And with a low cry Mrs Ogilvy fell back into her chair. At such moments what can be done but to appeal to heaven? “Oh my Lord God!” she cried. She had looked for it so long, for years and years and years, anticipated every particular of it: how she would recognise him afar off, and go out to meet him, like the father of the prodigal, and bring him home, and fill the house with feasting because her son who had been lost was found: how he would come to her all in a moment, and fling himself down by her side, with his head in her lap, as had been one of his old ways. Oh, and a hundred ways besides, like himself, like herself, when the mother and the son after long years would look each other in the face, and all the misery and the trouble would be forgotten! But never like this. He said “Mother,” and she dropped away from him, sank into the seat behind her, putting out neither hands nor arms. She did not lose consciousness--alas! she had not that resource, pain kept her faculties all awake--but she lost heart more completely than ever before. A wave of terrible sickness came over her, a sense of repulsion, a desire to hide her face, that the shadows might cover her, or cover him who stood there, saying no more: the man who was her son, who said he was her son, who said “Mother” in a tone which, amid all these horrible contradictions, yet went to her heart like a knife. Oh, not with sweetness! sharp, sharp, cutting every doubt away! “Mother,” he said again, “I would have sworn you would not forget me, though all the world forgot me.” “No,” she said, like one in a dream. “Can a mother forget her----” Her voice broke again, and went out upon the air. She lifted her trembling hands to him. “Oh Robbie, Robbie! are you my Robbie?” she said in a voice of anguish, with the sickness and the horror in her heart. “Ay, mother,” he said, with a tone of bitterness in his voice; “but take me in, for I’m tired to death.” And then a great compunction awoke within her: her son, for whom she had longed and prayed all these years--and instead of running out to meet him, and putting the best robe on him, a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, he had to remind her that he was tired to death! She took him by the hand and led him in, and put him in the big chair. “I am all shaken,” she said: “both will and sense, they are gone from me: and I don’t know what I am doing. Robbie, if ye are Robbie----”