Utter desertion seized my soul--my father was not there! Was it a horrible dream?
Should I ever awake?
My heart sank totally within me.

I could bear no more.

I fell down on the bed weeping bitterly, and wept myself asleep.
Years after, when I was a young man, I read Jean Paul's terrible dream that there was no God, and the desolation of this night was my key to that dream.
Once more I awoke to a sense of misery, and stretched out my arms, crying, "Papa! papa!" The same moment I found my father's arms around me; he folded me close to him, and said-- "Hush, Ranald, my boy! Here I am! You are quite safe." I nestled as close to him as I could go, and wept for blessedness.
"Oh, papa!" I sobbed, "I thought I had lost you." "And I thought I had lost you, my boy.

Tell me all about it." Between my narrative and my replies to his questionings he had soon gathered the whole story, and I in my turn learned the dismay of the household when I did not appear.

Kirsty told what she knew.