"I--I cannot pray--I cannot even think," she answered, laying her head once more on her folded arms, like a weary or a chidden child. "Go you, good Hamish, and pray yourself with them down-stairs." "In the kitchen, is it?" said Hamish, with a considerable portion of irony in his voice. "Faix, my lady, and it's queer thoughts we'd have, and queer prayers we would be saying there, with the pot forenent us, boiling on the fire, and Cromwell's black rogues of troopers coming and going, and flinging curses and scraps of Scriptures (according to their usual custom) in equal measure at our heads. No! no! my lady," he continued vehemently, "if you would have us pray at all, it must be here--here where the cross will mind us of a Mother who once stood at its foot, and who was even more desolate than you are; a Mother silent and heart-broken--not because her Child had gone before her into exile, from whence He might any day return, but because she saw Him dying--dying in the midst of tortures--and forsaken so entirely that it might well have seemed to her (only she knew _that_ never could be) as if God as well as man had utterly abandoned Him." "You are right, Hamish; you are right," cried Mrs. Netterville suddenly, touched to the quick by his voice and eloquence. "Go you down at once, good Hamish, and bid them come here directly. I shall be ready by the time they are assembled." As Mrs. Netterville spoke thus, she rose from the floor, and then, all at once perceiving the strange disorder of her attire, she began hastily to gather up her tresses, previous to placing her widow's coif upon them. Hamish waited to hear no more, but instantly left the room to do her bidding. As he walked rapidly toward the lower part of the mansion, he drew a long sigh of relief, like one who has just got rid of a heavy burden, as in truth he had; for he felt that he had gained his point, and that whatever his mistress might have yet to suffer, she was safe, at all events, from the effects of that first great shock of sorrow which had threatened to overturn her intellect. When he returned to announce that the household was assembled and waiting for her further orders he found her kneeling at the _prie-dieu_, in all the grave composure of her usual manner. She did not trust herself, however, to look round, but merely signed to him that they should come in; and the instant the noise and bustle of their first entrance had subsided, she commenced reading from her open missal.