There returned again the vision of the two brown eyes staring at her, intent and bright, out of that dark corner of the kirk.

The whole appearance and attitude, the smile, the suggested gesture of young Hermiston came before her in a flash at the sight of the torn page.

"I was surely fey!" she said, echoing the words of Dandie, and at the suggested doom her high spirits deserted her.

She flung herself prone upon the bed, and lay there, holding the psalm-book in her hands for hours, for the more part in a mere stupor of unconsenting pleasure and unreasoning fear.

The fear was superstitious; there came up again and again in her memory Dandie's ill-omened words, and a hundred grisly and black tales out of the immediate neighbourhood read her a commentary on their force.