"Jessy, we have laid out together such a great and good work, but without your help we cannot carry it forward. We must have some good woman to look after our food and our home. We are counting on you, and you must stand by us." "I will go with you gladly. I will soon put a stop to the wastrie and pilfering going on in the Major's house; and I will take good care of you two feckless, helpless men--but I am your sister, Ian; I must look to my position." "You are right. You will be mistress. You will stand at my right hand, as you always did; and the Major said you were to have 'your will and want and wish,' whatever it was. Jessy, you are going _home_." "How soon, Ian?" "Any mail may bring me word to hurry back to Scotland. I feel that I ought to be there now. Get ready for an early journey." In less than two weeks the expected letter, urging Ian's early return, came; and Ian and Jessy set their faces Scotlandward the next day; but Dr. Lindsey resolved to stay another month and see more of a country so wonderfully fresh and interesting. Jessy went away very quietly, and it struck Ian she was glad when the parting was over; and she acknowledged that in a certain way she was so. "I was that feared I would die there," she said, "and I could not keep the little Border graveyard out of my thoughts. My kindred for three hundred years lie there, and I wanted to take my last rest among them." This feeling would be to an American an unthinkable source of anxiety, but to the Scotch man or woman it would be a real and potent promoter of the feeling. For they cherish the memory of their fathers--good or bad--and there burns alive in them a sense of identity with the dead, even to the twentieth generation. Ian thoroughly understood Jessy's worry and respected her for it. "You should have written to me, Jessy. A word concerning your fear would have brought me to you at any time. Why did you think of dying? Were you not well treated?" "I could not have been better treated. I was close to Donald's heart, the children loved me, and Macbeth wanted me to be his wife." "And Mercedes?" "Perhaps not so much. She was a wonderfully jealous little woman. She did not like Donald or the children or her father to be long in my company. She did her best to conquer the feeling, but how could she with centuries of Castilian blood in her veins? It was my own fault if I was not happy, but the longing for Scotland was above all other desires. I had too little to do. I wanted some work that was _my_ work. No one can be content without it." "The children are fine boys." "Yes--do you remember the morning you would not hear of their father going either to the army or navy? You said he was the only Macrae to keep up the name of the family, and forthwith sent him to a desk in Reid's shipping office. You have four grandsons now, three of them Macraes. You see God knew, if you could only have trusted Him. What is the Major's worry now?"