Yet the secret silence of the night, the vague terror and darkness of that occult world which we all carry with us, created in her, at first, fear, and then a kind of angry, desperate resentment. "Oh, how helpless I am!" she sighed. "I can think and feel, I can fear and love, and I am not here by my own will; I did not place myself here; I cannot keep myself here. My life is in the grasp of a Power I cannot control. What am I to do? What can I do? Oh, how miserable I am! All my life long I have seen '_Not for you_' written on all I wished. Life is very hard," she said with a little sob. And then she made no further complaint, but her heart grew so still, she was sure something must have died there. Alas! was it hope? "Life is very hard." With these words she lay down again, and between sleeping and waking the hours wore on, and she rose at last from her shivery sleep, even later than usual. Then she hurried breakfast a little, and as the light grew over land and sea she tidied her room and dressed Vala and herself for the kirk. As the sound of the first service bell traveled solemnly over the moor she was ready to leave the house. Her last duty was to put a peat or two upon the fire, and as she was doing this she heard some one lift the sneck and push open the door. "It is David to carry Vala," she thought. "How good he is!" But when she turned she saw that it was not David. It was her husband, Nicol Sinclair. He walked straight to the fireside, and sat down without a word. Nanna's heart sank to its lowest depths, and a cold despair made her feet and hands heavy as lead; but she slowly spread the cloth on the table, and bit by bit managed to recollect the cup and saucer, the barley-cake, the smoked goose, and the tea. There was a terrible account between the man sitting on the hearth and herself, and words of passionate reproach burned at her lips; but she held her peace. Long ago she had left her cause with God; he would plead it thoroughly. Even now, when her enemy was before her, she had no thought of any other advocate. Her pallor, her slow movements, her absolute dumbness, roused in Sinclair an angry discomfort. And when Vala made a movement he lifted her roughly, and with a brutal laugh said, "A nice plaything you will be on board the _Sea Rover_!" Nanna shivered at the words. She comprehended in a moment the torture this man had probably come purposely to inflict upon her. Already his cruel hands had crippled her child; and what neglect, what terrors, what active barbarities, might he not impose on the little one in the hell of his own ship! Who there could prevent him? Little did Nicol Sinclair care for public opinion on land; but out at sea, where Vala's tears and cries could bring her no help, what pitiless inhumanities might he not practise? "_Fly with the child!_"