"Oh, if I could but convince him of my love! but he won't give me a chance. He has an unaccountable dread of me, which makes him as well as me wretched. It is a delusion which no argument can overcome, and seems indeed an essential part of his sad affliction. The more care and kindness he needs, the less will he accept at my hands. I long to devote my life to him, and he will not allow me. I should be but too happy to nurse him day and night. Ah, Mr MacPhail, you little know a mother's heart! Even if my beautiful boy had not been taken from me, Stephen would still have been my idol, idiot as he is--and will be as long as he lives. And--"

"He 's nae idiot, mem," interposed Malcolm.

"And just imagine," she went on, "what a misery it must be to a widowed mother, poor companion as he would be at the best, to think of her boy roaming the country like a beggar! sleeping she doesn't know where! eating wretched food! and--"

"Guid parritch an' milk, an' brose an' b.u.t.ter," said Malcolm parenthetically; "--whiles herrin' an' yallow haddies."

"It's enough to break a mother's heart! If I could but persuade him to come home for a week so as to have a chance with him! But it's no use trying: ill disposed people have made mischief between us, telling wicked lies, and terrifying the poor fellow almost to death. It is quite impossible except I get some one to help me-- and there are so few who have any influence with him!"

Malcolm thought she must surely have had chances enough before he ran away from her; but he could not help feeling softened towards her.

"Supposin' I was to get ye speech o' 'im, mem?" he said.

"That would not be of the slightest use. He is so prejudiced against me, he would only shriek, and go into one of those horrible fits."

"I dinna see what's to be dune than," said Malcolm.

"I must have him brought here--there is no other way."

"An' whaur wad be the guid o' that, mem? By yer ain shawin', he wad rin oot o' 's verra body to win awa' frae ye."

"I did not mean by force," returned Mrs Stewart. "Some one he has confidence in must come with him. Nothing else will give me a chance. He would trust you now; your presence would keep him from being terrified--at his own mother, alas! through you he would learn to trust me; and if a course of absolute indulgence did not bring him to live like other people--that of course is impossible --it might at least induce him to live at home, and cease to be a byword to the neighbourhood."

Her tone was so refined, and her voice so pleading; her sorrow was so gentle; and she looked, in the dimness, to Malcolm's imagination at least, so young and handsome, that the strong castle of his prejudices was swaying as if built on reeds; and had it not been that he was already the partizan of her son, and therefore in honour bound to give him the benefit of every doubt, he would certainly have been gained over to work her will. He knew absolutely nothing against her--not even that she was the person he had seen in Mrs Catanach's company in the garret of Lossie House. But he steeled himself to distrust her, and held his peace.

"It is clear," she resumed after a pause, "that the intervention of some friend of both is the only thing that can be of the smallest use. I know you are a friend of his--a true one, and I do not see why you should not be a friend of mine as well--Will you be my friend too?"

She rose as she said the words, and approaching him, bent on him out of the shadow the full strength of eyes whose light had not yet begun to pale before the dawn we call death, and held out a white hand glimmering in the dusk: she knew only too well the power of a still fine woman of any age over a youth of twenty.

Malcolm, knowing nothing about it, yet felt hers, and was on his guard. He rose also, but did not take her hand.

"I have had only too much reason," she added, "to distrust some who, unlike you, professed themselves eager to serve me; but I know neither Lord Lossie nor you will play me false."

She took his great rough hand between her two soft palms, and for one moment Malcolm was tempted--not to betray his friend, but to simulate a yielding sympathy, in order to come at the heart of her intent, and should it prove false, to foil it the more easily.

But the honest nature of him shrunk from deception, even where the object of it was good: he was not at liberty to use falsehood for the discomfiture of the false even; a pretended friendship was of the vilest of despicable things, and the more holy the end, the less fit to be used for the compa.s.sing of it--least of all in the cause of a true friendship.

"I canna help ye, mem," he said; "I daurna. I hae sic a regaird for yer son 'at afore I wad du onything to hairm him, I wad hae my twa han's chappit frae the shackle bane."

"Surely, my dear Mr MacPhail," returned the lady in her most persuasive tones, and with her sweetest smile, "you cannot call it harming a poor idiot to restore him to the care of his own mother!"

"That's as it turnt oot," rejoined Malcolm. "But I'm sure o' ae thing, mem, an' that is, 'at he's no sae muckle o' an eediot as some fowk wad hae him."

Mrs Stewart's face fell, she turned from him, and going back to her seat hid her face in her handkerchief.

"I'm afraid," she said sadly, after a moment, "I must give up my last hope: you are not disposed to be friendly to me, Mr MacPhail; you too have been believing hard things of me."

"That's true; but no frae hearsay alane," returned Malcolm. "The luik o' the puir fallow whan he but hears the chance word mither, 's a sicht no to be forgotten. He grips his lugs atween 's twa han's, an' rins like a colley wi' a pan at 's tail. That couldna come o' naething."

Mrs Stewart hid her face on the cushioned arm of the settee, and sobbed. A moment after she sat erect again, but languid and red eyed, saying, as if with sudden resolve:

"I will tell you all I know about it, and then you can judge for yourself. When he was a very small child, I took him for advice to the best physicians in London and Paris: all advised a certain operation which had to be performed for consecutive months, at intervals of a few days. Though painful it was simple, yet of such a nature that no one was so fit to attend to it as his mother. Alas!

instead of doing him any good, it has done me the worst injury in the world: my child hates me!"

Again she hid her face on the settee.

The explanation was plausible enough, and the grief of the mother surely apparent! Malcolm could not but be touched.

"It's no 'at I'm no willin' to be your freen', mem; but I'm yer son's freen' a'ready, an' gien he war to hear onything 'at gart him mislippen till me, it wad gang to my hert."

"Then you can judge what I feel!" said the lady.

"Gien it wad hale your hert to hurt mine, I wad think aboot it, mem; but gien it hurt.i.t a' three o' 's, and did guid to nane, it wad be a misfit a'thegither. I'll du naething till I'm doonricht sure it's the pairt o' a freen'."

"That's just what makes you the only fit person to help me that I know. If I were to employ people in the affair, they might be rough with the poor fellow."

"Like eneuch, mem," a.s.sented Malcolm, while the words put him afresh on his guard.

"But I might be driven to it," she added.

Malcolm responded with an unuttered vow.

"It might become necessary to use force--whereas you could lead him with a word."

"Na; I'm naither sic witch nor sic traitor."

"Where would be the treachery when you knew it would be for his good?"

"That's jist what I dinna ken, mem," retorted Malcolm. "Luik ye here, mem," he continued, rousing himself to venture an appeal to the mother's heart; "--here's a man it has pleased G.o.d to mak no freely like ither fowk. His min' though cawpable a hantle mair nor a body wad think 'at didna ken him sae weel as I du, is certainly weyk--though maybe the weykness lies mair i' the tongue than i' the brain o' 'im efter a'--an' he's been sair fricht.i.t wi'

some guideship or ither; the upshot o 't a' bein', 'at he's unco timoursome, and ready to bursten himsel' rinnin' whan there's nane pursuin'. But he's the gentlest o' craturs--a doonricht gentleman, mem, gien ever there was ane--an' that kin'ly wi' a' cratur, baith man an' beast! A verra bairn cud guide him--ony gait but ane."

"Anywhere but to his mother!" exclaimed Mrs Stewart, pressing her handkerchief to her eyes, and sobbed as she spoke. "There is a child he is very fond of, I am told," she added, recovering herself.

"He likes a' bairns," returned Malcolm, "an' they 're maistly a' freen'ly wi' him. But there's but jist ae thing 'at maks life endurable till 'im. He suffers a hantle (a great deal) wi' that puir back o' his, an' wi' his breath tu whan he's fricht.i.t, for his hert gangs loupin like a sawmon in a bag net. An' he suffers a hantle, forbye, in his puir feeble min tryin' to unnerstan' the guid things 'at fowk tells him, an' jaloosin' it's his ain wyte 'at he disna unnerstan' them better an' whiles he thinks himsel' the child o' sin and wrath, an' that Sawtan has some special propriety in him, as the carritchis says--"

"But," interrupted the lady hurriedly, "you were going to tell me the one comfort he has."

"It's his leeberty, mem--jist his leeberty; to gang whaur he lists like the win'; to turn his face whaur he wull i' the mornin', an'

back again at nicht gien he likes; to wan'er--"

"Back where?" interrupted the mother, a little too eagerly.

"Whaur he likes, mem--I cudna say whaur wi' ony certainty. But aih! he likes to hear the sea moanin', an' watch the stars sheenin'!

--There's a sicht o' oondevelopit releegion in him, as Maister Graham says; an' I du not believe 'at the Lord 'll see him wranged mair nor 's for 's guid. But it's my belief, gien ye took the leeberty frae the puir cratur, ye wad kill him."

"Then you won't help me!" she cried despairingly. "They tell me you are an orphan yourself--and yet you will not take pity on a childless mother!--worse than childless, for I had the loveliest boy once--he would be about your age now, and I have never had any comfort in life since I lost him. Give me my son, and I will bless you--love you."

As she spoke she rose, and approaching him gently, laid a hand on his shoulder. Malcolm trembled, but stood his mental ground.

"'Deed, mem, I can an' wull promise ye naething!" he said. "Are ye to play a man fause 'cause he's less able to tak care o' himsel'