This enforced pause made them both a little calmer. “Ye will stay all night,” said Agnes, faltering, “now that you are here. Take off your bonnet, Kirsteen. And ye must take something.” “Do you think,” said Kirsteen, “that I have come here to eat or to drink--or to bide?--oh, no, oh, no,--but get me the thing I have come for and let me go.” “How can I get it when my mother will not give it up,” said Agnes overcome, falling into the natural refuge of tears. “Let me see her,” said Kirsteen. “She has seen nobody, not even the minister. She will scarcely look at the light. She cannot cry like me. She’s just like stone. He was her only son, and she just moans and says she never believed the Almighty would deal with her so.” Agnes, with the impatience of a patient and gentler nature of this intolerable grief, was relieved to be able to make her plaint. But it did not seem unnatural to Kirsteen that the mother should be like stone. “When she sees me,” she said, “perhaps the tears will come.” “Oh, Kirsteen, but I dare not ask her.” “I will not bid you ask her, I will just go ben.” “Oh, Kirsteen!” She knew the way well, across the outer room, which was not called a hall, to the door on the other side, within which Mrs. Drummond was sitting with her woe. There was nothing but the moonlight in the hall making a broad strip of whiteness as it came in unbroken by the open door. The two black figures passed across it like shadows, the daughter of the house following, the stranger leading. Mrs. Drummond sat by the side of the fire, which was a feeble redness in the grate, unneeded, supposed to add a little cheerfulness, but in its unnatural, untended smouldering making things rather worse than better. Her white widow’s cap was the highest light in the room, which with its dark wainscot and faint candles looked like a cave of gloom. The windows were all closed and curtained, shutting out the lingering light of day. A large Bible was open on the table, and in Mrs. Drummond’s lap lay the knitting with which her fingers were always occupied. But she was neither reading nor working; her white hair was scarcely distinguishable under the whiteness of her cap. Her face rigid with sorrow was grey in comparison. She sat without moving, like marble. Calamity had made her severe and terrible, she who had once been kind. She took no notice at first of the fact that some one had come into the room, believing it to be her gentle Agnes, who was nobody, the helpless handmaiden of this despair. Kirsteen went round the table to the other side of the fire and stood before his mother, saying nothing. Mrs. Drummond raised her eyelids and perceived her with a faint cry. “Who is this come to disturb me? I gave no leave to anybody to come. I can see nobody. Kirsteen Douglas, what are ye wanting here?”