hearts and give God thanks?" She made a pause and said, after a moment, "I must see Oona, too." But when he was about to rise and leave her in order to bring Oona, she stopped him once more. "You must tell me first," she said, speaking very low, "what is become of _him_? Did he let himself be borne away to the clouds in yon flames? I know, I know, it's all done; but did you see him? Did he speak a word at the end?" "Miss Milnathort," said Walter, holding her hands, "there is nothing but confusion in my mind. Was it all a dream and a delusion from beginning to end?" She laughed a strange little laugh of emotion. "Look at me then," she said, "for what have I suffered these thirty years? And you--was it all for nothing that you were so soon beaten and ready to fall? Have you not seen him? Did he go without a word?" Walter looked back upon all the anguish through which he had passed, and it seemed to him but a dream. One great event, and then weeks of calm had intervened since the day when driven to the side of the loch in madness and misery, he had found Oona and taken refuge in her boat, and thrown himself on her mercy; and since the night when once more driven distracted by diabolical suggestions, he had stepped out into the darkness, meaning to lose himself somehow in the gloom and be no more heard of--yet was saved again by the little light in her window, the watch-light that love kept burning. These recollections and many more swept through his mind, and the pain and misery more remote upon which this old woman's childlike countenance had shone. He could not take hold of them as they rose before him in the darkness, cast far away into a shadowy background by the brightness and reality of the present. A strange giddiness came over his brain. He could not tell which was real, the anguish that was over, or the peace that had come, or whether life itself--flying in clouds behind him, before him hid under the wide-spreading sunshine--was anything but a dream. He recovered himself with an effort, grasping hold of the latest recollection to satisfy his questioner. "This I know," he cried, "that when we were flying from the tower, with flames and destruction behind us, the only words I heard from her were a prayer for pardon--'forgive him,' that was all I heard. And then the rush of the air in our faces, and roar that was like the end of all things. We neither heard nor saw more."