her, fearing no evil, in the great quiet of the summer afternoon two days before. He was surprised yet half afraid. “I know what this means,” he said, when he had shaken hands with her and given her a seat. “You’ve made up your mind, Mrs Ogilvy, to make that dreadful journey. I see it in your face--and I am sorry. I am very sorry----” “No,” she said; “you are mistaken. I am not going. I came to ask you, on the contrary, after all we settled the other day, to do nothing more----” “To do nothing more!--I cabled as I promised, and I’ve got the man ready to go out----” “He must not go,” she said. “Well---- I think it is maybe just as wise. But you have changed your mind very quick. I will not speak the common nonsense to you and say that’s what ladies will do: for no doubt you will have your reasons--you have your reasons?” She looked round her, trembling a little, upon the quiet office where nobody could have been hidden, scarcely a fly. “Mr Somerville,” she said, “you were scarcely gone that day--oh, how long it is ago I know not--it might be years!--you were scarcely gone, when my son came home.” “What?” he cried, with a terrifying sharpness of tone. Her face blanched at the sound. “Was it an ill thing to do? Is there danger?” she cried; and then with deliberate gravity she repeated, “You were scarcely gone when, without any warning, my Robbie came home.” “God bless us all!” said the old gentleman. “No; I do not know that there is any danger. It might be the wisest thing he could do--but it is a very surprising thing for all that.” “It is rather surprising,” she said, with a little dignity, “that having always his home open to him, and no safeguards against the famine that might arise in that land--and indeed brought down for his own part, my poor laddie, to the husks that the swine do eat--he should never have come before.” “That’s an old ferlie,” said Mr Somerville; “but things being so that he should have come now--that’s what beats me. There’s another paper with more particulars: maybe he was well advised. It’s a far cry to Lochow. That’s a paper I have read with great interest, Mrs Ogilvy, but it would not be pleasant reading for you.” “But is there danger?” she said, her face colouring and fading under her old friend’s eye, as she watched every word that fell from his lips. “Well,” he said, “with a thing like that hanging over a man’s head, it’s rash to say that there’s no danger; but these wild offeecials in the wild parts of America--sheriffs they seem to call them--riding the country with a wild posse, and a revolver in every man’s hand--bless me, very unlike our sheriffs here!--have not their eyes fixed on Mid-Lothian nor any country place hereaway, we may be sure. They will look far before they will look for him here.” “But is it him--him, my son--that they are looking for, my Robbie?” she said, with a sharp cry.