A few hours later she stood in Nancy’s room again, in the grey dawn, hooded and cloaked for her journey. But her little friend had drugged herself into a deep sleep, and Alison did not wake her. In one of her tiny hands—the hand that had loaded Alison with easy kindness and covered her with a blame and shame not hers—was clasped the unlucky key. She breathed deeply and peacefully with parted lips—those lips made for laughter and for love—the swollen eyelids fringed and closed, the dark hair scattered on the pillow. Alison stood and looked at her long, without resentment, without love, without feeling of any kind, for feeling was numb with her now. Then she turned away, and went and kissed Willy in his sleep. And there were no other farewells. ’I doubt you are leaving us in trouble, Miss Ally!’ said kindly Jean. She stood at the coach door—the March wind scattering the scanty locks upon her rough, broad forehead—loth to part from the young lady she had liked and served through all these winter weeks. ’Yes, Jean,’ said Alison, sadly,’ good-bye.’ ’But, oo—it’ll a’ win richt i’ the end?’ said the cheerful woman, tentatively. ’No—never!’ answered Alison, with the tremendous finality of youth. The horn sounded, the whip cracked, and the lumbering vehicle lurched on its way. And so Alison went back to The Mains. *CHAPTER XLI.* It might have been about eight o’clock the next morning when Lizzie, the old housekeeper in George Street, thrust her head in at her master’s door. ’Maircy me!’ she exclaimed, and there was some cause for her wonder in the sight, at that hour, of candles burning in the broad day, and Herries at his desk, where, indeed, he had been all night. Sleep had left him and thought had become intolerable. With an effort almost superhuman he had determined to lose himself in the technicalities of his work, and he had done it. But he now looked, with bloodshot eyes, his tumbled linen and disordered hair, the living image of dissipation rather than business. Lizzie eyed him most suspiciously. He never drank, but the censorious old woman believed he had been drinking. ’The Lord be gude to us!’ she ejaculated, ’what’s wrang? Wastin’ waxen candles this gait!’ And she blew them out, and snuffed them with her fingers. ’You’re wanted,’ she went on. ’There’s a lad frae Creighton’s wi’ a message express. Ye maun gang there at aince anent the dog.’ ’What about the dog?’ said Herries. ’Weel,’ said Lizzie, ’as far as I can get it frae the lad, the tyke is turned upon them all, and aye he sits girning by the corp, and they canna get it coffined. They’re for you to gang and fleech him awa’, or somethin’ that gait.’ ’I will come,’ said Herries.