“I will, father.”

During these ten years there had been occasional news from the exiles.  Mrs. Morrison stopped Archie at intervals, as he passed her door, and said there had been a letter from Katie.  At first they came frequently, and were tinged with brightest hopes.  Alexander had a fine place, and their baby was the most beautiful in the world.  The next news was that Alexander was in business for himself and making money rapidly.  Handsome presents, that were the wonder of the village, then came occasionally, and also remittances of money that made the poor mother hold her head proudly about “our Katie” and her “splendid house and carriage.”

But suddenly all letters stopped, and the mother thought for long they must be coming to see her, but this hope and many another faded, and the fair morning of Katie’s marriage was shrouded in impenetrable gloom and mystery.

Archie got bravely over his trouble, and a while after his father’s death married a good little woman, not quite without “the bit of siller.”  Soon after he took his savings to Edinburgh and joined his wife’s brother in business there.  Things prospered with him, slowly but surely, and he became known for a steady, prosperous merchant, and a douce pious householder, the father of a fine lot of sons and daughters.

One night, twenty years after the beginning of my story, he was passing through the old town of Edinburgh, when a wild cry of “Fire!  Fire!  Fire!” arose on every side of him.

“Where?” he asked of the shrieking women pouring from all the filthy, narrow wynds around.

“In Gordon’s Wynd.”

He was there almost the first of any efficient aid, striving to make his way up the smoke-filled stairs, but this was impossible.  The house was one of those ancient ones, piled story upon story; so old that it was almost tinder.  But those on the opposite side were so close that not unfrequently a plank or two flung across from opposite windows made a bridge for the benefit of those seeking to elude justice.

By means of such a bridge all the inhabitants of the burning house were removed, and no one was more energetic in carrying the women and children across the dangerous planks than Archie Scott; for his mountain training had made such a feat one of no extraordinary danger to him.  Satisfied at length that all life was out of risk, he was turning to go home, when a white, terrible face looked out of the top-most floor, showing itself amid the gusts of smoke like the dream of a corpse, and screaming for help in agonizing tones.  Archie knew that face only too well.  But he remembered, in the same instant, what his father had said in dying, and, swift as a mountain deer, he was quickly on the top floor of the opposite house again.

In a few moments the planks bridged the distance between death and safety; but no entreaties could make the man risk the dangerous passage.  Setting tight his lips, Archie went for the shrieking coward, and carried him into the opposite house.  Then the saved man recognized his preserver.