too, and we’ll save the poor man!” And then I saw a motion, and heard it.... Eh, dinna ask me what!--a dull, heavy stroke, and a crack, and another groan. I gave a cry--if he had killed me the next minute I couldna have helped it; and the creature started, and made a grasp at something, and then turned and started a’ round. I gied scream after scream, no able to stop. I had sunk down among the whins, and he couldna see me. And then he began to speel the brae as fast as he had come down. I stood there and cried, and durstna stir. And in a whilie down the lane came Andrew White and his wife and their laddie, with a lantern. And then we saw it was the minister. I was near dead with the fright and the awfu’ feeling myself. For weel I saw he had been murdered there where he lay. The laddie ran to the village for help, and Andrew’s man came down from the mill. And when I came to myself, I took my gown over my head, and ran a’ the way till I got to the Manse.... Me catch the villain! how could I catch him--and him up like a wild-cat into the wood? Na, I thought of Isabel--I’m meaning of Mrs. Lothian, his poor young wife. And that is a’ I can tell you, if ye were to question me till the morn.’ The miller’s testimony corroborated Jean’s. ‘The wife’ had cried upon him, as he was sitting down to his supper, to come and listen to the screams from the brae; and Andrew being no coward, and having bowels of compassion, notwithstanding his gloomy view of religious matters, rushed down immediately with his wife and ‘the laddie.’ He heard a rustling in the wood as he passed, but took no notice, not connecting it, he said, with the accident, and found the minister insensible, and scarcely breathing. He had had a bad fall from his horse, which of itself Andrew thought must have been enough to injure him seriously; and there was besides the fatal blow on the forehead, which had smashed the skull, and extinguished all consciousness and possibility of life. The testimony of the doctor was the only other important point in the evidence. He could not decide whether the other injuries might not have been fatal. That they were very serious, there was no doubt; but it was the blow which had killed Mr. Lothian. As to the man who did it, however, no information could be gathered. He was to Jean but ‘a black shadow’ in the darkness. She could not even tell what was his height, or dress, or anything about him.