He stooped to kiss her on the forehead, she struck him on the face so that the blood sprang. He went back a step, and stood looking at her sadly as he wiped it away.

'Crying!' she said. 'You always were a coward, Francis!'

But the word had no more any sting for him.

'I'm all right, mother. My nose got in the way!' he answered, restoring his handkerchief to his pocket.

'It's the doctor puts him up to it!' said Mrs. Gordon to herself. 'But we shall soon be rid of him now! If there's any more of this nonsense then, I shall have to shut Francis up again! That will teach him how to behave to his mother!'

When at length Mrs. Gordon was able to go about the house again, it was at once to discover that things were not to be as they had been. Then deepened the combat, and at the same time assumed aspects and occasioned situations which in the eye of the world would have seemed even ludicrously unbecoming. The battle of the warrior is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood, but how much harder and worthier battles are fought, not in shining armour, but amid filth and squalor physical as well as moral, on a field of wretched and wearisome commonplace!

It was essential to success that there should be no traitor among the servants, and Francis had made them understand what his measures were.

Nor was there in this any betrayal of a mother's weakness, for Mrs.

Gordon's had long been more than patent to all about her. When, therefore, he one day found her, for the first time, under the influence of strong drink, he summoned them and told them that, sooner than fail of his end, he would part with the whole house-hold, and should be driven to it if no one revealed how the thing had come to pass. Thereupon the youngest, a mere girl, burst into tears, and confessed that she had procured the whisky. Hardly thinking it possible his mother should have money in her possession, so careful was he to prevent it, he questioned, and found that she had herself provided the half-crown required, and that her mistress had given her in return a valuable brooch, an heirloom, which was hers only to wear, not to give.

He took this from her, repaid her the half-crown, gave her her wages up to the next term, and sent Mrs. Bremner home with her immediately. Her father being one of his own tenants, he rode to his place the next morning, laid before him the whole matter, and advised him to keep the girl at home for a year or two.

This one evil success gave such a stimulus to Mrs. Gordon's passion that her rage with her keeper, which had been abating a little, blazed up at once as fierce as at first. But, miserable as the whole thing was, and trying as he found the necessary watchfulness, Gordon held out bravely. At the end of six months, however, during which no fresh indulgence had been possible to her, he had not gained the least ground for hoping that any poorest growth of strength, or even any waking of desire toward betterment, had taken place in her.

All this time he had not been once to Corbyknowe. He had nevertheless been seeing David Barclay three or four times a week. For Francis had told David how he stood with Kirsty, and how, while refusing him, she had shown him his duty to his mother. He told him also that he now saw things with other eyes, and was endeavouring to do what was right; but he dared not speak to her on the subject lest she should think, as she would, after what had passed between them, be well justified in thinking, that he was doing for her sake what ought to be done for its own. He said to him that, as he was no man of business, and must give his best attention to his mother, he found it impossible for the present to acquaint himself with the state of the property, or indeed attend to it in any serviceable manner; and he begged him, as his father's friend and his own, to look into his affairs, and, so far as his other duties would permit, place things on at least a better footing.

To this petition, David had at once and gladly consented.

He found everything connected with the property in a sad condition. The agent, although honest, was weak, and had so given way to Mrs. Gordon that much havoc had been made, and much money wasted. He was now in bad health, and had lost all heart for his work. But he had turned nothing to his own advantage, and was quite ready, under David's supervision, to do his best for the restoration of order, and the curtailment of expenses.

All that David now saw in his intercourse with the young laird, went to convince him that he was at length a man of conscience, cherishing steady purposes. He reported at home what he saw, and said what he believed, and his wife and daughter perceived plainly that his heart was lighter than it had been for many a day. Kirsty listened, said little, asked a question here and there, and thanked God. For her father brought her not only the good news that Francis was doing his best for his mother, but that he had begun to open his eyes to the fact that he had his part in the wellbeing of all on his land; that the property was not his for the filling of his pockets, or for the carrying out of schemes of his own, but for the general and individual comfort and progress.

'I do believe,' said David, 'the young laird wud fain mak o' the lan's o' Weelset a spot whauron the e'en o' the bonny man micht rist as he gaed by!'

Mrs. Gordon's temper seemed for a time to have changed from fierce to sullen, but by degrees she began to show herself not altogether indifferent to the continuous attentions of her inexorable son. It is true she received them as her right, but he yielded her a right immeasurably beyond that she would have claimed. He would play draughts or cribbage with her for hours at a time, and every day for months read to her as long as she would listen--read Scott and Dickens and Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade.

One day, after much entreaty, she consented to go out for a drive with him, when round to the door came a beautiful new carriage, and such a pair of horses as she could not help expressing satisfaction with.

Francis told her they were at her command, but if ever she took unfair advantage of them, he would send both carriage and horses away.

She was furious at his daring to speak so to _her_, and had almost returned to her room, but thought better of it and went with him. She did not, however, speak a word to him the whole way. The next morning he let her go alone. After that, he sometimes went with her, and sometimes not: the desire of his heart was to behold her a free woman.

She was quite steady for a while, and her spirits began to return. The hopes of her son rose high; he almost ceased to fear.

CHAPTER XXXIX

KIRSTY GIVES ADVICE

It was again midsummer, and just a year since they parted on the Horn, when Francis appeared at Corbyknowe, and found Kirsty in the kitchen.

She received him as if nothing had ever come between them, but at once noting he was in trouble, proposed they should go out together. It was a long way to be silent, but they had reached the spot, whence they started for the race recorded in my first chapter, ere either of them said a word.

'Will ye no sit, Kirsty?' said Francis at length.

For answer she dropped on the same stone where she was sitting when she challenged him to it, and Francis took his seat on its neighbour.

'I hae had a some sair time o' 't sin' I shawed ye plain hoo little I was worth yer notice, Kirsty!' he began.

'Ay,' returned Kirsty, 'but ilka hoor o' 't hes shawn what the rael Francie was!'

'I kenna, Kirsty. A' I can say is--'at I dinna think nearhan sae muckle o' mysel as I did than.'

'And I think a heap mair o' ye,' answered Kirsty. 'I canna but think ye upo' the richt ro'd noo, Francie!'

'I houp I am, but I'm aye fin'in' oot something 'at 'ill never du.'

'And ye'll keep fin'in' oot that sae lang 's there 's onything left but what 's like himsel.'

'I un'erstan ye, Kirsty. But I cam to ye the day, no to say onything aboot mysel, but jist 'cause I cudna du wantin yer help. I wudna hae presumed but that I thoucht, although I dinna deserve 't, for auld kin'ness ye wud say what ye wud advise.'

'I'll du that, Francie--no for auld kin'ness, but for kin'ness never auld. What's wrang wi' ye?'

'Kirsty, wuman, she's brocken oot again!'

'I dinna won'er. I hae h'ard o' sic things.'

'It's jist taen the pith oot o' me! What _am_ I to du?'

'Ye canna du better nor weel; jist begin again.'

'I had coft her a bonny cairriage, wi' as fine a pair as ever ye saw, Kirsty, as I daursay yer father has telled ye. And they warna lost upon her, for she had aye a gleg ee for a horse. Ye min' yon powny?--And up til yesterday, a' gaed weel, till I was thinkin I cud trust her onygait. But i' the efternune, as she was oot for an airin, are o' the horses cuist a shue, and thinkin naething o' the risk til a human sowl, but only o' the risk til the puir horse, the fule fallow stoppit at a smithy nae farrer nor the neist door frae a public, and tuik the horse intil the smithy, lea'in the smith's lad at the held o' the ither horse. Sae what suld my leddy but oot upo' the side _frae_ the smithy, and awa roon the back o' the cairriage to the public, and in! Whether she took onything there I dinna ken, but she maun hae broucht a bottle hame wi her, for this mornin she was fou--fou as e'er ye saw man in market!'

He broke down, and wept like a child.

'And what did ye du?' asked Kirsty.

'I said naething. I jist gaed to the coachman and gart him put his horses tu, and tak his denner wi' him, and m'unt the box, and drive straucht awa til Aberdeen, and lea' the carriage whaur I boucht it, and du siclike wi' the horses, and come hame by the co'ch.'

As he ended the sad tale, he glanced up at Kirsty, and saw her regarding him with a look such as he had never seen, imagined, or dreamed of before. It lasted but a moment; her eyes dropt, and she went on with the knitting which, as in the old days, she had brought with her.

'Noo, Kirsty, what am I to du neist?' he said.

'Hae ye naething i' yer ain min'?' she asked.

'Naething.'

'Weel, we'll awa hame!' she returned, rising. 'Maybe, as we gang, we'll get licht!'

They walked in silence. Now and then Francis would look up in Kirsty's face, to see if anything was coming, but saw only that she was sunk in thought: he would not hurry her, and said not a word. He knew she would speak the moment she had what she thought worth saying.

Kirsty, recalling what her father had repeatedly said of Mrs. Gordon's management of a horse in her young days, had fallen awondering how one who so well understood the equine nature, could be so incapable of understanding the human; for certainly she had little known either Archibald Gordon or David Barclay, and quite as little her own son.

Having come to the conclusion that the incapacity was caused by overpowering affection for the one human creature she ought not to love, Kirsty found her thoughts return to the sole faculty her father yielded Mrs. Gordon--that of riding a horse as he ought to be ridden.