question more nearly, yet hardly dared.

"Do you think she could have gone mad? People sometimes do go stark mad
suddenly. Because, if so, and if you could be mistaken in thinking you
saw her in the house when you went--"

The Scotchman was looking keenly at him with sharp eyes and haggard
face. "I understand ye," he said, with a sigh of resignation, "the noise
o' the thing has been such that there's no evil men haven't thought of
me, or madness of her. Ye think the living creature ye saw rise from the
coffin was, maybe, the dead man's daughter?"

"I think it was much too big for a woman."

"Oh, as to that, she was a good height." Perhaps, with involuntary
thought of what might have been, he drew himself up to his full stature
as he said, "A grand height for a woman; but as to this idea of yours,
I'll not say ye're insulting her by it, though! that's true too; but
I've had the same notion; and now I'll tell ye something. She was not
mad; she took clothes; she left everything in order. Was that the act of
a maniac? and if she wasn't mad, clean out of her wits, would she have
done such a thing as ye're thinking of?"

"No"--thoughtfully--"I should think not."

"And, furthermore; if she had wished to do it, where is it she could
have laid him? D'ye think I haven't looked the ground over? There's no
place where she could have buried him, and to take him to the lake was
beyond her strength." There was nothing of the everyday irascibility
about his voice; the patience of a great grief was upon him, as he