Before Lily could explain what had happened Tom too appeared, wet and pale, and choking with sobs, followed at a little distance by two red-bearded, red-haired keepers, wet through also, moving slowly, and carrying between them Macpherson, without coat or hat, his head fallen back, his face white and still, his arms hanging limply down, water trickling from his clothes and hair. “I knew it! I said so!” screamed Mrs. Echalaz, clasping Tom in her arms. “Never, never will I trust you out of my sight again!” Tom broke away, crying bitterly. “Oh, mother, don’t! He’s dead!” “Dead!” shrieked poor Mrs. Echalaz; “and they’re bringing him into this house?” She was rushing out into the passage, but Robert, who had already helped to bring Macpherson in, met her, and led her quietly back. “You put these two to bed,” said he, “and I will take care of him, mother. The men say he may come round,” and he hurried away to do all that the keeper’s experience suggested and send at once for a doctor. The keeper, whose name, in common with most of the population of that district, was also Macpherson, told Robert how this very thing had happened only two years before to the young laird and his own son, who were both very nearly drowned, and explained that an unusual amount of rain must have fallen up in the hills, some sudden and violent downpour, to occasion the spate. It was long before they dared cease to doubt of Macpherson’s recovery, and when at last he really began to mend, the process was slow and tedious. As soon as her terrors for Tom were appeased by finding that he was not a whit the worse for his wetting, Mrs. Echalaz took so kindly to the young fellow, who certainly owed his whole misfortune to them, that she waited on him and nursed him as patiently and tenderly as his own mother could have done. “I could not have believed it was so pleasant to be ill,” he said to her, with a grateful smile, one day when, helped by Robert and Tom, he had come into the sitting-room for the first time; “I shall be spoiled for going back to work.” They all protested that he need not think of work yet, as he could not so much as walk alone; and many a pleasant day went by in that little sitting-room, where half-drawn blinds made a cool dimness, and an unfamiliar perfume dwelt in the air—attar of roses, perhaps; something quite different, at any rate, from the odor of plain—very plain— cookery and peat smoke to which he was accustomed at the Manse. The room was like fairyland, with its hundred costly trifles, china ornaments, scraps of Oriental work, curious fans and other nicknacks, photographs and books littered about in prettily-regulated disorder.