When they had been warmed and fed and rested in one of the nearest cottages, Liot took David in his arms and went back to his old hut. He put the sleeping child in the bunk, and then sat down on the cold, dark hearthstone. What Hunish expressed so plainly was the underlying thought in his own heart. He could not escape from a conclusion so tragically manifested. In sorrow too great for tears, he compelled himself to resign all his hopes and dreams--a renunciation as bitter as wormwood, but not as cruelly bitter as the one it included; for his rejection was also the rejection of his son. God had not forgiven him, nor had he accepted David's dedication to his service, for he had stripped him of all means to accomplish it. He might have permitted him to reach Stornoway and leave the boy among his kindred; he had chosen rather to include David in the sin of his father. This was the thought that wounded his heart like a sword. He went to the sleeping boy and kissed his face, weeping most of all for the sorrow he had brought on the innocent one. If this earth be a penal world, Liot that night went down to one of its lowest hells. Sorrow of many kinds brutally assailed him. He hid nothing from his consciousness. He compelled himself to see over again the drowning of Bele--that irreparable wrong which had ruined all his happiness; he compelled himself to stand once more by Karen's coffin, and listen to his own voice calling God to witness his innocence; he compelled himself to admit that he had thought God had forgotten his sin of seven years ago. And when these things had been thought out to the end, his heart was so full that he quite unconsciously gave utterance to his thoughts in audible speech. The tones of his voice in the darkness were like those of a man praying, and the hopeless words filled the sorrowful room with a sense of suffering: "So, then, it is for a life-sentence that I am sent here. There is to be no pardon till I have dreed out the years appointed me in the gust and poverty of this dreadful place, among its hard, unfriendly men. My God! I am but thirty-three years old. How long wilt thou be angry with me? And the little lad! Pass me by, but oh, be merciful to him!" A great silence followed this imploration. The man was waiting. For hours he sat motionless; but just before dawn he must have heard a word of strength or comfort, for he rose to his feet and bowed his head. He was weeping bitterly, and his voice was like a sob; but from that hut on the wild Skye coast there arose with a heartbroken cry the sublimest of mortal prayers--"_Thy will be done._" IV THE DOOR WIDE OPEN