"If ye please, Miss Anne--" began the girl. "What, Jacky?" "Miss Alice is no weel--I saw her gaun up to her ain room, slow and heavy. Mostly ye canna hear her foot, it's like a spirit's--the night it was dragging slow and sad-like, and I heard her say--" Jacky paused. "What did you hear her say?" "It was in her ain room--I wasna listening, Miss Anne, I just heard it--she said 'there is no one with me'--low, low--like as if she was in grief. Miss Anne, will ye go up to Miss Alice? There was naebody near her but me, and she wasna wanting me. Will ye go, Miss Anne?" Jacky's keen eyes was softened with an involuntary tear. "I must see Mrs. Catherine first," said Anne, passing on hurriedly to the little room. Jacky seated herself in the window-seat near the library-door, in meditative solitude; the strange, chivalrous girl's heart within her beating high with plans of help and aid to that gentle, weeping Alice, whom all the stronger spirits round her seemed instinctively to join in warding evil and trouble from. The door of the little room was at once opened to Anne, and she found Mrs. Catherine within, the trace of a tear even visible upon her sterner cheek. "The poor bairn, child!" she exclaimed. "The poor, bit, silly, gentle thing! I could almost have seen yourself suffering, sooner than her. If stronger folk feel it even more painfully, there is aye a kind of struggle with their sorrow; but yonder, there was no strength to make resistance, child. The trouble sank down, like a stone, to the bottom of the bairn's heart. I cannot get away from my eye the bit, wan, unresisting, hopeless look of her." "Mrs. Catherine!" exclaimed Anne, "I must go to her instantly. I bring hope. Do not look at me in anger. I am speaking words of truth and soberness: the matter does not stand as you think--as I thought this morning. Mrs. Catherine, Norman is innocent." Mrs. Catherine made an emphatic motion with her hand, as if commanding Anne to go on; and waited breathlessly. "Mrs, Catherine, I have his own words to build upon. I have the recorded conviction of my father. Do you think they could be deceived, to whom he was dearest upon earth? My father, Esther, Marion his wife, who went with him, they all believed him innocent--the last, by sharing his fate. You could not but believe his own words. He did not do it, Mrs. Catherine. He is innocent." Mrs. Catherine laid her hands upon Anne's shoulders, and gazed with earnest scrutiny into her face. "His own words--sharing his fate--what does the bairn mean? Child, I thought there was some other terror upon your mind, this morning, that ye did not tell me. Is Norman Rutherford alive?" "Mrs. Catherine, his secret is safe with you," said Anne, drawing the letters from her bosom. "Norman is alive, unjustly condemned, and innocent. We must prove that first: but take these, and let me go to Alice."