The minister—­the Rev. Alexander Cardross—­had been sailing with him; had only just landed, and was watching the boat crossing back again, when the squall came down.  Though this region is a populous district now, with white villas dotted like daisies all along the green shores, there was then not a house in the whole peninsula of Cairnforth except the Castle, the Manse, and a few cottages, called the “clachan.”  Before help was possible, the earl and his boatman, Neil Campbell, were both drowned.  The only person saved was little Malcolm Campbell—­ Neil’s brother—­a boy about ten years old.

In most country parishes of Scotland or England there is an almost superstitious feeling that “the minister,” or “the clergyman,” must be the fittest person to break any terrible tidings.  So it ought to be.  Who but the messenger of God should know best how to communicate His awful will, as expressed in great visitations of Calamity?  In this case no one could have been more suited for his solemn office than Mr. Cardross.  He went up to the Castle door, as he had done to that of many a cottage bearing the same solemn message of sudden death, to which there could be but one answer—­“Thy will be done.”

But the particulars of that terrible interview, in which he had to tell the countess what already her own eyes had witnessed—­though they refused to believe the truth—­the minister never repeated to any creature except his wife.  And afterward, during the four weeks that Lady Cairnforth survived her husband, he was the only person, beyond her necessary attendants, who saw her until she died.

The day after her death he was suddenly summoned to the castle by Mr. Menteith, an Edinburg writer to the signet, and confidential agent, or factor, as the office called in Scotland, to the late earl.

“They’ll be sending for you to baptize the child.  It’s early—­but the pair bit thing may be delicate, and they may want it done at once, before Mr. Menteith returns to Edinburg.”

“Maybe so, Helen; so do not expect me back till you see me.”

Thus saying, the minister quitted his sunshiny manse garden, where he was working peacefully among his raspberry-bushes, with his wife looking on, and walked, in meditative mood, through the Cairnforth woods, now blue with hyacinths in their bosky shadows, and in every nook and corner starred with great clusters of yellow primroses, which in this part of the country grow profusely, even down to within a few feet of high-water mark, on the tidal shores of the lochs.  Their large, round, smiling faces, so irresistibly suggestive of baby smiles at sight of them, and baby fingers clutching at them, touched the heart of the good minister, who had left two small creatures of his own—­a “bit girlie” of five, and a two-year-old boy—­playing on his grass-plot at home with some toys of the countess’s giving:  she had always been exceedingly kind to the Manse children.