"I would like thee to go and tell my father all."
"I will tell thee what thou must do--go home and tell the great news thyself."
"I can not go into Suneva's house. Thou should not ask that of me."
"In the day of thy good fortune, be generous. Suneva Fae has a kind heart, and I blame thee much that there was trouble. Because God has forgiven thee, go without a grudging thought, and say--'Suneva, I was wrong, and I am sorry for the wrong; and I have good news, and want my father and thee to share it.'"
"There is no 'can' in it. It is my will, Margaret, that thou go. Go at once, and take thy son with thee. The kind deed delayed is worth very little. To-day that is thy work, and we will not read or write. As for me, I will loose my boat, and I will sail about the bay, and round by the Troll Rock, and I will think of these things only."
For a few minutes Margaret stood watching him drift with the tide, his boat rocking gently, and the fresh wind blowing his long white hair, and carrying far out to sea the solemnly joyful notes to which he was singing his morning psalm.
"Bless, O my soul, the Lord thy God and not forgetful be Of all his gracious benefits he hath bestowed on thee.
Such pity as a father hath unto his children dear, Like pity shows the Lord to such as worship him in fear."
[*] Version allowed by the authority of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland.
"Thou art a good man," said Margaret to herself, as she waved her hand in farewell, and turned slowly homeward. Most women would have been impatient to tell the great news that had come to them, but Margaret could always wait. Besides, she had been ordered to go to Suneva with it, and the task was not a pleasant one to her. She had never been in her father's house, since she left it with her son in her arms; and it was not an easy thing for a woman so proud to go and say to the woman who had supplanted her--"I have done wrong, and I am sorry for it."
Yet it did not enter her mind to disobey the instructions given her; she only wanted time to consider how to perform them in the quietest, and least painful manner. She took the road by the sea shore, and sat down on a huge barricade of rocks. Generally such lonely communion with sea and sky strengthened and calmed her; but this morning she could not bring her mind into accord with it. Accidentally she dislodged a piece of rock, and it fell among the millions of birds sitting on the shelving precipices below her. They flickered with piercing cries in circles above her head, and then dropped like a shower into the ocean, with a noise like the hurrahing of an army. Impatient and annoyed, she turned away from the shore, across the undulating heathy plateau. She longed to reach her own room; perhaps in its seclusion she would find the composure she needed.