“Oh, whisht, whisht,” cried Helen again. “And now he has come back. And every thing is changed. The old laird is dead and gone, and John Duff, that was never very kind, is laird in his stead, and there’s no home for him there in his father’s house. And he’s a far older man--eight years it was this time that he was away. And you will wonder to hear me say a bonnie lad when you look at that black-browed man. But I see my bonnie lad in him still, Lily; he is aye the same to me. And, oh, if you knew how it drags my heart out of my bosom when he bids me come with him and I cannot! He says we might save the fragments that remain--but there’s more than that, more than that! He has wasted his youth, but he has not yet lived half his life. And there’s that to save, Lily; and him and me together we could stand. Oh, Lily, there’s neither man nor devil that I would fear for Alick’s sake, and at Alick’s side, to save him--before it is too late!” “Helen,” cried Lily, “what do I know? I dare not speak; but what if after all you could not save him? If he cannot stand by himself, how could you make him? You are but a little delicate woman; you are not fit to fight. Oh, Helen, Helen, what if you could not save him when all is done!” “I am not feared,” Helen said with a serene countenance. And then there suddenly came a cloud over her, and tears came to her eyes. “What is the use of speaking,” she said, throwing up her hands with an impatience unlike her usual calm, “when I can do nothing? when he must just go away again without hope, my poor Alick! and come back no more? And that will be the end both of him and me,” she went on, “two folk that might have made a home, and served God in our generation, and brought up children and received strangers and held our warm place in the cold world. One of us will perish away yonder, among wild beasts and ill men, and one of us will just fade away on the roadside like a flower thrown away when its sweetness is gone--and it will be no better for any mortal, but maybe worse, that Alick Duff and Helen Blythe were born into this weary world.” “Oh, Helen, Helen!” cried Lily, “I think Alick Duff must have been the cloud that has come over your life and turned its brightness to dark. If you had not always been thinking of him, you would have had another home and a brighter life. And even now--can I not see myself?--don’t you know very well there is a good man----”