This proposition he was not prepared to deny, and the end of it was that Mr. Robson baptised the girl, taking Miranda for godmother. Mabilla they called her by her sponsor's desire, "Mabilla By-the-Wood," and as such she was published and married. You may be disposed to blame him for lightness of conscience, but I take leave to tell you that he had had the cure of souls in Dryhope for five-and-thirty years. He claimed on that score to know his people. The more he knew of them, the less he was able to question the lore of such an one as Miranda King. And he might remind you that Mabilla King is alive to this hour, a wife and mother of children. That is a fact, and it is also a fact, as I am about to tell you, that she had a hard fight to win such peace. Married, made a woman, she lost her haunted look and gained some colour in her cheeks. She lost her mortal chill. Her clothing, the putting up of her hair made some difference, but loving entreaty all the difference in the world. To a casual glance there was nothing but refinement to distinguish her from her neighbours, to a closer one there was more than that. Her eyes, they said, had the far, intent, rapt gaze of a wild animal. They seemed to search minutely, reaching beyond our power of vision, to find there things beyond our human ken. But whereas the things which she looked at, invisible to us, caused her no dismay, those within our range, the most ordinary and commonplace, filled her with alarm. Her eyes, you may say, communed with the unseen, and her soul followed their direction and dwelt remote from her body. She was easily startled, not only by what she saw but by what she heard. Nobody was ever more sensitive to sound. They say that a piano-tuner goes not by sound, but by the vibrations of the wire, which he is able to test without counting. It was so with her. She seemed to feel the trembling of the circumambient air, and to know by its greater or less intensity that something--and very often what thing in particular--was affecting it. All her senses were preternaturally acute--she could see incredible distances, hear, smell, in a way that only wild nature can. Added to these, she had another sense, whereby she could see what was hidden from us and understand what we could not even perceive. One could guess as much, on occasions, by the absorbed intensity of her gaze. But when she was with her husband (which was whenever he would allow it) she had no eyes, ears, senses or thoughts for any other living thing, seen or unseen. She followed him about like a dog, and when that might not be her eyes followed him. Sometimes, when he was afield with his sheep, they saw her come out of the cottage and slink up the hedgerow to the fell's foot. She would climb the brae, search him out, and then crouch down and sit watching him, never taking her eyes off him. When he was at home her favourite place was at his feet. She would sit huddled