’La! cousin, I can’t tell you,’ said Nancy, carelessly. ’I daresay—she’s often out. I can’t keep a constant dragon’s eye on a great girl like that. I’m no tyrant, and she has her liberties.’ Herries turned away impatiently; there was nothing to be gained in remaining with his cousin but added uneasiness. He left her house a bitterly dissatisfied and anxious man. *CHAPTER XXXV.* Herries’s homeward way led him past the house where his partner, Creighton, lay, now in the last stages of consumptive illness. He had been there very often of late, and, more than one night, had watched beside the sick-bed until morning. During the early stages of his illness, Mr. Creighton had always asked each day for Alison, and been well satisfied with the answers which Herries gave him. But latterly these kind and eager questionings had ceased, and in increasing fever and weakness the man was gradually losing touch with the things of this life. Yet there had been a rally only that morning and the day before. A forlorn hope sprang up in Herries’s heart that his partner’s sagacity might help him once again. He would tell him his trouble—he would unburden himself. Creighton was a long-headed, a shrewd man, and as secret as the grave towards which he was hastening. Herries quickened his steps, and when he came to the stair he mounted it with a renewed energy in his gait. Before he reached the sick man’s door he heard his voice—speaking out much more strongly than of late—and his hopes arose. Mr. Creighton was sitting up in bed, unimaginably gaunt and pale; a thin red colour made a patch on either sunk and waxen cheek, and his eyes were very bright. But, alas! when they were turned on Herries there was no recognition in them, and his loud, eager talk was the mere babble of delirium. The names upon his lips were names that Herries had never heard; they were doubtless those of the man’s home and youth so resolutely put behind him, so hopelessly divided from him by the yawning gulf of some bitter, early quarrel. A woman’s name he uttered so often, and with such poignant meaning, that Herries, bending over him, asked again and yet again if she were not one who could be sent for. He could not know that the earth had covered her for thirty years in that parish graveyard, away among the Pentlands, where Creighton, one evening not long since, had craved his partner to see him buried. Now his unmeaning voice went on and on, monotonous, painful, terribly sad. Herries turned away at last in bitterest silence. Creighton’s dog, that crouched upon the bed, half starved, growled at his footsteps as he crossed the floor.