They told me she had lost two others, and we tried everything of which we could think.

It just seemed as if it had grown a lump of flesh, with no vital spark in it." Dannie turned, went out of the door, and back along the lane to the river where he had left Jimmy.

"'A lump of flesh with na vital spark in it,'" he kept repeating.

"I dinna but that is the secret.

She is almost numb with misery.