back the way they had come: clearly she thought of nothing but carrying the
infant home to her father; and here even the slow perception of her
companion understood her.

"Maggie, Maggie," he cried, "ye'll baith be deid afore ye win hame wi' 't!
Come on to my mither. There never was wuman like her for bairns! She'll ken
a hantle better nor ony father what to dee wi' 't!"

Maggie at once recovered her senses, and knew he was right--but not before
she had received an instantaneous insight that never after left her: now
she understood the heart of the Son of Man, come to find and carry back the
stray children to their Father and His. When afterward she told her father
what she had then felt, he answered her with just the four words and no
more--

"Lassie, ye hae 't!"

Happily the moon was now up, so that Andrew was soon able to find the
things they had both dropped in their haste, and Maggie had soon wrapped
the baby in the winsey petticoat she had been carrying. Andrew took up his
loaf and his other packages, and they set out again for Bogsheuch, Maggie's
heart all but overwhelmed with its exultation. Had the precious thing been
twice the weight, so exuberant was her feeling of wealth in it that she
could have carried it twice the distance with ease, although the road was
so rough that she went in constant terror of stumbling. Andrew gave now
and then a queer chuckle at the ludicrousness of their home-coming, and
every second minute had to stop and pick up one or other of his many
parcels; but Maggie strode on in front, full of possession, and with the
feeling of having now at last entered upon her heavenly inheritance; so
that she was quite startled when suddenly they came in sight of the turf