Willy Ray had been coming and going most of the night from the kitchen to his own room—­a little carpeted closet of a bedroom that went out from the first landing on the stairs, and looked up to the ghyll at the back.  The wee place was more than his sleeping-room; he had his books there, but he had neither slept nor read that night.  He wandered about aimlessly, with the eyes of one walking in his sleep, breaking out sometimes into a little hysterical scream, followed by a shudder, and then a sudden disappearance.  Death had come to him for the first time, and in a fearful guise.  Its visible presence appalled him.  He was as feeble as a child now.  He was ready to lean on the first strong human arm that offered; and though Rotha understood but vaguely the troubles that beset his mind, her quick instinct found a sure way to those that lay heavy at his heart.  She comforted him with what good words she could summon, and he came again and again to her with his odd fancies and his recollections of the poor feeble philosophy which he had gleaned from books.  The look in the eyes of this simple girl and the touch of her hand made death less fearsome than anything besides.  Willy seemed to lean on Rotha, and she on her part appeared to grow stronger as she felt this.

Ralph had gone to bed much as usual the night before—­after he had borne upstairs what lay there.  He was not seen again until morning, and when he came down and stood for a moment over his mother’s chair as she sat gazing steadfastly into the fire, Rotha was stooping over the pan, with the porridge thivle in her hand.  She looked up into his face, while his hand rested with a speechless sympathy on his mother’s arm, and she thought that, mingled with a softened sorrow, there was something like hope there.  The sadness of last night was neither in his face nor in his voice.  He was even quieter than usual, but he appeared to have grown older in the few hours that had intervened.  Nevertheless, he went through his ordinary morning’s work about the homestead with the air of one whose mind was with him in what he did.  After breakfast he took his staff out of the corner and set out for the hills, his dog beside him.

During the day, Rotha, with such neighborly help as it was the custom to tender, did all the little offices incident to the situation.  She went in and out of the chamber of the dead, not without awe, but without fear.  She had only once before looked on death, or, if she had seen it twice before this day, her first sight of it was long ago, in that old time of which memory scarcely held a record, when she was carried in her father’s arms into a darkened room like this and held for a moment over the white face that she knew to be the face of her mother.  But, unused as she had been to scenes made solemn by death, she appeared to know her part in this one.