“Look, papa, how quickly the lights change. It was in sunshine just now, and how black everything is already! It makes one feel eerie. It is like a cloud of misfortune enveloping the old house.” She was foolishly in hopes that he would have taken up this metaphorical strain, and thus given her an opening to say what she had to say. “Nothing more natural, my dear,” said Mr. Heriot. “The clouds are driving up from the mouth of the Firth. It’s an ill sign when they come and go so fast. I hope those foolish fellows from Comlie shore will be warned in time.” “Oh, papa,” cried Marjory, seizing this opening. “It is dreadful to think how seldom we are warned in time! How we go on to the very edge of a precipice, and then--” “Phoo!” said Mr. Heriot, “if a man does not keep a look-out before him, it’s nobody’s fault but his own.” Thus the door was shut upon her again. She looked at him with a kind of despair, and put both her hands round his arm. “Papa,” she said, “I think we have had a very tolerably happy life--nothing very much to find fault with. Everything has gone on comfortably. We have had no great troubles, no misfortunes to speak of--” “I don’t know what you call misfortunes,” said her father. “That affair of the Western Bank was anything but pleasant.” “It was only money, papa.” “Only money! What would you have, I should like to know? _Only_ money! May, my dear, to be a sensible girl as you are, you sometimes speak very like a haverel. Loss of money is as great a misfortune as can befall a family. It brings a hundred other things in its train--loss of consideration, troubles of all kinds. Personal losses may hurt more for the moment, but so far as the family is concerned--” “Oh, don’t say so,” cried Marjory. “Papa, I am afraid there are things that hurt a great deal more. I have heard--something about Tom--” “What about Tom?” he said, turning upon her with an eagerness much unlike his former calm. “It may not perhaps be so bad as appears. He has had--an accident,” she said, breathless and terrified. To her surprise, the anxiety in her father’s face calmed down. “An accident! is that all?” he said, with a long-drawn breath of relief. “All! papa!” “Well, well,” said Mr. Heriot, half-impatiently, “you think I’ve no feeling. You are mistaken, May. But that boy, that brother of yours, has been in worse scrapes--scrapes that no doctor could mend. However, that’s not the question. How did you hear? and when did it happen? and what is it? Arm, or leg, or collar-bone? I know how lads lame themselves. Hunting is all very well in moderation, but these young men pay dear for it. They think no more of breaking a limb than if it was the branch of a rotten tree.” “But, papa, I am afraid it is, perhaps, more serious than you think,” faltered Marjory, half rendered hopeful by his ease, half frightened by indifference.