'If you will not save me by doing so, we have nothing left for it now but a disgraceful flight.' 'Flight?' 'Yes; I must quit this place ere I am arrested.' 'For where?' 'God alone knows.' Alison interlaced her fingers again in mute misery. 'You look worn and weary, Alison,' said Sir Ranald, observing the pinched expression of her little white face. 'I am both, indeed!' 'Then go to bed, child; think over all I have urged, think of what is before us, think well, and give me a final answer in the morning.' She kissed him with lips that were cold and quivering, and retired to her room, while he threw open his bureau, drew the lamp towards him, spread a sheet of paper with a vague idea that he was about to make some monetary calculations, and mechanically dipped a pen in the ink-bottle. Then he threw it down, and, resting his aching head upon his delicate and wrinkled hands, sank into a kind of stupor of thought. From this he was roused by a hand being laid gently on his shoulder, and by the voice of old Archie Auchindoir saying, while he shook his white head, 'Puir Sir Ranald--oh! my dear maister; eild and poortith are sair burdens for ae back.' 'What do you want, Archie?' he asked, peevishly. 'Sir Ranald, sir, I've a sma' matter o' three hunder pound and mair saved up in your service, and at your service it is now, every bodle o'd--tak' it and welcome; it may help ye at this pinch--tak' it, for God's sake, if it will tak' the tears frae Miss Alison's een.' 'Poor Archie, I thank you,' said Sir Ranald, shaking the hand of this faithful old man, whose eyes were inflamed with the tears he was, perhaps, too aged to shed; 'it is very generous of you, this offer, but is--pardon me saying so--simply absurd!' Again and again Archie pressed the little man in vain upon the acceptance of his master, till the pride of the latter turned his gratitude into something of his usual hauteur, on which Archie withdrew sorrowfully, muttering under his breath, 'Troth, he's weel boden there ben, that will neither borrow nor lend.' Meaning that Sir Ranald must surely be well enough off, if he could afford to dispense with all assistance. With her gorgeous brown hair unrolled and floating over her shoulders, Alison, with her hands lying listlessly in her lap, sat lost in her own terrible thoughts, with her tear-inflamed eyes gazing into her bed-room fire, which had just attained that clear, red light, without flickering flame, in which one may fancy strange scenes without end--deep valleys, caverns, rocks, castles perched on cliffs, faces, and profiles; and therein had she seen, more than once, Essilmont with its Scoto-French turrets with their conical roofs and vanes, its crow-stepped gables and massive chimneys, that she now might never see in reality again! A victim on the double altar of gold and filial piety.