Perhaps, if it had once been borne in upon him that another than himself was involved in the suspicion which had settled upon his name—­if he had even come to realize that Rotha might suffer the stigma of a fatal reproach for no worse offence than that she was her father’s daughter—­perhaps, if he had once felt this as a possible contingency, he would have shaken off the black cloud that seemed to justify the odium in which he was held by those about him, and lifted up his head for her sake if not for his own.

But Sim lacked virile strength.  The disease of melancholy had long kept its seat at his heart, and that any shadow of doubt could rest on Rotha as a result of a misdeed, or supposed misdeed, of his had never yet occurred to Sim’s mind.

And truly Rotha was above the blight of withering doubt.  Rude daughter of a rude age, in a rude country and without the refinements of education, still how pure and sweet she was; how strong, and yet how tender; how unconscious in her instinct of self-sacrifice; how devoted in her loyalty; how absolute in her trust!

But deep and rich as was Rotha’s simple nature, it was yet incomplete.  She herself was made aware that a great change was even now coming to pass.  She understood the transformation little, if at all; but it seemed as though, somehow, a new sense were taking hold of her.  And, indeed, a new light had floated into her little orbit.  Was it too bright as yet for her to see it for what it was?  It flooded everything about her, and bathed the world in other hues than the old time.  Disaster had followed on disaster in the days that had just gone by, but nevertheless—­she knew not how—­it was not all gloom in her heart.  In the waking hours of the night there was more than the memory of the late events in her mind; her dreams were not all nightmares; and in the morning, when the swift recoil of sad thoughts rushed in at her first awakening, a sentiment of indefinite solace came close behind it.  What was it that was coming to pass?

It was love that was now dawning upon her, though still vague and indeterminate; it hardly knew its object.

Willy Ray took note of this change in the girl, and thought he understood it.  He accepted it as the one remaining gleam of hope and happiness for both of them amid the prevailing gloom.  Rotha avoided the searching light of his glances.  When the work of the household was in hand she shook off the glamour of the new-found emotion.

In the morning when the men came down for breakfast, and again in the evening when they came in for supper, the girl busied herself in her duties with the ardor of one having no thought behind them and no feeling in which they did not share.  But when the quieter hours of the day left her free for other thoughts, she would stand and look long into the face of the poor invalid to whom she had become nurse and foster-child in one; or walk, without knowing why, to the window neuk, and put her hand on the old wheel, that now rested quiet and unused beneath it, while she looked towards the south through eyes that saw nothing that was there.