“It’s real kind of you to do this for me, Thora,” I said, touched by the girl’s tenderness, “and I will not forget this.  No, not as long as I live;” and I think there was a tremor in my voice—­at least I felt what I said.

“But,” I continued, “what will they say to you at Crua Breck, if they hear you have done this thing?”

“Halcro, I have done nothing but what I have been told to do.  Before you knocked at the door, my father was saying we should aye ‘do as we’d be done by.’  In that I have obeyed him.  But I must run back now, or they will miss me.  See you give care to the foot.  Fare ye well!”

And with that she hastened back to the farm, leaving me to ponder over her manner of applying that golden rule which her father had, while teaching it, so grievously failed to practise.

I made my way onward to Lyndardy—­sadly, it is true, but with a strange new feeling in my heart for this blue-eyed maiden who, in defiance of her family, had helped me in my weariness and distress.

A short distance from the place where Thora left me, I came to the ruined cottage of Inganess.  As I approached I heard a click-clicking noise, by which I surmised there was some person within the ruined walls.  A dog came out to meet me at the door, wagging its tail in welcome.  It was the very counterpart of my own dead Selta, and I knew well whom to expect in the cottage even before I entered.

Seated on the floor under shelter of a part of the roof that had not fallen in, was an old man, with locks of silver hair appearing under his blue bonnet, and hanging with a curl about his neck.  The clicking sound I had heard proceeded from a flint and the back of a knife, with which the old man was endeavouring to strike a light to kindle the little pile of faded heather that lay in a corner.  When I looked in he raised his eyes and said with surprise: 

“Ah!  Halcro, lad.  Travelling on a day like this?  Why, ye’re as wet as myself.  But come in, come in here.  It’s a poor house; but ye’re real welcome.  And where’s your dog?”

I was downcast at this question, for it was this same old man before me—­this Colin Lothian, the wandering beggar—­who had given Selta to me, and the dog that was with him was Selta’s brother.

“Colin,” I asked, when I had told him of my dog’s death, “why is it you come to this poor place for shelter when every house in the Mainland is open to you?  Why do you not go to my uncle’s at Lyndardy?”

“Weel, ye see, lad, I dinna mind where I gang.  One place is as good as another, and this is very well in a shower of rain.  I was west at Crua Breck when the rain came on sae heavy; and I hae been here these twa hours tryin’ to strike a light, but ye see the tinder’s wet—­

“Try you if ye can do it, lad;” and the old man handed me the flint.