He felt her hands; they were burning with fever.

"Let us go home," she said, and then she turned and gave one long,
mournful look at the mountains and the sea and the great stretch of
moorland. Tallisker knew in his heart she was bidding farewell to
them. He had no word to say. There are moods of the soul beyond all
human intermeddling.

The silence was broken by Helen. She pointed to the mountains. "How
steadfast they are, how familiar with forgotten years! How small we
are beside them!"

"I don't think so," said Tallisker stoutly. "Mountains are naething to
men. How small is Sinai when the man Moses stands upon it!"

Then they were at the Keep garden. Helen pulled a handful of white and
golden asters, and the laird, who had seen them coming, opened the
door wide to welcome them. Alas! Alas! Though he saw it not, death
entered with them. At midnight there was the old, old cry of despair
and anguish, the hurrying for help, where no help was of avail, the
desolation of a terror creeping hour by hour closer to the
hearthstone.

The laird was stricken with a stony grief which was deaf to all
consolation. He wandered up and down wringing his hands, and crying
out at intervals like a man in mortal agony. Helen lay in a stupor
while the fever burned her young life away. She muttered constantly
the word "Colin;" and Tallisker, though he had no hope that Colin
would ever reach his sister, wrote for the young laird.