She smoothed it out and, for the moment, she thought to pass it over to her faithful friend, who, though no scholar, would have had no difficulty in reading that big, sprawling, crude schoolboy writing. But again the shame of it overcame the girl, and sitting down on the edge of a chair, she lifted her wet eyes to Elspeth’s face and said mournfully:-- "It’s the deluge, Eppie. I’ve always said it would come, and it is here." "What hass happened? Pe pleased to tell it quickly, Miss Isla, for I nefer wass a good hand at waitin’." "Malcolm has been dismissed from the Army, and he is coming home. He has sailed by now," she added, referring to the second page of the letter, "and his ship, the ’Jumna,’ will arrive in about three weeks. It’s a slow boat, but inside a month he’ll be at Achree." Elspeth bit her lip, and her hands worked nervously in front of her apron. "For the good God’s sake, Miss Isla, what are we to do with him here?" "That’s what I want to know. It will kill my father. He must never know that Malcolm has been sent home. He must just think that it is an ordinary leave of absence. Poor dear, it is not so hard to bamboozle him now as it once was! If he grasped the fact that Malcolm had been cashiered it would simply kill him. Now I shall be hard put to it, watching for other letters from India or from the War Office. Oh, Elspeth, I’m so tired of playing watch-dog! It’s killing me. Sometimes I think I shall get up quite early one morning and go down to the little loch and just walk in, where it is all silvery with the dawn. Then everything would be over, and I should be at peace!" "God forpid, my lamb, since ye are the one hope and salvation of Achree," said Elspeth Maclure fervently. Isla shook her head. "There is little hope for Achree now, and, so far as I can see, nothing can save it. My brother owes so much money, that, to get him clear, we ought to sell it. It is what he will do himself, without doubt, whenever he gets it into his own hands." Elspeth Maclure stood, thunderstruck and horrified, staring vaguely in front of her. "Sell Achree what hass peen the place of the Mackinnons for efer and efer!" she repeated slowly. "God forpid. He would nefer let it come to pass. Oh, Miss Isla, the laws made py men are not good laws. I’m only a plain woman, put this I see that, when a man iss like what Maister Malcolm iss, without the fear of God or man in hiss heart, he should not haf the power. I suppose he hass porrowed the money on the place, put it iss not him that will haf to pey," she added fiercely. "No," repeated Isla, with a hard, far-away look on her face, "it is not he who will have to pay." CHAPTER II THE OLD HOME Isla rose to her feet, and, suddenly, observing the baby clutching with his chubby hands at the side of his cage and smiling engagingly into her face, she stretched out her hands to him.