And still Gilian was in his bewilderment and fear about the open door. Had anything come in that was there beside them at the bed? Down in the kitchen Peggy poked the fire with less than her customary vigour, but between her cheerful and worldly occupation and this doleful room, felt Gilian, lay a space--a stairway full of dreads. All the stories he had heard of Death personified came to him fast upon each other, and they are numerous about winter fires in the Highland glens. He could fancy almost that he saw the plaided spectre by the bedside, arms akimbo, smiling ghastly, waiting till his prey was done with earthly conversation. It was horrible to be the only one in that chamber to know of the terrific presence that had entered at the door, and the boy’s mouth parched with old, remote, unreasonable fears. They did not disappear, those childish terrors, even when a kitten moved across the floor and began to toy with the vallance of the bed, explaining at once the door’s opening. For might not the kitten, he thought, be more than Peggy’s foundling be the other Thing disguised? He watched its gambols at the feet of that distressed household, watched its pawing at the fringe, turning round upon itself in playfulness, emblem surely of the cruel heedlessness of nature. MacGibbon moved to the window and stood beside the Paymaster, saying no word, but looking out at the vacant street, its causeway still shining with the rain. They were turning their backs, as it were, on a sorrow irremediable. Miss Mary and the Cornal stood alone by the dying man. He lay like a log but that his left hand played restlessly on the coverlet, long in the fingers, sinewy at the wrist. Miss Mary took it in hers and put palm to palm, and caressed the back with her other hand with an overflowing of affection that murmured at her throat. And now that MacGibbon did not see and the Cornal had blurred eyes upon his brother’s boyish countenance, she felt free to caress, and she laid the poor hand against her cheek and coyly kissed it. The General turned his look upon her wet face with a moment’s comprehension. “Tuts! never mind, Mary, my dear,” said he, “it might have been with Jamie yonder on the field, and there--there you have a son--in a manner--left to comfort you.” Then he began to wander anew. “A son,” said he, “a son. Whose son? Turner threw our sonlessness in our Jock’s face, but it was in my mind there was a boy somewhere we expected something of.” Miss Mary beckoned on Gilian to come forward to the bedside. He rose from the chair he sat on in the farthest corner with his dreads and faltered over. “What boy’s this?” said the General, looking at him with surmising eyes. “He puts me in mind of--of--of--of an old tale somewhere with a sunny day in it. Nan! Nan! Nan!--that’s the name. I knew I would come on it, for the sound of it was always like a sunny day in Portugal or Spain--_He estado en Espana_.”