They came to the hut I have already described as the one chiefly inhabited by Hector of the Stags and Bob of the Angels. It commanded a rare vision. In every direction rose some cone-shaped hill. The world lay in coloured waves before them, wild, rugged, and grand, with sheltering spots of beauty between, and the shine of lowly waters. They tapped at the door of the hut, but there was no response; they lifted the latch--it had no lock--and found neither within. Alister and Mercy wandered a little higher, to the shadow of a great stone; Christina went inside the hut and looked from its door upon the world; Ian leaned against the side of it, and looked up to the sky. Suddenly a few great drops fell--it was hard to say whence. The scattered clouds had been drawing a little nearer the sun, growing whiter as they approached him, and more had ascended from the horizon into the middle air, blue sky abounding between them. A swift rain, like a rain of the early summer, began to fall, and grew to a heavy shower. They were glorious drops that made that shower; for the sun shone, and every drop was a falling gem, shining, sparkling like a diamond, as it fell. It was a bounteous rain, coming from near the zenith, and falling in straight lines direct from heaven to earth. It wanted but sound to complete its charm, and that the bells of the heather gave, set ringing by the drops. The heaven was filled with blue windows, and the rain seemed to come from them rather than from the clouds. Into the rain rose the heads of the mountains, each clothed in its surplice of thin mist; they seemed rising on tiptoe heavenward, eager to drink of the high-born comfort; for the rain comes down, not upon the mown grass only, but upon the solitary and desert places also, where grass will never be--"the playgrounds of the young angels," Bob called them. "Do come in," said Christina; "you will get quite wet!" He turned towards her. She stepped back, and he entered. Like one a little weary, he sat down on Hector's old chair. "Is anything the matter?" asked Christina, with genuine concern. She saw that he was not quite like himself, that there was an unusual expression on his face. He gave a faint apologetic smile. "As I stood there," he answered, "a strange feeling came over me--a foreboding, I suppose you would call it!" He paused; Christina grew pale, and said, "Won't you tell me what it was?" "It was an odd kind of conviction that the next time I stood there, it would not be in the body.--I think I shall not come back." "Come back!" echoed Christina, fear beginning to sip at the cup of her heart. "Where are you going?" "I start for Canada next week." She turned deadly white, and put out her hands, feeling blindly after support. Ian started to his feet. "We have tired you out!" he said in alarm, and took her by both hands to place her in the chair.