‘Aye, it’s me. I thought I was sure to be alone here. Do you take your walks all the same on the Sabbath day?’ ‘To me a’ days are the same,’ said Ailie. ‘If I ken mysel I have nae desire but to ay be doing my Master’s business. Sabbath or every day, I make no difference. And the silence is fine, and the air sweet to-day, like every day.’ ‘It is not silence now,’ said Isabel, with the fitful, hasty temper for which, as soon as the words were said, she was sorry and penitent. ‘No,’ said Ailie, from whom the great perplexity she was in had taken much of her solemn aspect. ‘It’s no silence now, and whiles there are better things than silence. Isabel, when I saw ye among the heather, I felt that the Lord sent ye to give me an answer in my trouble. It’s like drawing the lot; and I’ve done that o’er and o’er by myself, and I canna see it. But you, you’re innocent, and ken nothing about him or me. I’ll draw the lot at you, Isabel. I’m no saying it to make you vain. It’s because you’re young, and soft, and no learned in the ways of this world, but like a little bairn. Isabel,’ said the young prophetess, kneeling down suddenly at her side, and gazing into her face with those visionary eyes which were wild in their pathos, ‘am I to do what he bids, or no?’ The question raised Isabel out of her personal brooding. She was startled--almost frightened by the vehemence of the appeal. ‘Oh! how can I tell you, or what do you want me to say?’ she said, clasping her hands; and then she remembered what she had heard about Ailie and Mr. John, and shrank at the thought of the responsibility thus placed in her hands. ‘Tell me aye or no,’ said Ailie, gazing so into her face, into her eyes, that Isabel’s very soul was moved. She bore the look as long as she could, and then she covered her face with her hands. ‘Your eyes go through and through me,’ she said, ‘and I cannot judge for you. I am not like her that is gone. I am but Isabel. I cannot guide myself. And you that have more light than all the rest--how should I help you?’ ‘I am giving no reasons,’ said Ailie, ‘it’s no a time for reasons. It’s out of the mouth of babes and sucklings--Isabel, say aye or no?’