Throughout, Kirsty had held her mare by the bridle, and she, although behaving as well as she could, had, in the fright the laird's rushes and the sounds of the whip caused her, added not a little to her mistress's difficulties. Just as she sprang on her back, the door opened, and faces looked peering out; whereupon with a cut or two she encouraged a few wild gambols, so that all the trouble seemed to have been with the mare. Then she rode quietly through the gate.

Gordon stood in a motionless fury until he heard the soft thunder of the mare's hoofs on the turf as Kirsty rode home at a fierce gallop; then he turned and went into the house, not to communicate what had taken place, but to lie about it as like truth as he might find possible.

About half-way home, on the side of a hill, across which a low wind, the long death-moan of autumn, blew with a hopeless, undulant, but not intermittent wail among the heather, Kirsty broke into a passionate fit of weeping, but ere she reached home all traces of her tears had vanished.

Gordon did not go the next day, nor the day after, but he never saw Phemy again. It was a week before he showed himself, and then he was not a beautiful sight. He attributed the one visible wale on his cheek and temple to a blow from a twig as he ran in the dusk through the shrubbery after a strange dog. Even at the castle they did not know exactly when he left it. His luggage was sent after him.

The domestics at least were perplexed as to the wale on his face, until the man to whom Kirsty had spoken at the door hazarded a conjecture or two, which being not far from the truth, and as such accepted, the general admiration and respect which already haloed Corbyknowe's Kirsty, were thenceforward mingled with a little wholesome fear.

When Kirsty told her father and mother what she had done at castle Weelset, neither said a word. Her mother turned her head away, but the light in her father's eyes, had she had any doubt as to how they would take it, would have put her quite at her ease.

CHAPTER XIX

FRANCIS GORDON'S CHAMPION

Poor little Phemy was in bed, and had cried herself asleep. Kirsty was more tired than she had ever been before. She went to bed at once, but, for a long time, not to sleep.

She had no doubt her parents approved of the chastisement she had given Gordon, and she herself nowise repented of it; yet the instant she lay down, back came the same sudden something that set her weeping on the hillside. As then, all un-sent for, the face of Francie Gordon, such as he was in their childhood, rose before her, but marred by her hand with stripes of disgrace from his father's whip; and with the vision came again the torrent of her tears, for, if his father had then struck him so, she would have been bold in his defence. She pressed her face into the pillow lest her sobs should be heard. She was by no means a young woman ready to weep, but the thought of the boy-face with her blows upon it, got within her guard, and ran her through the heart. It seemed as if nevermore would she escape the imagined sight. It is a sore thing when a woman, born a protector, has for protection to become an avenger, and severe was the revulsion in Kirsty from an act of violence foreign to the whole habit, though nowise inconsistent with the character, of the calm, thoughtful woman. She had never struck even the one-horned cow that would, for very cursedness, kick over the milk-pail! Hers was the wrath of the mother, whose very presence in a calm soul is its justification--for how could it be there but by the original energy? The wrath was gone, and the mother soul turned against itself--not in judgment at all, but in irrepressible feeling. She did not for one moment think, I repeat, that she ought not to have done it, and she was glad in her heart to know that what he had said and she had done must keep Phemy and him apart; but there was the blow on the face of the boy she had loved, and there was the reflex wound in her own soul! Surely she loved him yet with her mother-love, else how could she have been angry enough with him to strike him! For weeks the pain lasted keen, and it was ever after ready to return. It was a human type of the divine suffering in the discipline of the sinner, which with some of the old prophets takes the shape of God's repenting of the evils he has brought on his people; and was the only trouble she ever kept from her mother: she feared to wake her own pain in the dearer heart. She could have told her father; for, although he was, she knew, just as loving as her mother, he was not so soft-hearted, and would not, she thought, distress himself too much about an ache more or less in a heart that had done its duty; but as she could not tell her mother, she would not tell her father. But her father and mother saw that a change had passed upon her, and partially, if not quite, understood the nature of it. They perceived that she left behind her on that night a measure of her gaiety, that thereafter she was yet gentler to her parents, and if possible yet tenderer to her brother.

For all the superiority constantly manifested by her in her relations with Francis, the feeling was never absent from her that he was of a race above her own; and now the visage of the young officer in her father's old regiment never, any more than that of her play-fellow, rose in her mind's eye uncrossed by the livid mark of her whip from the temple down the cheek! Whether she had actually seen it so, she did not certainly remember, but so it always came to her, and the face of the man never cost her a tear; it was only that of the boy that made her weep.

Another thing distressed her even more: the instant ere she struck the first, the worst blow, she saw on his face an expression so meanly selfish that she felt as if she hated him. That expression had vanished from her visual memory, her whip had wiped it away, but she knew that for a moment she had all but hated him--if it was indeed _all but_!

All the house was careful the next morning that Phemy should not be disturbed; and when at length the poor child appeared, looking as if her colour was not 'ingrain,' and so had been washed out by her tears, Kirsty made haste to get her a nice breakfast, and would answer none of her questions until she had made a proper meal.

'Noo, Kirsty,' said Phemy at last, 'ye maun tell me what he said whan ye loot him ken 'at I cudna win til him 'cause ye wudna lat me!'

'He saidna muckle to that. I dinna think he had been sair missin ye.'

'I see ye're no gaein to tell me the trowth, Kirsty! I ken by mysel he maun hae been missin me dreidfu'!'

'Ye can jeedge nae man by yersel, Phemy. Men's no like hiz lass-fowk!'

Phemy laughed superior.

'What ken ye aboot men, Kirsty? There never cam a man near ye, i' the w'y o' makin up til ye!'

'I'm no preten'in to ony exparience,' returned Kirsty; 'I wad only hae ye tak coonsel wi' common sense. Is 't likly, Phemy, 'at a man wi gran'

relations, and gran' notions, a man wi' a fouth o' grit leddies in 's acquantance to mak a fule o' him and themsel's thegither, special noo 'at he's an offisher i' the Company's service--is 't ony gait likly, I say, 'at he sud be as muckle ta'en up wi' a wee bit cuintry lassie as she cudna but be wi' him?'

'Noo, Kirsty, ye jist needna gang aboot to gar me mistrust ane wha's the verra mirror o' a' knichtly coortesy,' rejoined Phemy, speaking out of the high-flown, thin atmosphere she thought the region of poetry, 'for ye canna! Naething ever onybody said cud gar me think different o'

_him_!'

'Nor naething ever he said himsel?' asked Kirsty.

'Naething,' answered Phemy, with strength and decision.

'No gien it was 'at naething wud ever gar him merry ye?'

'That he micht weel say, for he winna need garrin!--But he never said it, and ye needna try to threpe it upo' me!' she added, in a tone that showed the very idea too painful.

'He did say't, Phemy.'

'Wha tellt ye? It's lees! Somebody's leein!'

'He said it til me himsel. Never a lee has onybody had a chance o'

puttin intil the tale!'

'He never said it, Kirsty!' cried Phemy, her cheeks now glowing, now pale as death. 'He daurna!'

'He daured; and he daured to _me_! He said, "I wudna merry her gien baith o' ye gaed doon upon yer knees to me!"'

'Ye maun hae sair angert him, Kirsty, or he wudna hae said it! Of coorse he wasna to be guidit by you! He _cud_na hae meaned what he said! He wad never hae said it to me! I wuss wi' a' my hert I hadna latten ye til 'im! Ye hae ruined a'!'

'Ye never loot me gang, Phemy! It was my business to gang.'

'I see what's intil't!' cried Phemy, bursting into tears. 'Ye tellt him hoo little ye thoucht o' me, and that gart him change his min'!'

'Wud he be worth greitin about gien that war the case, Phemy? But ye ken it wasna that! Ye ken 'at I jist cudna du onything o' the sort!-- I'm jist ashamed to deny't!'

'Hoo am I to ken? There's nae a wuman born but wad fain hae him til hersel!'

Kirsty held her peace for pity, thinking what she could say to convince her of Gordon's faithlessness.

'He didna say he hadna promised?' resumed Phemy through her sobs.

'We camna upo' that.'

'That's what I'm thinkin!'

'I kenna what ye're thinking, Phemy!'

'What did ye gie him, Kirsty, whan he tauld ye--no 'at I believe a word o' 't--'at he wud nane o' me?'

Kirsty laughed with a scorn none the less clear that it was quiet.

'Jist a guid lickin,' she answered.

'Ha, ha!' laughed Phemy hysterically. 'I tellt ye ye was leein! Ye hae been naething but leein--a' for fun, of coorse, I ken that--to mak a fule o' me for bein fleyt!'

Despair, for a moment, seemed to overwhelm Kirsty. Was it for this she had so wounded her own soul! How was she to make the poor child understand? She lifted up her heart in silence. At last she said,--

'Ye winna see mair o' him this year or twa onygait, I'm thinkin! Gien ever ye get a scart o' 's pen, it'll surprise me. But gien ever ye hae the chance, which may God forbid, tell him I said I had gien him his licks, and daured him to come and deny't to my face. He winna du that, Phemy! He kens ower weel I wad jist gie him them again!'