The cry she uttered rang in the ears of all the watching population for years after. They forgot the ship and the men who were so near at hand to gather round this curious group. Nora fell forward into her lover’s arms like an inanimate thing. One shock she had borne, and it had taken all her strength--the other she could not bear. For the first time in her life she lost consciousness. The light had gone out of her eyes before--now the very breath died on her lips. Mrs. Sinclair, who had come down to the pier with him to find her child, could never be sufficiently thankful that Willy was a doctor and knew precisely what to do. He carried his love all the way along the pier, hampered by eager offers of help, and still more anxious comments of sympathy, to Nancy Morrison’s cottage on the shore, his heart full of remorse and exultation. Though he had long ago forgotten his threat about the _Pretty Peggy_, still it was quite true that he had come, like a conspirator, to surprise from Nora’s honest eyes, from her candid face, some revelation of her true feelings. She had so revealed them now as that they never could be denied again; and though it was not Willy’s fault, he was remorseful in his tenderness. He had never set foot on the _Pretty Peggy_. He had forgotten so entirely even the use he had made of her name, that he believed, like Mrs. Sinclair, that it was kindness to her foster-brother which had taken Nora to the pier. Instead of an unprofitable visit to the Greenland seas, he had been settling himself very advantageously in an inland town, where his “connections” in the county were sure to be of use to him; and after this interval, with the mother’s concurrence, had come, with sober determination not to be discouraged, to know what Nora meant, and what his fate was to be. All this Nora learnt afterwards by degrees, with wrath and happiness. The doctor who had died was a dissipated old man, of a class too common in the Greenland ships. “I kent weel that doited body could never be onything to Miss Nora,” cried Nancy Morrison, drying her eyes. The mystery was cleared up in a fashion to all the admiring and sympathetic population round when Willy Erskine appeared on the scene; and yet nobody knew what it meant except Nora and he. She was very angry and she was very happy, as we have said. But she had taken all power of resistance, had she wished to resist, out of her own hands. And the story came to the usual end of such stories, and there is nothing more to say. PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED EDINBURGH FOOTNOTES: [A] The Paraphrases are a selection of hymns always printed along with the metrical version of the Psalms in use in Scotland, and more easy, being more modern in diction, to be learned by heart. [B] Used in Scotland in the sense of weakness of body--invalidism. End of Project Gutenberg's The Lady's Walk, by Mrs. Margaret Oliphant