How this night passed over, this dreadful night, under the once peaceful roof of the Hewan, was never known. It must have been dawn, though it seemed to her so dark, when Mrs Ogilvy dropped on her knees by the dining-room door--and how she got to her own room she did not know. She came to herself with the brilliant summer morning pervading all things, her room full of light, her body full of pain, her mind, as soon as she was conscious, coming back with a dull spring to the knowledge of catastrophe and disaster, though for the first moment she could not tell what it was. She was lying upon her bed fully dressed, her white shawl, which she had been wearing last night, flung, all crumpled, upon the floor, but nothing else changed. A thicker shawl had been thrown over her. Who was it that had carried her up-stairs? This became an awful question as her mind grew clearer. Who was it? who was it?--the victor--perhaps the survivor---- She was aching from head to foot, feeling as if her bones were broken, and she could never stand on her feet again; but when this thought entered her mind she sprang up from her bed like a young girl. The survivor!--perhaps Robbie, Robbie, her once innocent boy, with the stain of blood on his hands: perhaps---- Mrs Ogilvy snatched at the shawl on the floor, which looked almost as if something dead might lie hidden under it, and wrapped herself in it, not knowing why, and stole down-stairs in the brightness of that early morning before even Janet was stirring. She hurried into the dining-room, from which she had been shut out only a few hours ago, with her heart leaping in her throat, not knowing what awful scene she might see. But there was nothing there. A chair had been knocked down, and lay in the middle of the floor in a sort of grotesque helplessness, as if in mockery of the mother’s fears. Nothing else. She stood for a moment, rendered weak again by sudden relief, asking herself if that awful vision of the night had been merely a dream, until suddenly a little heap of torn paper flung upon the ornaments in the grate brought it back again so vividly that all her fears awoke once more. Then she stole away again to the bedrooms, in which, if all was well, they should be lying asleep. There was no sound from Robbie’s, or she could hear none from the beating of her heart. She stole in very softly, as she had not ventured to do since the first morning after his return. There he lay, one arm over his head like a child, breathing that soft breath of absolute rest which is almost inaudible, so deep and so quiet. What fountains of love and tenderness burst forth in the old mother’s breast, softening it, healing it, filling its dryness with heavenly dew. Oh, Robbie, God bless him! God bless him! who at the last had stood for his mother--who would not let her be hurt--who would rather lose everything. And she had perhaps been hard upon him! There was no blood on the hand of one who slept like _that_.