Her tears fell upon his hands, which held hers. He looked at her wistfully, eagerly, in the dim light, by which he could scarcely see her face. How high life was beating in his heart as he listened to these words. Hard to get rid of life! as if it were not something priceless, full of happiness, full of possibility, which a man would do anything, bear anything, rather than be rid of. He put her cloak round her while she stood passively by him, worn out, with those tears on her cheeks--and then drew her hand within his arm, and led her away silently along the dim sea-shore with all its mysterious sounds. The light increased slowly, dimly, the pale morning broke as they moved along. To Marjory it was all like a dream. To him, what was it? Every moment he could see her more plainly, and feel her, leaning on him. Rid of life! Who would be rid of that which held such prizes still? CHAPTER XX. No house possessed by the Hay-Heriots had ever gone through such a night as that house by the Cathedral in St. Andrews had just passed. First there had been the blank dinner hour, with no one at home to eat the food, no one but little Milly who stood at the window and cried, and imagined misfortunes unutterable which must have befallen “my May.” The crying of the child infected the whole house. One of the maids had joined her at the window, another climbed to the top of the house to an attic which commanded the road “east the town,” leading to the Spindle, another had stolen outside to the door in the wall, where she stood watching all comers and goers, with the wind blowing her ribbons about, and ruffling her hair. In the very midst of this suspense, Miss Jean’s old coach, like a family hearse, came jolting heavily over the stones--for all the world, the excited listeners thought, like the Phantom Coach, which, as is well known, drives along the streets of St. Andrews at midnight, after a storm, carrying the drowned to the hallowed soil round the Cathedral ruins. Had it been dark, this resemblance would have been more than the nerves of the women could have borne, and the impression was scarcely lessened when Miss Jean herself, tired yet alert, with her sharp eyes looking out from the shelter of her broad “borders” and big black bonnet, got out briskly tapping upon the pavement with her cane. Milly stayed her crying, out of very excitement, to explain her sister’s absence, and was then held silent by fear while the old lady remarked upon it. “A bonny like way to leave a house with a wheen maids and one bairn!” she said. “May Hay-Heriot must be out of her senses. Out of the house at seven o’clock--the hour ye dine--did ye say it was the hour ye dine? Then it’s worse than madness, it must be wickedness. Do not look at me as if ye would eat me, ye little spirit--”