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“I see them! I see them!” cried Barbara, fixing her eyes on the bed, her voice like a shriek; “they are full of eyes, behind and before, and they see into the heart of man. Their faces are full of anger, and their mouths are open to devour–“

“Wheesh, wheesh, woman! Here’s the young Sheriff come doon frae the Barr wi’ the Fiscal to tak’ evidence.”

And Barbara Allen was silent as Gregory Jeffray came in.

To do him justice, when he wrote her the letter that killed–concerning the necessities of his position and career–he had tried to break the parting gently. How should he know all that she knew? It was clearly an ill turn that fate had played him. Indeed, he felt ill-used. So he listened to the Fiscal taking evidence, and in due course departed.

But within an inner pocket he had a letter that was not filed with the documents, but which might have shed clearer light upon when and how Grace Allen slipped and fell, gathering flowers at night above the great pool of the Black Water.

“There is set up a throne in the heavens,” chanted mad Barbara Allen as Gregory went out; “and One sits upon it–and my Gracie’s there, clothed in white robes, an’ a palm in her hand. And you’ll be there, young man,” she cried after him, “and I’ll be there. There’s a cry comin’ owre the Black Water for you, like the cry that raised me oot o’ my bed yestreen. An’ ye’ll hear it–ye’ll hear it, braw young man; ay–and rise up and answer, too!”

But they paid no heed to her–for, of course, she was mad. Neither did Gregory Jeffray hear aught as he went out, but the water lapping against the little boat that was still half full of flowers.

The days went by, and being added together one at a time, they made the years. And the years grew into one decade, and lengthened out towards another.

Aunt Annie was long dead, a white stone over her; but there was no stone over Grace Allen–only a green mound where daisies grew.

Sir Gregory Jeffray came that way. He was a great law-officer of the Crown, and first heir to the next vacant judgeship. This, however, he was thinking of refusing because of the greatness of his private practice.

He had come to shoot at the Barr, and his baggage was at Barmark station. How strange it would be to see the old places again in the gloom of a September evening!

Gregory still loved a new sensation. All was so long past–the bitterness clean gone out of it. The old boathouse had fallen into other hands, and railways had come to carry the traffic beyond the ferry.

As Sir Gregory Jeffray walked from the late train which set him down at the station, he felt curiously at peace. The times of the Long Ago came back not ungratefully to his mind. There had been much pleasure in them. He even thought kindly of the girl with whom he had walked in the glory of a forgotten summer along the hidden ways of the woods. Her last letter, long since destroyed, was not disagreeable to him when he thought of the secret which had been laid to rest so quietly in the pool of the Black Water.

He came to the water’s edge. He sent his voice, stronger now than of yore, but without the old ring of boyish hopefulness, across the loch. A moment’s silence, the whisper of the night wind, and then from the gloom of the farther side an answering hail–low, clear, and penetrating.

“I am in luck to find them out of bed,” said Gregory Jeffray to himself.

He waited and listened. The wind blew chill from the south athwart the ferry. He shivered, and drew his fur-lined travelling-coat about him. He could hear the water lapping against the mighty piers of the railway viaduct above, which, with its gaunt iron spans, like bows bent to send arrows into the heavens, dimly towered between him and the skies.