“What is she going to do?” the girl asked herself again and again as she tossed on her hard bed that night.  She tried to imagine Aunt Janet bringing in wood for the fire, breaking the ice of the well in winter, cleaning and cooking as Jean did, and her imagination simply would not stretch so far.  Then she saw the nights when she would sit in the big book-room with the ghosts walking about the draughty passages, up and down through the green baize door, looking for their swords and dirks, the beds and tables and chairs that had been sold while the rats scuttered about the wainscoting.  And she got a terrible vision of her aunt looking round furtively as her hand went behind the curtain to a paper bag of cheap sweets.

“Oh, I can’t leave her!” she cried.  “Poor Aunt Janet!”

But even as her lips told her she could not go, her feet tingled like the swallows’ wings in September and knew that, whoever suffered for it, she would have to go.

Ghosts and shadows crowded round her next day when she ran down to the beach to say good-bye to Wullie.  On the gate of the farm was fixed a notice saying that Miss Lashcairn desired the villagers to come to the house next day if they wished a free joint of beef, as she had no further use for her cattle.  “As the beast in question is old,” went on the firm, precise writing, “the meat will be tough.  But probably it is quite worth consideration by those with large families.”

Marcella was crying as she banged open the door of Wullie’s hut.

“I thought ye’d be coming, Marcella,” he said, looking at her with mournful brown eyes that recalled Hoodie’s.  “Jock’s wife’s made ye a seed cake to eat the day, and anither tae pack in yer grip.  She says if ye’ll pit it intill a bit tin an’ fasten it doon tight it’ll maybe keep till ye’re at Australia.  But I’m thenkin’ she doesna rightly ken whaur Australia is on the map.”

“Oh, Wullie,” cried Marcella, flinging herself down on the ground beside him.  “I feel as if I can’t bear it all.  Hoodie killed, and going to be eaten, Jean going to Perth to live, and Aunt Janet all alone in the old farm, living with the rats.”

“Ye’re awa’ yersel’, Marcella, mind,” said Wullie gravely.

“Wullie, I wish I could explain.  I don’t want to go, really, but if I don’t I’m so afraid I’ll get frozen up and dead.  Oh, and acid drops,” she added frantically.

“Eh?” he asked.

“Oh, that’s nothing.  Only something I was thinking,” she said quickly.  “But I’ve got to go; only I hate to think of things being uprooted here.”

“Then dinna think aboot it.  I knew ye’d be awa’ afore long.  It’s in ye, juist as it’s in the birds.  But ye’ll come flying back like they do.”

“Oh, Wullie, do you think I shall?” she pleaded, watching him as he stroked his beard and looked out across the sea.

“Ye’ll be back, Marcella.  Very glad ye’ll be tae come back, an’ ye’ll find me here, juist the same.  Things change little.  It takes millions of years to change everything save folk’s spirits.  I’ll never change, till His hand straightens me oot some day for a buryin’.  But ye’ll be changed, Marcella, like Lashnagar—­things will have cropped out in ye, and things will have walked over ye.”