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The Ball and the Cross

and enemy, and almost turned cold at what he saw there. He had seen the blue but gloomy eyes of the western Highlander troubled by as many tempests as his own west Highland seas, but there had always been a fixed star of faith behind the storms. Now the star had gone out, and there was only misery.

Yet MacIan had the strength to answer the question where Turnbull, taken by surprise, had not the strength to ask it.

“They are right, they are right!” he cried. “O my God! they are right, Turnbull. I ought to be here!”

He went on with shapeless fluency as if he no longer had the heart to choose or check his speech. “I suppose I ought to have guessed long ago—all my big dreams and schemes—and every one being against us—but I was stuck up, you know.”

“Do tell me about it, really,” cried the atheist, and, faced with the furnace of the other’s pain, he did not notice that he spoke with the affection of a father.

“I am mad, Turnbull,” said Evan, with a dead clearness of speech, and leant back against the garden-seat.

“Nonsense,” said the other, clutching at the

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