“You’re in time--oh ay, you’re in time; but little more,” he said, and went on at intervals in a somewhat solemn monologue, as they drove down the side of the grey and misty loch, under dripping cloaks and umbrellas. “She’s been failing ever since the new year,” he said. “It’s not to be wondered at, at her age; neither should we sorrow, as them that are without hope. She’s lived a good and useful life, and them that she brought into the world have been enabled to smooth her path out of it. We’ve nothing to murmur at; she’ll be real glad to see you both--you, Marg’ret, and you, Mr. Edgar. Often does she speak of you. It’s a blessing of Providence that her life has been spared since the time last Autumn when we all thought she was going. She’s had a real comfortable evening time, with the light in it, poor old granny, as she had a right to, if any erring mortal can be said to have a right. And now, there’s Willie restored, that was thought to be dead and gone.” “Has Willie come back?” asked Margaret hastily. “He’s expected,” said Robert Campbell, with a curious dryness, changing the lugubrious tone of his voice; “and I hope he’ll turn out an altered man; but it’s no everyone going down to the sea in ships that sees the wisdom o’ the Lord in the great waters, as might be hoped.” The rain blew in their faces, the mists came down over the great mountain range which separates Loch Arroch from Loch Long, and the Castle Farm lay damp and lonely in its little patch of green, with the low ruins on the other side of the house shining brown against the cut fields and the slaty blueness of the loch. It was not a cheerful prospect, nor was it cheerful to enter the house itself, full of the mournful bustle and suppressed excitement of a dying--that high ceremonial, to which, in respect, or reverence, or dire curiosity, or acquisitiveness, more dreadful still, so many spectators throng in the condition of life to which all Mrs. Murray’s household belonged. In the sitting-room there were several people seated. Mrs. MacColl, the youngest daughter, in her mother’s chair, with her handkerchief to her eyes, and Mrs. Campbell opposite, telling her sister, who had but lately arrived, the details of the illness; Jeanie MacColl, who had come with her mother, sat listlessly at the window, looking out, depressed by the day and the atmosphere, and the low hum of talk, and all the dismal accessories of the scene. James Murray’s wife, a hard-featured, homely person, plain in attire, and less refined in manner than any of the others, went and came between the parlour and the kitchen. “They maun a’ have their dinner,” she said to Bell, “notwithstanding that there’s a dying person in the house;” and with the corners of her mouth drawn down, and an occasional sigh making itself audible, she laid the cloth, and prepared the table.