The widow, who had had many visitors that morning, seemed to be scarcely aware of his entrance; she was sitting on a low seat beside the fire, her face covered with her hands, while the tremulous rocking motion of her body showed that she was still brooding over the distresses of the previous night. Her companion, who, without undressing, had thrown herself across the bed, was fast asleep. The stranger seated himself beside the fire, which seemed dying amid its ashes, and, turning sedulously from the light of the window, laid his hand gently on the widow’s shoulder. She started and looked up. “I have strange news for you,” he said. “You have long mourned for your husband and your son; but though the old man has been dead for years, your son Ernest is still alive, and is now in the harbour of Cromarty. He is lieutenant of the vessel whose guns you must have heard during the night.” The poor woman seemed to have lost all power of reply. “I am a friend of Ernest’s,” continued the stranger, “and have come to prepare you to meet with him. It is now five years since his father and he were blown off to sea by a strong gale from the land. They drove before it for four days, when they were picked up by an armed vessel cruising in the North Sea, and which soon after sailed for the coast of Spanish America. The poor old man sank under the fatigues he had undergone; though Ernest, better able from his youth to endure hardship, was little affected by them. He accompanied us on our Spanish expedition--indeed, he had no choice, for we touched at no British port after meeting with him; and through good fortune, and what his companions call merit, he has risen to be the second man aboard; and has now brought home with him gold enough from the Spaniards to make his old mother comfortable. He saw your light yester evening, and steered by it to the roadstead, blessing you all the way. Tell me, for he anxiously wished me to inquire of you, whether Helen Henry is yet unmarried?” “It is Ernest--it is Ernest himself!” exclaimed the maiden, as she started from the widow’s bed. In a moment after he had locked her in his arms. It was ill before evening with old Eachen Macinla. The fatigues of the previous day, the grief and horror of the following night, had prostrated his energies bodily and mental; and he now lay tossing in a waste apartment of the storehouse in the delirium of fever. The bodies of his two sons occupied the floor below. He muttered unceasingly in his ravings, of William and Ernest Beth. They were standing beside him, he said, and every time he attempted to pray for his poor boys and himself, the stern old man laid his cold swollen hand on his lips.