"Is there ony hurry aboot Sto't, my lord?" asked Malcolm, hesitating.

"I had a word to say to yer lordship mysel'."

"Make haste then."

"I 'm some fain to gang back to the fishin', my lord," said Malcolm.

"This is ower easy a life for me. The deil wins in for the liftin'

o' the sneck. Forbye, my lord, a life wi'oot aither danger or wark 's some wersh-like (insipid); it wants saut, my lord. But a' that 's naither here nor there, I ken, sae lang's ye want me oot o' the hoose, my lord."

"Who told you I wanted you out of the house? By Jove! I should have made shorter work of it. What put that in your head? Why should I?"

"Gien yer lordship kens nane, sma' occasion hae I to baud a rizzon to yer han'. I thoucht--but the thoucht itsel's impidence."

"You young fool! You thought, because I came upon you as I did in the garret the other night--Bah!--You d.a.m.ned ape! As if I could not trust--! Pshaw!"

For the moment Malcolm forgot how angry his master had certainly been, although, for Florimel's sake doubtless, he had restrained himself; and fancied that, in the faint light of the one candle, he had seen little to annoy him, and had taken the storm and its results, which were indeed the sole reason, as a sufficient one for their being alone together. Everything seemed about to come right again. But his master remained silent.

"I houp my leddy's weel," ventured Malcolm at length.

"Quite well. She's with Lady Bellair, in Edinburgh."

Lady Bellair was the bold faced countess.

"I dinna like her," said Malcolm.

"Who the devil asked you to like her?" said the marquis. But he laughed as he said it.

"I beg yer lordship's pardon," returned Malcolm. "I said it 'or I kent. It was nane o' my business wha my leddy was wi'."

"Certainly not. But I don't mind confessing that Lady Bellair is not one I should choose to give authority over Lady Florimel. You have some regard for your young mistress, I know, Malcolm."

"I wad dee for her, my lord."

"That 's a common a.s.sertion," said the marquis.

"No wi' fisher fowk. I kenna hoo it may be wi' your fowk, my lord."

"Well, even with us it means something. It implies at least that he who uses it would risk his life for her whom he wishes to believe it. But perhaps it may mean more than that in the mouth of a fisherman? Do you fancy there is such a thing as devotion--real devotion, I mean--self sacrifice, you know?"

"I daurna doobt it, my lord."

"Without fee or hope of reward?"

"There maun be some cawpable o' 't, my lord, or what for sud the warl' be? What ither sud haud it ohn been destroyt as Sodom was for the want o' the ten richteous? There maun be saut whaur corruption hasna the thing a' its ain gait."

"You certainly have pretty high notions of things, MacPhail. For my part, I can easily enough imagine a man risking his life; but devoting it!--that 's another thing altogether."

"There maun be 'at wad du a' 't cud be dune, my lord."

"What, for instance, would you do for Lady Florimel, now? You say you would die for her: what does dying mean on a fisherman's tongue?"

"It means a' thing, my lord--short o' ill. I wad sterve for her, but I wadna steal. I wad fecht for her, but I wadna lee."

"Would ye be her servant all your days? Come, now."

"Mair nor willin'ly, my lord--gien she wad only hae me, an' keep me."

"But supposing you came to inherit the Kirkbyres property?"

"My lord," said Malcolm solemnly, "that 's a puir test to put me till. It gangs for naething. I wad raither clean my leddie's butes frae mornin' to nicht, nor be the son o' that wuman, gien she war a born d.u.c.h.ess. Try me wi' something worth yer lordship's mou'."

But the marquis seemed to think he had gone far enough for the present. With gleaming eyes he rose, took his withered love letter from the table, put it in his waistcoat pocket, and saying "Well, find out for me what this is they're about with the schoolmaster,"

walked to the door.

"I ken a' aboot that, my lord," answered Malcolm, "ohn speirt at onybody."

Lord Lossie turned from the door, ordered him to bring his riding coat and boots, and, ringing the bell, sent a message to Stoat to saddle the bay mare.

CHAPTER LXIV: THE LAIRD AND HIS MOTHER

When Malcolm and Joseph set out from Duff Harbour to find the laird, they could hardly be said to have gone in search of him: all in their power was to seek the parts where he was occasionally seen in the hope of chancing upon him; and they wandered in vain about the woods of Fife House all that week, returning disconsolate every evening to the little inn on the banks of the Wan Water. Sunday came and went without yielding a trace of him; and, almost in despair, they resolved, if unsuccessful the next day, to get a.s.sistance and organize a search for him. Monday pa.s.sed like the days that had preceded it, and they were returning dejectedly down the left bank of the Wan Water, in the gloamin', and nearing a part where it is hemmed in by precipitous rocks, and is very narrow and deep, crawling slow and black under the lofty arch of an ancient bridge that spans it at one leap, when suddenly they caught sight of a head peering over the parapet. They dared not run for fear of terrifying him, if it should be the laird, and hurried quietly to the spot.

But when they reached the end of the bridge its round back was bare from end to end. On the other side of the river, the trees came close up, and pursuit was hopeless in the gathering darkness.

"Laird, laird! they've taen awa' Phemy, an' we dinna ken whaur to luik for her," cried the poor father aloud.

Almost the same instant, and as if he had issued from the ground, the laird stood before them. The men started back with astonishment --soon changed into pity, for there was light enough to see how miserable the poor fellow looked. Neither exposure nor privation had thus wrought upon him: he was simply dying of fear. Having greeted Joseph with embarra.s.sment, he kept glancing doubtfully at Malcolm, as if ready to run on his least movement. In a few words Joseph explained their quest, with trembling voice and tears that would not be denied enforcing the tale. Ere he had done, the laird's jaw had fallen, and further speech was impossible to him. But by gestures sad and plain enough, he indicated that he knew nothing of her, and had supposed her safe at home with her parents. In vain they tried to persuade him to go back with them, promising every protection: for sole answer he shook his head mournfully.

There came a sudden gust of wind among the branches. Joseph, little used to trees and their ways with the wind, turned towards the sound, and Malcolm unconsciously followed his movement. When they turned again, the laird had vanished, and they took their way homeward in sadness.

What pa.s.sed next with the laird, can be but conjectured. It came to be well enough known afterwards where he had been hiding; and had it not been dusk as they came down the riverbank, the two men might, looking up to the bridge from below, have had it suggested to them. For in the half spandrel wall between the first arch and the bank, they might have spied a small window, looking down on the sullen, silent gloom, foam flecked with past commotion, that crept languidly away from beneath. It belonged to a little vaulted chamber in the bridge, devised by some banished lord as a kind of summer house--long neglected, but having in it yet a mouldering table, a broken chair or two, and a rough bench. A little path led steep from the end of the parapet down to its hidden door. It was now used only by the gamekeepers for traps and fishing gear, and odds and ends of things, and was generally supposed to be locked up. The laird had, however, found it open, and his refuge in it had been connived at by one of the men, who, as they heard afterwards, had given him the key, and a.s.sisted him in carrying out a plan he had devised for barricading the door. It was from this place he had so suddenly risen at the call of Blue Peter, and to it he had as suddenly withdrawn again--to pa.s.s in silence and loneliness through his last purgatorial pain.*

* [Com'io fui dentro, in un bogliente vetro Gittato mi sarci per rinfrescarmi, Tant' era ivi lo 'ncendio senza metro.

Del Purgatoria, xxvii. 49.]

Mrs Stewart was sitting in her drawing room alone: she seldom had visitors at Kirkbyres--not that she liked being alone, or indeed being there at all, for she would have lived on the Continent, but that her son's trustees, partly to indulge their own aversion to her, taking upon them a larger discretionary power than rightly belonged to them, kept her too straitened, which no doubt in the recoil had its share in poor Stephen's misery. It was only after sc.r.a.ping for a whole year that she could escape to Paris or Hamburg, where she was at home. There her sojourn was determined by her good or ill fortune at faro.

What she meditated over her knitting by the firelight,--she had put out her candles,--it would be hard to say, perhaps unwholesome to think:--there are souls to look into which is, to our dim eyes, like gazing down from the verge of one of the Swedenborgian pits.

But much of the evil done by human beings is as the evil of evil beasts: they know not what they do--an excuse which, except in regard of the past, no man can make for himself, seeing the very making of it must testify its falsehood.

She looked up, gave a cry, and started to her feet: Stephen stood before her, halfway between her and the door. Revealed in a flicker of flame from the fire, he vanished in the following shade, and for a moment she stood in doubt of her seeing sense. But when the coal flashed again, there was her son, regarding her out of great eyes that looked as if they had seen death. A ghastly air hung about him as if he had just come back from Hades, but in his silent bearing there was a sanity, even dignity, which strangely impressed her. He came forward a pace or two, stopped, and said--

"Dinna be fricht.i.t, mem. I 'm come. Sen' the la.s.sie hame, an' du wi' me as ye like. I canna haud aff o' me. But I think I 'm deein', an ye needna misguide me."

His voice, although it trembled a little, was clear and unimpeded, and though weak, in its modulation manly.

Something in the woman's heart responded. Was it motherhood-- or the deeper G.o.dhead? Was it pity for the dignity housed in the crumbling clay, or repentance for the son of her womb? Or was it that sickness gave hope, and she could afford to be kind?