Your mither's been walkin' these twa nights.
Don't you be sittin' right in her foot-pad!"

I was sitting on the stairs watching the clock
on the landing. The hands were creeping near
midnight, and I was sorely uneasy for my
father, who had gone over to the mills after
dinner, and had not yet returned. Again and
again I had gone to my own room to spy
through the pane across the dark river, and
between the gloomy trees, at the light still
burning in his private counting-house. One by
one the lights in the workpeople's cottages had
twinkled and disappeared, and the landscape
was all black, the rain descending unseen into
the invisible river.

I had long guessed that affairs had been
going wrong at the mills, but not until that
morning had I known that inevitable ruin hung
over the firm of Gordon and Elphinstone. My
father had for the first time in his life taken me
into his confidence, telling me that I must
prepare to look poverty bravely in the face.
In another day or two, at furthest, the smash
of the Streamstown Mills must be known all
over the kingdom. My father's agony had been
terrible to behold. This was not the downfall
of a mill only; it was the destruction of an idol
to which a life had been sacrificed. I had drawn
nearer to my father in his trouble than I had
ever done before. I had always yearned to
him with a natural love, and one was absent
now whom, justly or unjustly, I had always
blamed for keeping us apart.

"Where is Luke Elphinstone?" I said to
my father that morning, for the junior partner
had been absent for three weeks. "I hope he
will not leave you to bear the brunt of this alone."

My father looked at me hastily, as if I had
hit on a thought of his own, but he checked me
sternly.

"Were he here," he said, "he is as powerless
as I, and cowardice could only do him
harm. Such conduct would not be like him."

I thought within myself that it would be like
him, but I did not say another word.

The house had been as silent as a tomb all
day. I had strayed through the dull sad rooms
and wondered what might lie before me.
After dark I sat on the staircase, shunning the
big rooms below. Elspie had come out of my
nursery, where she lived, and coaxed me to
come to her, as I have written down, but I was
not afraid of my mother that night. At this
crisis I could have borne to meet her wandering
spirit face to face. It was always before trouble
befell us that her step was heard; but I was
nineteen years of age now, and I had got used
to the shadows of the Mill-house.

I sat thinking upon the stairs. I thought
of all the friends who had ever come and
gone about the old house, of my dear Dick,
and of Sylvia, who had promised to come
and visit me in the summer, but whom the
Mill-house would never now receive again. I
thought of Mrs. Hatteraick, my mother's friend.
She had lived at Eldergowan in my mother's
lifetime, had come between my parents in their
sad disagreements, and had nursed my mother
in her last illness. I thought of Mark Hatteraick,
her son, the tall soldier lad who had
tossed me in his arms, and called me his little
wife. Those two last friends were far away in
a distant country now, but they haunted my
mother's rooms to my fancy.

So there was a pang at thought of quitting
the old house. I pictured myself and my father
walking hand in hand out of the iron gates
over the burn, with only Elspie in our wake,
Luke Elphinstone going by a different road.
A great sigh of satisfaction swelled my heart as
I assured myself that he should have to go one
way, and we another. This is what I felt for
him that night.

I sat thinking on the stairs till it struck
twelve, and I got terrible fears about my father
all alone with his trouble in the gloom of the
deserted mills. I remembered that men have
done sad things in their extremity, that the
dark river flowed by the counting-house window,
and that the coming shame was more
bitter than death to my father. To lighten my
thoughts I went down and laid out a tempting
little supper in the dining-room. I made the
lamp bright, I heaped wood on the fire, I
tugged the ugly curtains across the window
where the wind was battering and the rain
splashing. With one o'clock all my dreadful
thoughts came back. I got so wild with fear
that I left the house at last and got as far in
the dark as the wooden bridge that led across
to the mills, when I heard my father's laugh
blowing towards me. I was back in time to
open the door to his knock. Two came in
then. Luke Elphinstone had returned.

We three sat down to supper, my father at
the head of the table, and Luke and I facing
one another. My father was in high spirits,
the furrows were smoothed from his forehead,
his face was flushed, he talked and laughed a
great deal. Luke also had an air of suppressed
jubilation about him. He ate and drank well,
speaking little. But I did not mind him much,
for my "father was talking to me, piling my
plate with food I could not eat, and filling my
glass with wine. It was so new to me to be
the object of such attentions from him that I
felt overpowered by confusion and delight. I
thought he had remembered my poor little
efforts to comfort him, and we were going to be
friends at last. God bless the day, even if
poverty and ruin came with it! I laughed
and chattered and sipped my wine, and spoke
quiite kindly to Luke Elphinstone, to whom I
had often been hard in my thoughts. I had
accused him of coming between me and my
father, and widening the breach that had
always divided us. I slipped my chair round
closer to my father. We were both on one
side of the table now, and Luke was at the
other. I talked over quite kindly at Luke.

Next day I learned what was the secret of
my father's change of mood. When Luke
Elphinstone had walked into the counting-house
that night, where my father sat alone in his
misery, contemplating the ruin that was coming
upon him, he had been the bearer of