The intimation that Ailie was about to set out on a mission to the general world could not but be exciting information to the parish; and at the same time there was an arrival of pilgrims from that outer world to inquire into the marvel. Commissions of investigation had already come from the Presbytery of the district, and even from Edinburgh and Glasgow, the news having spread quickly at a moment of general religious excitement; but the inquirers from England, one of whom was soon discovered to be ‘an English minister,’ produced a more marked impression, and thrilled the Loch with indescribable pride. Margaret was sinking day by day. She had made her last step on the grass, taken her last draught of the fresh mountain air out of doors. From day to day it seemed impossible that she should ever again totter from one room to the other; and yet she managed to do it, retaining her hold upon her domestic place with a tenacity quite unlike the feebleness of her hold upon life. Sometimes, indeed, she had to be carried to the sofa in the parlour, from which she could still gain a glimpse of the Loch, and feel herself one of the family; but she would not relinquish this last stronghold of existence. ‘It will be time enough to shut me up when I’m gone,’ she would say, smiling upon them; and the doctor’s orders had been that she should be humoured in everything. ‘Nothing can harm her now,’ he had said, with that mournful abandonment of precaution, which shows the death of hope. And the parish--nay, ‘the whole Loch,’ held its breath and looked on. As for Isabel it seemed to her that she lived in a dreadful dream. The vague terror that had been hanging over her so long had settled down, and could no longer be escaped; it seemed years to her since the time when she had believed it might not be--or at least hoped that it might have been delayed.