“Ye must just try and possess your souls in patience till ye get back again,” the minister said out of his dark corner. It was just a grand lesson, both thought, and the kind of thing that the minister ought to say. And the silence fell again with a slow diminution of the light, and gradual fading of the yellow sky. To sit there without moving, without breathing, with always the consciousness of the minister unseen, fixing a penetrating look upon them, which probably showed him, so clever a man, the very recesses of their hearts, became moment by moment more than Katrin or Robina could bear. “The young fools; I’ll throw it all up if they dinna put in an appearance before that clock strikes!” cried Mr. Blythe at last. “Look out of the window, one of you women, and see if ye can see them.” “There’s nothing, minister, nothing, but a wheen country carts going from the market,” said Beenie in the rôle of Sister Anne. “The idiots!” said Mr. Blythe again with that force of language peculiar to his country. “Not for their ain purposes, and them all but unlawful, can they keep their time.” “Oh, sir, ye mustna be hard upon them at siccan a moment!” cried Katrin, rocking herself to and fro in anxiety. “Eh, but I see the powny!” cried Beenie from the window; “there’s a wee laddie holding Rory. And will I run and open the door no to disturb Marget in the kitchen?” she said, not waiting for an answer. The spell of the quiet had so gained upon Robina, and the still rising tide of excitement, that she swept almost noiselessly into the narrow hall, and opened the door mysteriously to the two other shadows who stole in, as it seemed, out of the yellow light that filled up the doorway behind into a darkness which, turning from that wistful illumination, seemed complete. CHAPTER XX