Kirsteen looked up in her face with quick anger and impatient sarcasm. “Why should I be quiet?” she said. “Have I nothing to do that I should be quiet? That’s for idle folk. But read on, read on, Miss Jean. It’s a bonny story--and there will be more?” Miss Jean retired again to her seat, and all the workers bent over their work but not a needle moved. Kirsteen picked up the silk again. She tried to restore it to its form, plaiting and twisting with swift impatient movements now this way and now that. All the young women watched her furtively, not losing a movement she made. She twisted the silk about, trying apparently to recover her own intention, pulling it here and there with impatient twitches and murmurs of exasperation. Then she piled it all upon the table in a sort of rage, throwing it out of her hands. “Go on, go on with your paper,” she cried to Miss Jean, and took up a half made dress from the table at which she began to stitch hurriedly, looking up every moment to cry, “Go on, go on. Will ye go on?” At length Miss Jean, exceedingly tremulous and miserable, began to read again in a broken voice. Kirsteen stitched blindly for half an hour, then she rose suddenly and left the room. CHAPTER IX. Kirsteen did not seclude herself for long. While the girls were still whispering to each other, not without some awe, of the sudden shock which she had evidently received, of her deathlike look, her struggle to maintain her composure, her rejection of all inquiries, she had returned among them, had taken up the silk again, and resumed what she was doing. There was scarcely a word said after Kirsteen came back. The young women all bent over their sewing, and their needles flew through their work. The presence among them of this one tragic face, perfectly colourless, self-commanded, silent, wrapped in an abstraction which nobody could penetrate, had the strangest impressive effect upon them. They did not dare to speak even to each other, but signed to each other for things they wanted, and worked like so many machines, fearing even to turn their eyes towards her. Miss Jean, quite unable to control herself after this mysterious blow which she had given without knowing, had retired to the parlour, where she sat alone and cried, she knew not why. Oh, if she had but held her tongue, if she had not been so ready to go and read the news to them! Kirsteen, so busy as she was, might never have seen it, might never have known. Miss Jean read the paragraph over and over again, till she could have repeated it by heart. She found lower down a list of the names of those who had been killed and wounded, but this brought no enlightenment to her, for she did not know Drumcarro, or the names of the neighbours near. She had to lay it away as an insoluble mystery, not able to comprehend how, from so few details as there were, and without even hearing any name, Kirsteen should have at once been killed, as it were, by this mysterious blow. How did she know who he