg's cleverness when he was safe among his old cronies in Mother Flannigan's kitchen, or in the bar-parlour at Hare's public.