Looking through the low window of the study, she saw Jacky standing at the gate, and hastened to admit her. The girl was shivering with intense anxiety, and alarm--she had been standing there for more than an hour. On the previous night, she had haunted the precincts of Schole in fear and trembling for her mistress, and had been abruptly dismissed by Marget, with a fretful explanation that "Maister Patrick was in the deadthraw"--since then she had been watching at the window of Miss Crankie's parlor. Now, she was awe-stricken, speaking below her breath, and letting fall now and then silent, solitary, large tears. She had never been in the shadow of death before, and her imaginative spirit bowed before its majesty. "Jacky," said Anne, "he is dead." Jacky did not answer--she only glanced a timid, wistful, upward look out of those keen, dark eyes of hers, dilated and softened with her sympathy. "You will come in and stay with me, Jacky," said Anne. "I must remain here for some days--you are not afraid?" Afraid! no. Jacky was stricken with awe and sad reverence, but not with fear. "I do not well know what to do, Jacky," said Anne, thoughtfully. "Miss Lillie seems to have wandered out: I cannot find her." "If ye please, Miss Anne, I saw her." "Where, Jacky?" "I was standing at the window looking out--it was just at the sun-rising--and I saw the gate of Schole opened canny, and Miss Lillie came out. She was just as she aye is, only there was a big veil over her face, and she took the Aberford road; and she didna walk slow as she does at common times, but was travelling ower the sands as fast as a spirit--as if it was a great errand she was on; naebody could have walkit yon way that hadna something urging them, and I thought then that Mr. Patrick was dead." Anne did not observe Jacky's reflections and inferences--she was too much occupied in speculations as to Christian's errand. "If ye please, Miss Anne, would ye no go up to your ain room and lie down? I'll stay and keep a'thing quiet." "I must see Miss Crankie," said Anne. "The air will revive me, Jacky, and I could not rest. In the meantime, you must stay at Schole, and see that no one disturbs the stillness that belongs to this solemn vicinity. We should have reverenced him living--we must reverence him more sadly dead." Jacky was overcome--her eyes were flooded--she needed to make no promise. Anne's charge to her was given in consequence of some grumbling threat of Marget's to "get in some o' the neighbors--no to be our lane wi' the corp." Anne was determined that there should be no unseemly visits, or vulgar investigation of the remains of one who had shrunk from all contact with the world so jealously. "If ye please, Miss Anne--" Anne had put on her bonnet, and stood at the gate on her way out. "What is it, Jacky?" Jacky hung her head in shy awkwardness. "It was just naething, Miss Anne."