"Hamish," he cried in a sharp whisper, "is--is--Callum--dead?" But Hamish made no reply, only gave him a glance as though he had been smitten with a mortal wound, and went hurriedly down the stairs. But Weaver Jimmie told him all about it as soon as he descended. For, to his surprise, Scotty found not only Jimmie there, but many others of the neighbours. Store Thompson's wife sat by the bed in the corner, and Granny lay upon it white and silent. Something lay in another corner, stretched upon boards, a figure so muffled and still that, without knowing why, Scotty glanced at it with a feeling of terror. Grandaddy was nowhere to be seen; but Praying Donald was there, reading by the window. His deep voice, hushed to a solemn, low rumble, filled the room; "Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their distresses," he was saying, but Scotty did not listen; he followed Weaver Jimmie out to the barn full of awe-stricken questionings. And Jimmie, his kindly face quivering with sympathy, told him all. Yes, that still, dark form he had seen in the corner was Callum; they had brought him home last night, and had taken Nancy to her home. But Hamish had said Callum was gone, Scotty argued, and Nancy with him; had they come back then? No, they had not come back. They had run away and tried to cross Lake Simcoe in a canoe. A storm had come up suddenly, and though the Caldwells and the MacDonalds, who had tracked them to the shore, tried to rescue them, they were too late. And Callum was gone, gone never to come back, and Nancy was with him; and if Store Thompson could get the great preacher who had lately come to Barbay, they would bury them both in the Glen to-morrow. Scotty did not hear any more; Callum to be buried, and Nancy, too, to be put away in the ground as they had put Kirsty's father! He crept off into a corner of the haymow as soon as Jimmie had left him, and lay there, his curly head hidden deep in the hay, his small body shaken with long convulsive sobs. Callum, his Callum, Granny's hero, as well as his own, gone never to come back! Voices reached him once, and lest he should be discovered, he pressed his small hands over his quivering face and manfully strove to hold down his grief. Praying Donald and Long Lauchie were walking slowly with bent heads past the open barn door. "It will be the will of the Almighty to be visiting us through this calamity," Praying Donald was saying, "but the Father will never be leaving His children comfortless, for the man of God himself will be coming to the funeral." "McAlpine?" asked Long Lauchie in an eager whisper. "Aye, John McAlpine himself; the Lord will be very merciful to us. But, eh, eh, that the man that poor Malcolm would be praying for all these years should be coming to us over his dead! Eh, it will be a mystery, a mystery!" IX RALPH STANWELL AGAIN