Maggie was on the road before he had done speaking. Andrew tried once to lead Jess, but immediately desisted. “It would be fell cruelty!” he said. “We maun jist lowse her, and tak her gien we can to the How o’ the Mains. They’ll gie her a nicht’s quarters there, puir thing! And we’ll see gien they can tak you in as weel, Maggie. The maister, I mak nae doobt, ’ill len’ me a horse to come for ye i’ the morning.” “I winna hear o’ ’t!” answered Maggie. “I can tramp the lave o’ the ro’d as weel’s you, Andrew!” “But I hae a’ thae things to cairry, and that’ll no lea’ me a han’ to help ye ower the burn!” objected Andrew. “What o’ that?” she returned. “I was sae fell tired o’ sittin that my legs are jist like to rin awa wi’ me. Lat me jist dook mysel i’ the bonny win’!” she added, turning herself round and round. “—Isna it jist like awfu’ thin watter, An’rew?—Here, gie me a haud o’ that loaf. I s’ cairry that, and my ain bit bundle as weel; syne, I fancy, ye can manage the lave yersel!” Andrew never had much to say, and this time he had nothing. But her readiness relieved him of some anxiety; for his mother would be very uncomfortable if he went home without her! Maggie’s spirits rose to lark-pitch as the darkness came on and deepened; and the wind became to her a live gloom, in which, with no eye-bound to the space enclosing her, she could go on imagining after the freedom of her own wild will. As the world and everything in it gradually disappeared, it grew easy to imagine Jesus making the darkness light about him, and stepping from it plain before her sight. That could be no trouble to him, she argued, as, being everywhere, he must be there. He could appear in any form, who had created every shape on the face of the whole world! If she were but fit to see him, then surely he would come to her! For thus often had her father spoken to her, talking of the varied appearances of the Lord after his resurrection, and his promise that he would be with his disciples always to the end of the world. Even after he had gone back to his father, had he not appeared to the apostle Paul? and might it not be that he had shown himself to many another through the long ages? In any case he was everywhere, and always about them, although now, perhaps from lack of faith in the earth, he had not been seen for a long time. And she remembered her father once saying that nobody could even _think_ a thing if there was no possible truth in it. The Lord went away that they might believe in him when out of the sight of him, and so be in him, and he in them!