But the rising and falling flame became more and more uncertain; and at last, very suddenly, it went quite out. There was not, in another minute, a spark left. For a while there was silence in the cottage, now dark for the first time since Annie was a widow. She crept to her cold bed; and there, under cover of the strange darkness she shed a few tears. But soon she said to herself, "God has His own ways of kindling our spirits as well as the flame of a lamp. Perhaps by humbling me, or by changing my duty when I became too fond of it, He may warm my heart to new trust in Him. His will be done! But He will let me pray that there may be none in the harbour this night who may drown, or be buffeted in the storm because He is pleased to darken my light." Before she had quite calmed her heart with this prayer, there was noise at a little distance, and red gleams on the fitful mist which drove past the window; and then followed a loud knocking at the door. It was Macdonald with his people, come to see whether the lady was safe. He looked perplexed and uneasy when Annie told him that she could not think that the lady could be otherwise than safe, now she knew the places about the island so well, and was so fearless. It often happened that she was absent for a night and day; and no doubt the storm had this night detained her and her companions in some sheltered place,--some place where, she had reason to believe, they had fire and light. As for herself, when Annie saw the torch that Macdonald carried, her eyes glistened in the blaze, and she said once more in the depth of her mind, "Surely God has His own ways." Macdonald was very wrathful when he learned by questioning Annie how it was that her house was dark. As he hastily kindled the peats he brought in from the stack, he muttered that it seemed to have pleased God to afflict the island again with a witch, after all the pains that were taken twenty years before, as he well remembered, to clear the place of one. This woman must be a witch-- "Nay," said Annie. "I take her to be sent to us for good. Let us wait and learn." "Good? What good?" "It is through her, you see, that I find how kind a neighbour you are, at need," replied Annie; not adding aloud what she was thinking of,--how this night had proved that God brings help at the least likely moments. "She is a witch," Macdonald persisted. "No power short of that could have quenched your lamp, and drawn away your only son from honouring his parent to be a slave to a stranger." As Annie could not at the moment speak, Macdonald went on raising a flame meantime by flapping the end of his plaid.