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<pre>

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Heather and Snow, by George MacDonald

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Title: Heather and Snow

Author: George MacDonald

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</pre>

    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <h1>
      HEATHER AND SNOW
    </h1>
    <center>
      <b>BY GEORGE MACDONALD</b>
    </center>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <h2>
      CONTENTS
    </h2>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch001">I. A RUNAWAY RACE</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch002">II. MOTHER AND SON</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch003">III. AT THE FOOT OF THE HORN</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch004">IV. DOG-STEENIE</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch005">V. COLONEL AND SERGEANT</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch006">VI. MAN-STEENIE</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch007">VII. CORBYKNOWE</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch008">VIII. DAVID AND HIS DAUGHTER</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch009">IX. AT CASTLE WEELSET</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch010">X. DAVID AND FRANCIS</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch011">XI. KIRSTY AND PHEMY</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch012">XII. THE EARTH-HOUSE</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch013">XIII. A VISIT FROM FRANCIS GORDON</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch014">XIV. STEENIE'S HOUSE</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch015">XV. PHEMY CRAIG</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch016">XVI. SHAM LOVE</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch017">XVII. A NOVEL ABDUCTION</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch018">XVIII. PHEMY'S CHAMPION</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch019">XIX. FRANCIS GORDON'S CHAMPION</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch020">XX. MUTUAL MINISTRATION</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch021">XXI. PHEMY YIELDS PLACE</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch022">XXII. THE HORN</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch023">XXIII. THE STORM AGAIN</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch024">XXIV. HOW KIRSTY FARED</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch025">XXV. KIRSTY'S DREAM</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch026">XXVI. HOW DAVID FARED</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch027">XXVII. HOW MARION FARED</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch028">XXVIII. HUSBAND AND WIFE</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch029">XXIX. DAVID, MARION, KIRSTY, SNOOTIE, AND
      WHAT WAS LEFT OF STEENIE</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch030">XXX. FROM SNOW TO FIRE</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch031">XXXI. KIRSTY SHOWS RESENTMENT</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch032">XXXII. IN THE WORKSHOP</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch033">XXXIII. A RACE WITH DEATH</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch034">XXXIV. BACK FROM THE GRAVE</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch035">XXXV. FRANCIS COMES TO HIMSELF</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch036">XXXVI. KIRSTY BESTIRS HERSELF</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch037">XXXVII. A GREAT GULF</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch038">XXXVIII. THE NEIGHBOURS</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch039">XXXIX. KIRSTY GIVES ADVICE</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch040">XL. MRS. GORDON</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch041">XLI. TWO HORSEWOMEN</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch042">XLII. THE LAIRD AND HIS MOTHER</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch043">XLIII. THE CORONATION</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch044">XLIV. KIRSTY'S TOCHER</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#ch045">XLV. KIRSTY'S SONG</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch001"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER I
    </h2>
    <h3>
      A RUNAWAY RACE
    </h3>
    <p>
      Upon neighbouring stones, earth-fast, like two islands of an
      archipelago, in an ocean of heather, sat a boy and a girl,
      the girl knitting, or, as she would have called it,
      <i>weaving</i> a stocking, and the boy, his eyes fixed on her
      face, talking with an animation that amounted almost to
      excitement. He had great fluency, and could have talked just
      as fast in good English as in the dialect in which he was now
      pouring out his ambitions&#8212;the broad Saxon of Aberdeen.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was giving the girl to understand that he meant to be a
      soldier like his father, and quite as good a one as he. But
      so little did he know of himself or the world, that, with
      small genuine impulse to action, and moved chiefly by the
      anticipated results of it, he saw success already his, and a
      grateful country at his feet. His inspiration was so purely
      ambition, that, even if, his mood unchanged, he were to
      achieve much for his country, she could hardly owe him
      gratitude.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll no hae the warl' lichtly (<i>make light of</i>) me!' he
      said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mebbe the warl' winna tribble itsel aboot ye sae muckle as
      e'en to lichtly ye!' returned his companion quietly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>Ye</i> do naething ither!' retorted the boy, rising, and
      looking down on her in displeasure. 'What for are ye aye
      girdin at me? A body canna lat his thouchts gang, but ye're
      doon upo them, like doos upo corn!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wadna be girdin at ye, Francie, but that I care ower
      muckle aboot ye to lat ye think I haud the same opingon o' ye
      'at ye hae o' yersel,' answered the girl, who went on with
      her knitting as she spoke.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye'll never believe a body!' he rejoined, and turned half
      away. 'I canna think what gars me keep comin to see ye! Ye
      haena a guid word to gie a body!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's nane ye s' get frae me, the gait ye're gaein, Francie!
      Ye think a heap ower muckle o' yersel. What ye expec, may
      some day a' come true, but ye hae gien nobody a richt to
      expec it alang wi' ye, and I canna think, gien ye war fair to
      yersel, ye wad coont yersel ane it was to be expeckit o'!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tauld ye sae, Kirsty! Ye never lay ony weicht upo what a
      body says!'
    </p>
    <p>
      That depen's upo the body. Did ye never hear maister Craig
      p'int oot the differ atween believin a body and believin
      <i>in</i> a body, Francie?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No&#8212;and I dinna care.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wudna like ye to gang awa thinking I misdoobtit yer word,
      Francie! I believe onything ye tell me, as far as <i>I</i>
      think ye ken, but maybe no sae far as <i>ye</i> think ye ken.
      I believe ye, but I confess I dinna believe <i>in</i>
      ye&#8212;yet. What hae ye ever dune to gie a body ony richt
      to believe in ye? Ye're a guid rider, and a guid shot for a
      laddie, and ye rin middlin fest&#8212;I canna say like a
      deer, for I reckon I cud lick ye mysel at rinnin! But, efter
      and a',&#8212;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wha's braggin noo, Kirsty?' cried the boy, with a touch of
      not ill-humoured triumph.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Me,' answered Kirsty; '&#8212;and I'll do what I brag o'!'
      she added, throwing her stocking on the patch of green sward
      about the stone, and starting to her feet with a laugh. 'Is't
      to be uphill or alang?'
    </p>
    <p>
      They were near the foot of a hill to whose top went the
      heather, but along whose base, between the heather and the
      bogland below, lay an irregular belt of moss and grass,
      pretty clear of stones. The boy did not seem eager to accept
      the challenge.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's nae guid in lickin a lassie!' he said with a shrug.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There mith be guid in tryin to du't though&#8212;especially
      gien ye war lickit at it!' returned the girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What guid <i>can</i> there be in a body bein lickit at
      onything?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The guid o' haein a body's pride ta'en doon a wee.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm no sae sure o' the guid o' that! It wud only hand ye ohn
      tried (<i>from trying</i>) again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Jist there's what yer pride dis to ye, Francie! Ye maun aye
      be first, or ye'll no try! Ye'll never du naething for fear
      o' no bein able to gang on believin ye cud du 't better nor
      ony ither body! Ye dinna want to fin' oot 'at ye're naebody
      in particlar. It's a sair pity ye wunna hae yer pride ta'en
      doon. Ye wud be a hantle better wantin aboot three pairts o'
      't.&#8212;Come, I'm ready for ye! Never min' 'at I'm a
      lassie: naebody 'ill ken!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye hae nae sheen (<i>shoes</i>)!' objected the boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye can put aff yer ain!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My feet's no sae hard as yours!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, I'll put on mine. They're here, sic as they are. Ye
      see I want them gangin throuw the heather wi' Steenie; that's
      some sair upo the feet. Straucht up hill throuw the heather,
      and I'll put my sheen on!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm no sae guid uphill.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'See there noo, Francie! Ye tak yersel for unco courteous,
      and honourable, and generous, and k-nichtly, and a'
      that&#8212;oh, I ken a' aboot it, and it's a' verra weel sae
      far as it gangs; but what the better are ye for 't, whan, a'
      the time ye're despisin a body 'cause she's but a quean, ye
      maun hae ilka advantage o' her, or ye winna gie her a chance
      o' lickin ye!&#8212;Here! I'll put on my sheen, and rin ye
      alang the laich grun'! My sheen's twice the weicht o' yours,
      and they dinna fit me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The boy did not dare go on refusing: he feared what Kirsty
      would say next. But he relished nothing at all in the
      challenge. It was not fit for a man to run races with a girl:
      there were no laurels, nothing but laughter to be won by
      victory over her! and in his heart he was not at all sure of
      beating Kirsty: she had always beaten him when they were
      children. Since then they had been at the parish school
      together, but there public opinion kept the boys and girls to
      their own special sports. Now Kirsty had left school, and
      Francis was going to the grammar-school at the county-town.
      They were both about fifteen. All the sense was on the side
      of the girl, and she had been doing her best to make the boy
      practical like herself&#8212;hitherto without much success,
      although he was by no means a bad sort of fellow. He had not
      yet passed the stage&#8212;some appear never to pass it in
      this world&#8212;in which an admirer feels himself in the
      same category with his hero. Many are content with themselves
      because they side with those whose ways they do not endeavour
      to follow. Such are most who call themselves Christians. If
      men admired themselves only for what they did, their conceit
      would be greatly moderated.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty put on her heavy tacketed (<i>hob-nailed</i>)
      shoes&#8212;much too large for her, having been made for her
      brother&#8212;stood up erect, and putting her elbows back,
      said,
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll gie ye the start o' me up to yon stane wi' the heather
      growin oot o' the tap o' 't.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, na; I'll hae nane o' that!' answered Francis.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fairplay to a'!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye'd better tak it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Aff wi' ye, or I winna rin at a'!' cried the boy,&#8212;and
      away they went.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty contrived that he should yet have a little the start
      of her&#8212;how much from generosity, and how much from
      determination that there should be nothing doubtful in the
      result, I cannot say&#8212;and for a good many yards he kept
      it. But if the boy, who ran well, had looked back, he might
      have seen that the girl was not doing her best&#8212;that she
      was in fact restraining her speed. Presently she quickened
      her pace, and was rapidly lessening the distance between
      them, when, becoming aware of her approach, the boy quickened
      his, and for a time there was no change in their relative
      position. Then again she quickened her pace&#8212;with an
      ease which made her seem capable of going on to accelerate it
      indefinitely&#8212;and was rapidly overtaking him. But as she
      drew near, she saw he panted, not a little distressed;
      whereupon she assumed a greater speed still, and passed him
      swiftly&#8212;nor once looked round or slackened her pace
      until, having left him far behind, she put a shoulder of the
      hill between them.
    </p>
    <p>
      The moment she passed him, the boy flung himself on the
      ground and lay. The girl had felt certain he would do so, and
      fancied she heard him flop among the heather, but could not
      be sure, for, although not even yet at her speed, her blood
      was making tunes in her head, and the wind was blowing in and
      out of her ears with a pleasant but deafening accompaniment.
      When she knew he could see her no longer, she stopped
      likewise and threw herself down while she was determining
      whether she should leave him quite, or walk back at her
      leisure, and let him see how little she felt the run. She
      came to the conclusion that it would be kinder to allow him
      to get over his discomfiture in private. She rose, therefore,
      and went straight up the hill.
    </p>
    <p>
      About half-way to the summit, she climbed a rock as if she
      were a goat, and looked all round her. Then she uttered a
      shrill, peculiar cry, and listened. No answer came. Getting
      down as easily as she had got up, she walked along the side
      of the hill, making her way nearly parallel with their late
      racecourse, passing considerably above the spot where her
      defeated rival yet lay, and descending at length a little
      hollow not far from where she and Francis had been sitting.
    </p>
    <p>
      In this hollow, which was covered with short, sweet grass,
      stood a very small hut, built of turf from the peat-moss
      below, and roofed with sods on which the heather still stuck,
      if, indeed, some of it was not still growing. So much was it,
      therefore, of the colour of the ground about it, that it
      scarcely caught the eye. Its walls and its roof were so thick
      that, small as it looked, it was much smaller inside; while
      outside it could not have measured more than ten feet in
      length, eight in width, and seven in height. Kirsty and her
      brother Steenie, not without help from Francis Gordon, had
      built it for themselves two years before. Their father knew
      nothing of the scheme until one day, proud of their success,
      Steenie would have him see their handiwork; when he was so
      much pleased with it that he made them a door, on which he
      put a lock:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'For though this be na the kin' o' place to draw
      crook-fingered gentry,' he said, 'some gangrel body micht
      creep in and mak his bed intil 't, and that lock 'ill be
      eneuch to haud him oot, I'm thinkin.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He also cut for them a hole through the wall, and fitted it
      with a window that opened and shut, which was more than could
      be said of every window at the farmhouse.
    </p>
    <p>
      Into this nest Kirsty went, and in it remained quiet until it
      began to grow dark. She had hoped to find her brother waiting
      for her, but, although disappointed, chose to continue there
      until Francis Gordon should be well on his way to the castle,
      and then she crept out, and ran to recover her stocking.
    </p>
    <p>
      When she got home, she found Steenie engrossed in a young
      horse their father had just bought. She would fain have
      mounted him at once, for she would ride any kind of animal
      able to carry her; but, as he had never yet been backed, her
      father would not permit her.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch002"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER II
    </h2>
    <h3>
      MOTHER AND SON
    </h3>
    <p>
      Francis lay for some time, thinking Kirsty sure to come back
      to him, but half wishing she would not. He rose at length to
      see whether she was on the way, but no one was in sight. At
      once the place was aghast with loneliness, as it must indeed
      have looked to anyone not at peace with solitude. Having sent
      several ringing shouts, but in vain, after Kirsty, he turned,
      and, in the descending light of an autumn afternoon, set out
      on the rather long walk to his home, which was the wearier
      that he had nothing pleasant at hand to think about.
    </p>
    <p>
      Passing the farm where Kirsty lived, about two miles brought
      him to an ancient turreted house on the top of a low hill,
      where his mother sat expecting him, ready to tyrannize over
      him as usual, and none the less ready that he was going to
      leave her within a week.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where have you been all day, Frank?' she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have been a long walk,' he answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You've been to Corbyknowe!' she returned. 'I know it by your
      eyes. I know by the very colour of them you're going to
      deceive me. Now don't tell me you haven't been there. I shall
      not believe you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I haven't been near the place, mother,' said Francis; but as
      he said it his face glowed with a heat that did not come from
      the fire. He was not naturally an untruthful boy, and what he
      said was correct, for he had passed the house half a mile
      away; but his words gave, and were intended to give the
      impression that he had not been that day with any of the
      people of Corbyknowe. His mother objected to his visiting the
      farmer, but he knew instinctively she would have objected yet
      more to his spending half the day with Kirsty, whom she never
      mentioned, and of whom she scarcely recognized the existence.
      Little as she loved her son, Mrs. Gordon would have scorned
      to suspect him of preferring the society of such a girl to
      her own. In truth, however, there were very few of his
      acquaintance whose company Francis would not have chosen
      rather than his mother's&#8212;except indeed he was ill, when
      she was generally very good to him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, this once I shall believe you,' she answered, 'and I
      am glad to be able. It is a painful thought to me, Frank,
      that son of mine should feel the smallest attraction to low
      company. I have told you twenty times that the man was
      nothing but a private in your father's regiment.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He was my father's friend!' answered the boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He tells you so, I do not doubt,' returned his mother. 'He
      was not likely to leave that mouldy old stone unturned.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The mother sat, and the son stood before her, in a
      drawing-room whose furniture of a hundred years old must once
      have looked very modern and new-fangled under windows so
      narrow and high up, and within walls so thick: without a fire
      it was always cold. The carpet was very dingy, and the
      mirrors were much spotted; but the poverty of the room was
      the respectable poverty of age: old furniture had become
      fashionable just in time to save it from being metamorphosed
      by its mistress into a show of gay meanness and costly
      ugliness. A good fire of mingled peat and coal burned bright
      in the barrel-fronted steel grate, and shone in the brass
      fender. The face of the boy continued to look very red in the
      glow, but still its colour came more from within than from
      without: he cherished the memory of his father, and did not
      love his mother more than a little.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He has told me a great deal more about my father than ever
      you did, mother!' he answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well he may have!' she returned. 'Your father was not a
      young man when I married him, and they had been together
      through I don't know how many campaigns.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you say he was not my father's friend!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not his <i>friend</i>, Frank; his servant&#8212;what do they
      call them?&#8212;his orderly, I dare say; certainly not his
      friend.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Any man may be another man's friend!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not in the way you mean; not that his son should go and see
      him every other day! A dog may be a man's good friend, and so
      was sergeant Barclay your father's&#8212;very good friend
      that way, I don't doubt!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You said a moment ago he was but a private, and now you call
      him sergeant Barclay!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, where's the difference?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To be made sergeant shows that he was not a common man. If
      he had been, he would not have been set over others!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course he was then, and is now, a very respectable man.
      If he were not I should never have let you go and see him at
      all. But you must learn to behave like the gentleman you are,
      and that you never will while you frequent the company of
      your inferiors. Your manners are already almost
      ruined&#8212;fit for no place but a farmhouse! There you are,
      standing on the side of your foot again!&#8212;Old Barclay, I
      dare say, tells you no end of stories about your mother!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He always asks after you, mother, and then never mentions
      you more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She knew perfectly that the boy spoke the truth.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't let me hear of your being there again before you go to
      school!' she said definitively. 'By the time you come home
      next year I trust your tastes will have improved. Go and make
      yourself tidy for dinner. A soldier's son must before
      everything attend to his dress.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Francis went to his room, feeling it absolutely impossible to
      have told his mother that he had been with Kirsty Barclay,
      that he had run a race with her, and that she had left him
      alone at the foot of the Horn. That he could not be open with
      his mother, no one that knew her unreasoning and stormy
      temper would have wondered; but the pitiful boy, who did not
      like lying, actually congratulated himself that he had got
      through without telling a downright falsehood. It would not
      have bettered matters in the least had he disclosed to her
      the good advice Kirsty gave him: she would only have been
      furious at the impudence of the hussey in talking so to
      <i>her</i> son.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch003"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER III
    </h2>
    <h3>
      AT THE FOOT OF THE HORN
    </h3>
    <p>
      The region was like a waste place in the troubled land of
      dreams&#8212;a spot so waste that the dreamer struggles to
      rouse himself from his dream, finding it too dreary to dream
      on. I have heard it likened to 'the ill place, wi' the fire
      oot;' but it did not so impress me when first, after long
      desire, I saw it. There was nothing to suggest the silence of
      once roaring flame, no half-molten rocks, no huge,
      honey-combed scoriae, no depths within depths glooming
      mystery and ancient horror. It was the more desolate that it
      moved no active sense of dismay. What I saw was a wide
      stretch of damp-looking level, mostly of undetermined or of
      low-toned colour, with here and there a black spot, or, on
      the margin, the brighter green of a patch of some growing
      crop. Flat and wide, the eye found it difficult to rest upon
      it and not sweep hurriedly from border to border for lack of
      self-asserted object on which to alight. It looked low, but
      indeed lay high; the bases of the hills surrounding it were
      far above the sea. These hills, at this season a ring of
      dull-brown high-heaved hummocks, appeared to make of it a
      huge circular basin, miles in diameter, over the rim of which
      peered the tops and peaks of mountains more distant. Up the
      side of the Horn, which was the loftiest in the ring, ran a
      stone wall, in the language of the country a dry-stane-dyke,
      of considerable size, climbing to the very top&#8212;an ugly
      thing which the eye could not avoid. There was nothing but
      the grouse to have rendered it worth the proprietor's while
      to erect such a boundary to his neighbour's property,
      plentiful as were the stones ready for that poorest use of
      stones&#8212;division.
    </p>
    <p>
      The farms that border the hollow, running each a little way
      up the side of the basin, are, some of them at least, as well
      cultivated as any in Scotland, but Winter claims there the
      paramountcy, and yields to Summer so few of his rights that
      the place must look forbidding, if not repulsive, to such as
      do not live in it. To love it, I think one must have been
      born there. In the summer, it is true, it has the character
      of <i>bracing</i>, but can be such, I imagine, only to those
      who are pretty well braced already; the delicate of certain
      sorts, I think it must soon brace with the bands of death.
    </p>
    <p>
      The region is in constant danger of famine. If the snow come
      but a little earlier than usual, the crops lie green under
      it, and no store of meal can be laid up in the cottages.
      Then, if the snow lie deep, the difficulty in conveying
      supplies of the poor fare which their hardihood counts
      sufficient, will cause the dwellers there no little
      suffering. Of course they are but few. A white cottage may be
      seen here and there on the southerly slopes of the basin, but
      hardly one in its bottom.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was now summer, and in a month or two the landscape would
      look more cheerful; the heather that covered the hills would
      no longer be dry and brown and in places black with fire, but
      a blaze of red purple, a rich mantle of bloom. Even now,
      early in July, the sun had a little power. I cannot say it
      would have been warm had there been the least motion in the
      air, for seldom indeed could one there from the south grant
      that the wind had no keen edge to it; but on this morning
      there was absolute stillness, and although it was not easy
      for Kirsty to imagine any summer air other than warm, yet the
      wind's absence had not a little to do with the sense of
      luxurious life that now filled her heart. She sat on her
      favourite grassy slope near the foot of the cone-shaped Horn,
      looking over the level miles before her, and knitting away at
      a ribbed stocking of dark blue whose toe she had nearly
      finished, glad in the thought, not of rest from her labour,
      but of beginning the yet more important fellow-stocking. She
      had no need to look close at her work to keep the loops
      right; but she was so careful and precise that, if she lived
      to be old and blind, she would knit better then than now. It
      was to her the perfect glory of a summer day; and I imagine
      her delight in the divine luxury greater than that of many a
      poet dwelling in softer climes.
    </p>
    <p>
      The spot where she sat was close by the turf-hut which I have
      already described. At every shifting of a needle she would
      send a new glance all over her world, a glance to remind one
      somehow of the sweep of a broad ray of sunlight across earth
      and sea, when, on a morning of upper wind, the broken clouds
      take endless liberties with shadow and shine. What she saw I
      cannot tell; I know she saw far more than a stranger would
      have seen, for she knew her home. His eyes would, I believe,
      have been drawn chiefly to those intense spots of live white,
      opaque yet brilliant, the heads of the cotton-grass here and
      there in thin patches on the dark ground. For nearly the
      whole of the level was a peat-moss. Miles and miles of peat,
      differing in quality and varying in depth, lay between those
      hills, the only fuel almost of the region. In some spots it
      was very wet, water lying beneath and all through its
      substance; in others, dark spots, the sides of holes whence
      it had been dug, showed where it was drier. His eyes would
      rest for a moment also on those black spaces on the hills
      where the old heather had been burned that its roots might
      shoot afresh, and feed the grouse with soft young sprouts,
      their chief support: they looked now like neglected spots
      where men cast stones and shards, but by and by would be
      covered with a tenderer green than the rest of the hill-side.
      He would not see the moorland birds that Kirsty saw; he would
      only hear their cries, with now and then perhaps the bark of
      a sheep-dog.
    </p>
    <p>
      My reader will probably conclude the prospect altogether
      uninteresting, even ugly; but certainly Christina Barclay did
      not think it such. The girl was more than well satisfied with
      the world-shell in which she found herself; she was at the
      moment basking, both bodily and spiritually, in a full sense
      of the world's bliss. Her soul was bathed in its own content,
      calling none of its feelings to account. The sun, the air,
      the wide expanse; the hill-tops' nearness to the heavens
      which yet they could not invade; the little breaths which
      every now and then awoke to assert their existence by
      immediately ceasing; doubtless also the knowledge that her
      stocking was nearly done, that her father and mother were but
      a mile or so away, that she knew where Steenie was, and that
      a cry would bring him to her feet;&#8212;all these things
      bore each a part in making Kirsty quiet with satisfaction.
      That there was, all the time, a deeper cause of her peace,
      Kirsty knew well-the same that is the root of life itself;
      and if it was not, at this moment or at that, filled with
      conscious gratitude, her heart was yet like a bird ever on
      the point of springing up to soar, and often soaring high
      indeed. Whether it came of something special in her
      constitution that happiness always made her quiet, as nothing
      but sorrow will make some, I do not presume to say. I only
      know that, had her bliss changed suddenly to sadness, Kirsty
      would have been quiet still. Whatever came to Kirsty seemed
      right, for there it was!
    </p>
    <p>
      She was now a girl of sixteen. The only sign she showed of
      interest in her person, appeared in her hair and the covering
      of her neck. Of one of the many middle shades of brown, with
      a rippling tendency to curl in it, her hair was parted with
      nicety, and drawn back from her face into a net of its own
      colour, while her neckerchief was of blue silk, covering a
      very little white skin, but leaving bare a brown throat. She
      wore a blue print wrapper, nowise differing from that of a
      peasant woman, and a blue winsey petticoat, beyond which
      appeared her bare feet, lovely in shape, and brown of hue.
      Her dress was nowise trim, and suggested neither tidiness nor
      disorder. The hem of the petticoat was in truth a little
      rent, but not more than might seem admissible where the rough
      wear was considered to which the garment was necessarily
      exposed: when a little worse it would receive the proper
      attention, and be brought back to respectability! Kirsty
      grudged the time spent on her garments. She looked down on
      them as the moon might on the clouds around her. She made or
      mended them to wear them, not think about them.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her forehead was wide and rather low, with straight eyebrows.
      Her eyes were of a gentle hazel, not the hazel that looks
      black at night. Her nose was strong, a little irregular, with
      plenty of substance, and sensitive nostrils. A decided and
      well-shaped chin dominated a neck by no means slender, and
      seemed to assert the superiority of the face over the whole
      beautiful body. Its chief expression was of a strong repose,
      a sweet, powerful peace, requiring but occasion to pass into
      determination. The sensitiveness of the nostrils with the
      firmness in the meeting of the closed lips, suggested a
      faculty of indignation unsparing toward injustice; while the
      clearness of the heaven of the forehead gave confidence that
      such indignation would never show itself save for another.
    </p>
    <p>
      I wish, presumptuous wish! that I could see the mind of a
      woman grow as she sits spinning or weaving: it would reveal
      the process next highest to creation. But the only hope of
      ever understanding such things lies in growing oneself. There
      is the still growth of the moonlit night of reverie; cloudy,
      with wind, and a little rain, comes the morning of thought,
      when the mind grows faster and the heart more slowly; then
      wakes the storm in the forest of human relation, tempest and
      lightning abroad, the soul enlarging by great bursts of
      vision and leaps of understanding and resolve; then floats up
      the mystic twilight eagerness, not unmingled with the dismay
      of compelled progress, when, bidding farewell to that which
      is behind, the soul is driven toward that which is before,
      grasping at it with all the hunger of the new birth. The
      story of God's universe lies in the growth of the individual
      soul. Kirsty's growth had been as yet quiet and steady.
    </p>
    <p>
      Once more as she shifted her needle her glance went flitting
      over the waste before her. This time there was more life in
      sight. Far away Kirsty descried something of the nature of
      man upon horse: to say how far would have been as difficult
      for one unused to the flat moor as for a landsman to reckon
      distances at sea. Of the people of the place, hardly another,
      even under the direction of Kirsty, could have contrived to
      see it. At length, after she had looked many times, she could
      clearly distinguish a youth on a strong, handsome hill-pony,
      and remained no longer in the slightest doubt as to who he
      might be.
    </p>
    <p>
      They came steadily over the dark surface of the moor, and it
      was clear that the pony must know the nature of the ground
      well; for now he glided along as fast as he could gallop, now
      made a succession of short jumps, now halted, examined the
      ground, and began slowly picking his way.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty watched his approach with gentle interest, while every
      movement of the youth indicated eagerness. Gordon had seen
      her on the hillside, probably long before she saw him, had
      been coming to her in as straight a line as the ground would
      permit, and at length was out of the boggy level, and
      ascending the slope of the hillfoot to where she sat. When he
      was within about twenty yards of her she gave him a little
      nod, and then fixed her eyes on her knitting. He held on till
      within a few feet of her, then pulled up and threw himself
      from his pony's back. The creature, covered with foam, stood
      a minute panting, then fell to work on the short grass.
    </p>
    <p>
      Francis had grown considerably, and looked almost a young
      man. He was a little older than Kirsty, but did not appear
      so, his expression being considerably younger than hers.
      Whether self-indulgence or aspiration was to come out of his
      evident joy in life, seemed yet undetermined. His countenance
      indicated nothing bad. He might well have represented one at
      the point before having to choose whether to go up or down
      hill. He was dressed a little showily in a short coat of dark
      tartan, and a highland bonnet with a brooch and feather, and
      carried a lady's riding-whip&#8212;his mother's, no
      doubt&#8212;its top set with stones&#8212;so that his
      appearance was altogether a contrast to that of the girl. She
      was a peasant, he a gentleman! Her bare head and yet more her
      bare feet emphasized the contrast. But which was by nature
      and in fact the superior, no one with the least insight could
      have doubted.
    </p>
    <p>
      He stood and looked at her, but neither spoke. She cast at
      length a glance upward, and said,
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Francis did not open his mouth. He seemed irresolute. Nothing
      in Kirsty's look or carriage or in the tone of her one word
      gave sign of consciousness that she was treating him, or he
      her, strangely. With complete self-possession she left the
      initiative to the one who had sought the interview: let him
      say why he had come!
    </p>
    <p>
      In his face began to appear indication of growing
      displeasure. Two or three times he turned half away with a
      movement instantly checked which seemed to say that in a
      moment more, if there came no change, he would mount and
      ride: was this all his welcome?
    </p>
    <p>
      At last she appeared to think she must take mercy on him: he
      used to say thirty words to her one!
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's a bonny powny ye hae,' she remarked, with a look at
      the creature as he fed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He's a' that,' he answered dryly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whaur did ye get him?' she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My mither coft (<i>bought</i>) him agen my hame-comin,' he
      replied.
    </p>
    <p>
      He prided himself on being able to speak the broadest of the
      dialect.
    </p>
    <p>
      'She maun hae a straucht e'e for a guid beast!' returned
      Kirsty, with a second glance at the pony.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He's a bonny cratur and a willin,' answered the youth.
      'He'll gang skelp throuw onything&#8212;watter
      onygait;&#8212;I'm no sae sure aboot fire.'
    </p>
    <p>
      A long silence followed, broken this time by the youth.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Winna ye gie me luik nor word, and me ridden like mad to hae
      a sicht o' ye?' he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      She glanced up at him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel ye hae that!' she answered, with a smile that showed
      her lovely white teeth: 'ye're a' dubs (<i>all bemired</i>)!
      What for sud ye be in sic a hurry? Ye saw me no three days
      gane!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, I saw ye, it's true; but I didna get a word o' ye!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye was free to say what ye likit. There was nane by but my
      mither!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wud ye hae me say a'thing afore yer mither jist as I wud til
      ye yer lane (<i>alone</i>)?' he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ay wud I,' she returned. 'Syne she wad ken, 'ithoot my haein
      to tell her sic a guse as ye was!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Had he not seen the sunny smile that accompanied her words he
      might well have taken offence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wuss ye war anither sic-like!' he answered simply.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Syne there wud be twa o' 's!' she returned, leaving him to
      interpret.
    </p>
    <p>
      Silence again fell.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, what wud ye hae, Francie?' said Kirsty at length.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wud hae ye promise to merry me, Kirsty, come the time,' he
      answered; 'and that ye ken as well as I du mysel!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's straucht oot ony gait!' rejoined Kirsty. 'But ye see,
      Francie,' she went on, 'yer father, whan he left ye a kin' o'
      a legacy, as ye may ca' 't, to mine, hed no intention that
      <i>I</i> was to be left oot; neither had <i>my</i> father
      whan he acceppit o' 't!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dinna unerstan ye ae styme (<i>one atom</i>)!' interrupted
      Gordon.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Haud yer tongue and hearken,' returned Kirsty. 'What I'm
      meanin 's this: what lies to my father's han' lies to mine as
      weel; and I'll never hae 't kenned or said that, whan my
      father pu't (<i>pulled</i>) ae gait, I pu't anither!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sakes, lassie! what <i>are</i> ye haverin at? Wud it be
      pu'in agen yer father to merry me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It wud be that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dinna see hoo ye can mak it oot! I dinna see hoo, bein sic
      a freen' o' my father's, he sud objeck to my father's son!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, but laddies <i>ir</i> gowks!' cried Kirsty. 'My father
      was your father's freen' for <i>his</i> sake, no for his ain!
      He thinks o' what wud be guid for you, no for himsel!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, but,' persisted Gordon, 'it wud be mair for my guid
      nor onything ither he cud wuss for, to hae you for my wife!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty's nostrils began to quiver, and her lip rose in a
      curve of scorn.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A bonnie wife ye wud hae, Francie Gordon, wha, kennin her
      father duin ilk mortal thing for the love o' his auld maister
      and comrade, tuik the fine chance to mak her ain o' 't, and
      haud her grip o' the callan til hersel!&#8212;Think ye aither
      o' the auld men ever mintit at sic a thing as fatherin baith?
      That my father had a lass-bairn o' 's ain shawed mair nor
      onything the trust your father pat in 'im! Francie, the verra
      grave wud cast me oot for shame 'at I sud ance hae thoucht o'
      sic a thing! Man, it wud maist drive yer leddy-mither
      dementit!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's my business' Kirsty, wha I merry!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I houp yer grace 'll alloo it's pairt <i>my</i> business
      wha ye sail <i>not</i> merry&#8212;and that's me, Francie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Gordon sprang to his feet with such a look of wrath and
      despair as for a moment frightened Kirsty who was not easily
      frightened. She thought of the terrible bog-holes on the way
      her lover had come, sprang also to her feet, and caught him
      by the arm where, his foot already in the stirrup, he stood
      in the act of mounting.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Francie! Francie!' she cried, 'hearken to rizzon! There's no
      a body, man or wuman, I like better nor yersel to du ye ony
      guid or turn o' guid&#8212;'cep' my father, of coorse, and my
      mither, and my ain Steenie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And hoo mony mair, gien I had the wull to hear the lang
      bible-chapter o' them, and see mysel comin in at the tail o'
      them a', like the hin'most sheep, takin his bite as he cam?
      Na, na! it's time I was hame, and had my slip
      (<i>pinafore</i>) on, and was astride o' a stick! Gien ye had
      a score o' idiot-brithers, ye wud care mair for ilk are o'
      them nor for me! I canna bide to think o' 't.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's true a' the same, whether ye can bide to think o' 't or
      no, Francie!' returned the girl, her face, which had been
      very pale, now rosy with indignation. 'My Steenie's mair to
      me nor a' the Gordons thegither, Bow-o'-meal or Jock-and-Tam
      as ye like!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She drew back, sat down again to the stocking she was
      knitting for Steenie, and left her lover to mount and ride,
      which he did without another word.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's mair nor ae kin' o' idiot,' she said to herself,
      'and Steenie's no the kin' that oucht to be ca'd ane. There's
      mair in Steenie nor in sax Francie Gordons!'
    </p>
    <p>
      If ever Kirsty came to love a man, it would be just nothing
      to her to die for him; but then it never would have been
      anything to her to die for her father or her mother or
      Steenie!
    </p>
    <p>
      Gordon galloped off at a wild pace, as if he would drive his
      pony straight athwart the terrible moss, taking hag and
      well-eye as it came. But glancing behind and seeing that
      Kirsty was not looking after him, he turned the creature's
      head in a safer direction, and left the moss at his back.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch004"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER IV
    </h2>
    <h3>
      DOG-STEENIE
    </h3>
    <p>
      She sat for some time at the foot of the hill, motionless as
      itself, save for her hands. The sun shone on in silence, and
      the blue butterflies which haunted the little bush of
      bluebells, that is harebells, beside her, made no noise; only
      a stray bee, happy in the pale heat, made a little music to
      please itself&#8212;and perhaps the butterflies. Kirsty had
      an unusual power of sitting still, even with nothing for her
      hands to do. On the present occasion, however, her hands and
      fingers went faster than usual&#8212;not entirely from
      eagerness to finish her stocking, but partly from her
      displeasure with Francis. At last she broke her 'worset,'
      drew the end of it through the final loop, and, drawing it,
      rose and scanned the side of the hill. Not far off she spied
      the fleecy backs of a few feeding sheep, and straightway sent
      out on the still air a sweet, strong, musical cry. It was
      instantly responded to by a bark from somewhere up the hill.
      She sat down, clasped her hands over her knees, and waited.
    </p>
    <p>
      She had not to wait long. A sound of rushing came through the
      heather, and in a moment or two, a fine collie, with long,
      silky, wavy coat of black and brown, and one white spot on
      his face, shot out of the heather, sprang upon her, and,
      setting his paws on her shoulders, began licking her face.
      She threw her arms round him, and addressed him in words of
      fondling rebuke:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye ill-mennered tyke!' she said; 'what richt hae ye to tak
      the place o' yer betters? Gang awa doon wi' ye, and wait.
      What for sud ye tak advantage o' your fower legs to his twa,
      and him the maister o' ye! But, eh man, ye're a fine doggie,
      and I canna bide the thoucht 'at yer langest day maun be sae
      short, and tak ye awa hame sae lang afore the lave o' 's!'
    </p>
    <p>
      While she scolded, she let him caress her as he pleased.
      Presently he left her, and going a yard or two away, threw
      himself on the grass with such <i>abandon</i> as no animal
      but a weary dog seems capable of reaching. He had made haste
      to be first that he might caress her before his master came;
      now he heard him close behind, and knew his opportunity over.
    </p>
    <p>
      Stephen came next out of the heather, creeping to Kirsty's
      feet on all-fours. He was a gaunt, longbacked lad, who, at
      certain seasons undetermined, either imagined himself the
      animal he imitated, or had some notion of being required, or,
      possibly, compelled to behave like a dog. When the fit was
      upon him, all the day long he would speak no word even to his
      sister, would only bark or give a low growl like the collie.
      In this last he succeeded much better than in running like
      him, although, indeed, his arms were so long that it was
      comparatively easy for him to use them as forelegs. He let
      his head hang low as he went, throwing it up to bark, and
      sinking it yet lower when he growled, which was seldom, and
      to those that loved him indicated great trouble. He did not
      like Snootie raise himself on his hindlegs to caress his
      sister, but gently subsided upon her feet, and there lay
      panting, his face to the earth, and his fore-arms crossed
      beneath his nose.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty stooped, and stroked and patted him as if he were the
      dog he seemed fain to be. Then drawing her feet from under
      him, she rose, and going a little way up the hill to the hut,
      returned presently with a basin full of rich-looking milk,
      and <i>a quarter</i> of thick oat-cake, which she had brought
      from home in the morning. The milk she set beside her as she
      resumed her seat. Then she put her feet again under the
      would-be dog, and proceeded to break small pieces from the
      oat-cake and throw them to him. He sought every piece eagerly
      as it fell, but with his mouth only, never moving either
      hand, and seemed to eat it with a satisfaction worthy of his
      simulated nature. When the oat-cake was gone, she set the
      bowl before him, and he drank the milk with care and
      neatness, never putting a hand to steady it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now you must have a sleep, Steenie!' said his sister.
    </p>
    <p>
      She rose, and he crawled slowly after her up the hill on his
      hands and knees. All the time he kept his face down, and, his
      head hanging toward the earth, his long hair hid it quite. He
      strongly suggested a great Skye-terrier.
    </p>
    <p>
      When they reached the hut, Kirsty went in, and Steenie crept
      after her. They had covered the floor of it with heather, the
      stalks set upright and close packed, so that, even where the
      bells were worn off, it still made a thick long-piled carpet,
      elastic and warm. When the door was shut, they were snug
      there even in winter.
    </p>
    <p>
      Inside, the hut was about six feet long, and four wide. Its
      furniture was a little deal table and one low chair. In the
      turf of which the wall consisted, at the farther end from the
      door, Kirsty had cut out a small oblong recess to serve as a
      shelf for her books. The hut was indeed her library, for in
      that bole stood, upright with its back to the room, in proper
      and tidy fashion, almost every book she could call her own.
      They were about a dozen, several with but one board and some
      with no title, one or two very old, and all well used. Most
      of her time there, when she was not knitting, Kirsty spent in
      reading and thinking about what she read; many a minute, even
      when she was knitting, she managed to read as well. She had
      read two of sir Walter's novels, and several of the
      Ettrick-shepherd's shorter tales, which the schoolmaster had
      lent her; but on her shelf and often in her hands were a
      Shakspere, a Milton, and a translation of Klopstock's
      <i>Messiah</i>&#8212;which she liked far better than the
      <i>Paradise Lost</i>, though she did not admire it nearly so
      much. Of the latter she would say, 'It's unco gran', but it
      never maks my hert grit (<i>great</i>), meaning that it never
      caused her any emotion. Among her treasures was also a
      curious old book of ghost-stories, concerning which the sole
      remark she was ever heard to make was, that she would like to
      know whether they were true: she thought Steenie could tell,
      but she would not question him about them. Ramsay's <i>Gentle
      Shepherd was</i> there too, which she liked for the good
      sense in it. There was a thumbed edition of Burns also, but I
      do not think much of the thumbing was Kirsty's, though she
      had several of his best poems by heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      Between the ages of ten and fifteen, Kirsty had gone to the
      parish school of the nearest town: it looked a village, but
      they always called it <i>the town</i>. There a sister of her
      father lived, and with her she was welcome to spend the
      night, so that she was able to go in most weathers. But when
      she staid there, her evening was mostly spent at the
      schoolmaster's.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Craig was an elderly man, who had married late, and lost
      his wife early. She had left him one child, a delicate,
      dainty, golden-haired thing, considerably younger than
      Kirsty, who cherished for her a love and protection quite
      maternal. Kirsty was one of the born mothers, who are not
      only of the salt, but are the sugar and shelter of the world.
      I doubt if little Phemie would have learned anything but for
      Kirsty. Not to the day of her death did her father see in her
      anything but the little girl his wife had left him. He
      spoiled her a good deal, nor ever set himself to instruct
      her, leaving it apparently to the tendency of things to make
      of her a woman like her mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was a real student and excellent teacher. When first he
      came as schoolmaster to Tiltowie, he was a divinity student,
      but a man so far of thought original that he saw lions in the
      way of becoming a minister. Such men as would be servants of
      the church before they are slaves of the church's Master will
      never be troubled with Mr. Craig's difficulties. For one
      thing, his strong poetic nature made it impossible for him to
      believe in a dull, prosaic God: when told that God's thoughts
      are not as our thoughts, he found himself unable to imagine
      them inferior to ours. The natural result was that he
      remained a schoolmaster&#8212;to the advantage of many a
      pupil, and very greatly to the advantage of Kirsty, whose
      nature was peculiarly open to his influences. The dominie
      said he had never had a pupil that gave him such satisfaction
      as Kirsty; she seemed to anticipate and catch at everything
      he wanted to make hers. There was no knowledge, he declared,
      that he could offer her, which the lassie from Corbyknowe
      would not take in like her porridge. Best thing of all for
      her was that, following his own predilections, he paid far
      more attention, in his class for English, to poetry than to
      prose. Colin Craig was himself no indifferent poet, and was
      even a master of the more recondite forms of verse. If, in
      some measure led astray by the merit of the form, he was
      capable of admiring verse essentially inferior, he yet
      certainly admired the better poetry more. He had, besides,
      the faculty of perceiving whether what he had written would
      or would not <i>convey</i> his thought&#8212;a faculty in
      which even a great poet may be deficient.
    </p>
    <p>
      In a word, Kirsty learned everything Mr. Craig brought within
      her reach; and long after she left school, the Saturday on
      which she did not go to see him was a day of disappointment
      both to the dominie and to his little Phemie.
    </p>
    <p>
      When she had once begun to follow a thing, Kirsty would never
      leave the trail of it. Her chief business as well as delight
      was to look after Steenie, but perfect attention to him left
      her large opportunity of pursuing her studies, especially at
      such seasons in which his peculiar affection, whatever it
      really was, required hours of untimely sleep. For, although
      at all times he wandered at his will without her, he
      invariably wanted to be near her when he slept; while she,
      satisfied that so he slept better, had not once at such a
      time left him. During summer, and as long before and after as
      the temperature permitted, the hut was the place he preferred
      when his necessity was upon him; and it was Kirsty's especial
      delight to sit in it on a warm day, the door open and her
      brother asleep on her feet, reading and reading while the sun
      went down the sky, to fill the hut as he set with a glory of
      promise; after which came the long gloamin, like a life out
      of which the light but not the love has vanished, in which
      she neither worked nor read, but brooded over many things.
    </p>
    <p>
      Leaving the door open behind them, Kirsty took a book from
      the bole, and seated herself on the low chair; instantly
      Steenie, who had waited motionless until she was settled,
      threw himself across her feet on the carpet of heather, and
      in a moment was fast asleep.
    </p>
    <p>
      There they remained, the one reading, the other sleeping,
      while the hours of the warm summer afternoon slipped away,
      ripples on the ocean of the lovely, changeless eternity, the
      consciousness of God. For a time the watching sister was
      absorbed in King Lear; then she fell to wondering whether
      Cordelia was not unkindly stiff toward her old father, but
      perceived at length that, with such sisters listening, she
      could not have spoken otherwise. Then she wondered whether
      there could be women so bad as Goneril and Regan, concluding
      that Shakspere must know better than she. At last she drew
      her bare feet from under Steenie, and put them on his back,
      where the coolness was delightful. Then first she became
      aware that the sun was down and the gloamin come, and that
      the whole world must be feeling just like her feet. The long
      clear twilight, which would last till morning, was about her,
      the eerie sleeping day, when the lovely ghosts come out of
      their graves in the long grass, and walk about in the cool
      world, with little ghosty sighs at sight of the old places,
      and fancy they are dreaming. Kirsty was always willing to
      believe in ghosts: awake in the dark nights she did not; but
      in her twilight reveries she grew very nearly a ghost
      herself.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a wonder she could sit so long and not feel worn out;
      but Kirsty was exceptionally strong, in absolute health, and
      specially gifted with patience. She had so early entertained
      and so firmly grasped the idea that she was sent into the
      world expressly to take care of Steenie, that devotion to him
      had grown into a happy habit with her. The waking mind gave
      itself up to the sleeping, the orderly to the troubled brain,
      the true heart to the heart as true.
    </p>
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      &nbsp;
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    <p>
      &nbsp;
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    </p><a name="ch005"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER V
    </h2>
    <h3>
      COLONEL AND SERGEANT
    </h3>
    <p>
      There was no difference of feeling betwixt the father and
      mother in regard to this devotion of Kirsty's very being to
      her Steenie; but the mother in especial was content with it,
      for while Kirsty was the apple of her eye, Steenie was her
      one loved anxiety.
    </p>
    <p>
      David Barclay, a humble unit in the widespread and
      distinguished family of the Barclays or Berkeleys, was born,
      like his father and grandfather and many more of his
      ancestors, on the same farm he now occupied. While his father
      was yet alive, with an elder son to succeed him, David
      <i>listed</i>&#8212;mainly from a strong desire to be near a
      school-friend, then an ensign in the service of the East
      India Company. Throughout their following military career
      they were in the same regiment, the one rising to be colonel,
      the other sergeant-major. All the time, the
      schoolboy-attachment went on deepening in the men; and, all
      the time, was never man more respectfully obedient to orders
      than David Barclay to those of the superior officer with whom
      in private he was on terms of intimacy. As often as they
      could without attracting notice, the comrades threw aside all
      distinction of rank, and were again the Archie Gordon and
      Davie Barclay of old school-days&#8212;as real to them still
      as those of the hardest battles they had fought together. In
      more primitive Scotland, such relations are, or were more
      possible than in countries where more divergent habits of
      life occasion wider social separations; and then these were
      sober-minded men, who neither made much of the shows of the
      world, nor were greedy after distinction, which is the mere
      coffin wherein Duty-done lies buried.
    </p>
    <p>
      When they returned to their country, both somewhat disabled,
      the one retired to his inherited estate, the other to the
      family farm upon that estate, where his brother had died
      shortly before; so that Archie was now Davie's landlord. But
      no new relation would ever destroy the friendship which
      school had made close, and war had welded. Almost every week
      the friends met and spent the evening together&#8212;much
      oftener, by and by, at Corbyknowe than at Castle Weelset. For
      both married soon after their return, and their wives were of
      different natures.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My colonel has the glory,' Barclay said once, and but once,
      to his sister, 'but, puir fallow, I hae the wife!' And truly
      the wife at the farm had in her material enough, both moral
      and intellectual, for ten ladies better than the wife at the
      castle.
    </p>
    <p>
      David's wife brought him a son the first year of their
      marriage, and the next year came a son to the colonel and a
      daughter to the sergeant. One night, as the two fathers sat
      together at the farm, some twelve hours after the birth of
      David's girl, they mutually promised that the survivor would
      do his best for the child of the other. Before he died the
      colonel would gladly have taken his boy from his wife and
      given him to his old comrade.
    </p>
    <p>
      As to Steenie, the elder of David's children, he was yet
      unborn when his father, partly in consequence of a wound from
      which he never quite recovered, met with rather a serious
      accident through a young horse in the harvest-field, and the
      report reached his wife that he was killed. To the shock she
      thus received was generally attributed the peculiarity of the
      child, prematurely born within a month after. He had long
      passed the age at which children usually begin to walk,
      before he would even attempt to stand, but he had grown
      capable of a speed on all-fours that was astonishing. When at
      last he did walk, it was for more than two years with the air
      of one who had learned a trick; and throughout his childhood
      and a great part of his boyhood, he continued to go on
      all-fours rather than on his feet.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
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      &nbsp;
    </p>
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      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch006"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER VI
    </h2>
    <h3>
      MAN-STEENIE
    </h3>
    <p>
      The sleeping youth began at length to stir: it was more than
      an hour before he quite woke up. Then all at once he started
      to his feet with his eyes wide open, putting back from his
      forehead the long hair which fell over them, and revealing a
      face not actually looking old, but strongly suggesting age.
      His eyes were of a pale blue, with a hazy, mixed, uncertain
      gleam in them, reminding one of the shifty shudder and shake
      and start of the northern lights at some heavenly version of
      the game of Puss in the Corner. His features were more than
      good; they would have been grand had they been large, but
      they were peculiarly small. His head itself was very small in
      proportion to his height, his forehead, again, large in
      proportion to his head, while his chin was such as we are in
      the way of calling strong. Although he had been all day
      acting a dog in charge of sheep, and treating the collie as
      his natural companion, there was, both in his countenance and
      its expression, a remarkable absence of the animal. He had a
      kind of exaltation in his look; he seemed to expect
      something, not at hand, but sure to come. His eyes rested for
      a moment, with a love of absolute devotion, on the face of
      his sister; then he knelt at her feet, and as if to receive
      her blessing, bowed his head before her. She laid her hand
      upon it, and in a tone of unutterable tenderness said,
      'Man-Steenie!' Instantly he rose to his feet. Kirsty rose
      also, and they went out of the hut.
    </p>
    <p>
      The sunlight had not left the west, but had crept round some
      distance toward the north. Stars were shining faint through
      the thin shadow of the world. Steenie stretched himself up,
      threw his arms aloft, and held them raised, as if at once he
      would grow and reach toward the infinite. Then he looked down
      on Kirsty, for he was taller than she, and pointed straight
      up, with the long lean forefinger of one of the long lean
      arms that had all day been legs to the would-be
      dog&#8212;into the heavens, and smiled. Kirsty looked up,
      nodded her head, and smiled in return. Then they started in
      the direction of home, and for some time walked in silence.
      At length Steenie spoke. His voice was rather feeble, but
      clear, articulate, and musical.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My feet's terrible heavy the nicht, Kirsty!' he said. 'Gien
      it wasna for them, the lave o' me wud be up and awa. It's
      terrible to be hauden doon by the feet this gait!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We're a' hauden doon the same gait, Steenie. Maybe it's some
      waur for you 'at wud sae fain gang up, nor for the lave o' 's
      'at's mair willin to bide a wee; but it 'll be the same at
      the last whan we're a' up there thegither.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wudna care sae muckle gien he didna grip me by the queets
      (<i>ankles</i>), like! I dinna like to be grippit by the
      queets! He winna lat me win at the thongs!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whan the richt time comes,' returned Kirsty solemnly, 'the
      bonny man 'll lowse the thongs himsel.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay! I ken that weel. It was me 'at tellt ye. He tauld me
      himsel! I'm thinkin I'll see him the nicht, for I'm sair
      hauden doon, sair needin a sicht o' 'im. He's whiles lang o'
      comin!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dinna won'er 'at ye're sae fain to see 'im, Steenie!' 'I
      <i>am</i> that; fain, fain!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye'll see 'im or lang. It's a fine thing to hae patience.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye come ilka day, Kirsty: what for sudna he come ilka
      nicht?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He has reasons, Steenie. He kens best.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, he kens best. I ken naething but him&#8212;and you,
      Kirsty!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty said no more. Her heart was too full.
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie stood still, and throwing back his head, stared for
      some moments up into the great heavens over him. Then he
      said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a bonny day, the day the bonny man bides in! The ither
      day&#8212;the day the lave o' ye bides in&#8212;the day whan
      I'm no mysel but a sair ooncomfortable collie&#8212;that
      day's ower het&#8212;and sometimes ower cauld; but the day he
      bides in is aye jist what a day sud be! Ay, it's that! it's
      that!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He threw himself down, and lay for a minute looking up into
      the sky. Kirsty stood and regarded him with loving eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hae a' the bonny day afore me!' he murmured to himself.
      'Eh, but it's better to be a man nor a beast Snootie's a fine
      beast, and a gran' collie, but I wud raither be mysel&#8212;a
      heap raither&#8212;aye at han' to catch a sicht o' the bonny
      man! Ye maun gang hame to yer bed, Kirsty!&#8212; Is't the
      bonny man comes til ye i' yer dreams and says, "Gang til him,
      Kirsty, and be mortal guid til him"? It maun be surely that!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Willna ye gang wi' me, Steenie, as far as the door?'
      rejoined Kirsty, almost beseechingly, and attempting no
      answer to what he had last said.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was at times such as this that Kirsty knew sadness. When
      she had to leave her brother on the hillside all the long
      night, to look on no human face, hear no human word, but
      wander in strangest worlds of his own throughout the slow
      dark hours, the sense of a separation worse than death would
      wrap her as in a shroud. In his bodily presence, however far
      away in thought or sleep or dreams his soul might be, she
      could yet tend him with her love; but when he was out of her
      sight, and she had to sleep and forget him, where was
      Steenie, and how was he faring? Then he seemed to her as one
      forsaken, left alone with his sorrows to an existence
      companionless and dreary. But in truth Steenie was by no
      means to be pitied. However much his life was apart from the
      lives of other men, he did not therefore live alone. Was he
      not still of more value than many sparrows? And Kirsty's love
      for him had in it no shadow of despair. Her pain at such
      times was but the indescribable love-lack of mothers when
      their sons are far away, and they do not know what they are
      doing, what they are thinking; or when their daughters seem
      to have departed from them or ever the silver cord be loosed,
      or the golden bowl broken. And yet how few, when the air of
      this world is clearest, ever come into essential contact with
      those they love best! But the triumph of Love, while most it
      seems to delay, is yet ceaselessly rushing hitherward on the
      wings of the morning.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Willna ye gang as far as the door wi' me, Steenie?' she
      said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wull do that, Kirsty. But ye're no feart, are ye?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, no a grain! What would I be feart for?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ow, naething! At this time there's naething oot and aboot to
      be feart at. In what ye ca' the daytime, I'm a kin' o' in
      danger o' knockin mysel again things; I never du that at
      nicht.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As he spoke he sprang to his feet, and they walked on.
      Kirsty's heart seemed to swell with pain; for Steenie was at
      once more rational and more strange than usual, and she felt
      the farther away from him. His words were very quiet, but his
      eyes looked full of stars.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I canna tell what it is aboot the sun 'at maks a dog o' me!'
      he said. 'He's hard-like, and hauds me oot, and gars me hing
      my heid, and feel as gien I wur a kin' o' ashamed, though I
      ken o' naething. But the bonny nicht comes straucht up to me,
      and into me, and gangs a' throuw me, and bides i' me; and
      syne I luik for the bonny man!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wuss ye wud lat me bide oot the nicht wi' ye, Steenie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What for that, Kirsty? Ye maun sleep, and I'm better my
      lane.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's jist hit!' returned Kirsty, with a deep-drawn sigh.
      'I canna bide yer bein yer lane, and yet, do what I like, I
      canna, whiles, even i' the daytime, win a bit nearer til ye!
      Gien only ye was as little as ye used to be, whan I cud carry
      ye aboot a' day, and tak ye intil my ain bed a' nicht! But
      noo we're jist like the sun and the mune!-whan ye're oot' I'm
      in; and whan ye're in&#8212;well I'm no oot' but my sowl's
      jist as blear-faced as the mune i' the daylicht to think
      ye'll be awa again sae sune!&#8212;But it <i>canna</i> gang
      on like this to a' eternity, and that's a comfort!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I ken naething aboot eternity. I'm thinkin it'll a' turn
      intil a lown starry nicht, wi' the bonny man intil't. I'm
      sure o' ae thing, and that only&#8212;'at something 'ill be
      putten richt 'at's far frae richt the noo; and syne, Kirsty,
      ye'll hae yer ain gait wi' me, and I'll be sae far like ither
      fowk: idiot 'at I am, I wud be sorry to be turnt a'thegither
      the same as some! Ye see I ken sae muckle they ken naething
      aboot, or they wudna be as they are! It maybe disna become
      <i>me</i> to say't, ony mair nor Gowk Murnock 'at sits o' the
      pu'pit stair,&#8212;but eh the styte (<i>nonsense</i>) oor
      minister dings oot o' his ain heid, as gien it war the stoor
      oot o' the bible-cushion! It's no possible he's ever seen the
      bonny man as I hae seen him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We'll a' hae to come ower to you, Steenie, and learn frae ye
      what ye ken. We'll hae to mak <i>you</i> the minister,
      Steenie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, na; I ken naething for ither fowk&#8212;only for mysel;
      and that's whiles mair nor I can win roun', no to say gie
      again!' 'Some nicht ye'll lat me bide oot wi' ye a' nicht? I
      wud sair like it, Steenie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye sail, Kirsty; but it maun be some nicht ye hae sleepit a'
      day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, but I cudna do that, tried I ever sae hard!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye cud lie i' yer bed ony gait, and mak the best o' 't!
      <i>Ye</i> hae naebody, I ken, to <i>gar</i> you sleep!'
    </p>
    <p>
      They went all the rest of the way talking thus, and Kirsty's
      heart grew lighter, for she seemed to get a little nearer to
      her brother. He had been her live doll and idol ever since
      his mother laid him in her arms when she was little more than
      three years old. For though Steenie was nearly a year older
      than Kirsty, she was at that time so much bigger that she was
      able, not indeed to carry him, but to nurse him on her knees.
      She thought herself the elder of the two until she was about
      ten, by which time she could not remember any beginning to
      her carrying of him. About the same time, however, he began
      to grow much faster, and she found before long that only upon
      her back could she carry him any distance.
    </p>
    <p>
      The discovery that he was the elder somehow gave a fresh
      impulse to her love and devotion, and intensified her pitiful
      tenderness. Kirsty's was indeed a heart in which the whole
      unhappy world might have sought and found shelter. She had
      the notion, notwithstanding, that she was harder-hearted than
      most, and therefore better able to do things that were right
      but not pleasant.
    </p>
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      &nbsp;
    </p>
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      &nbsp;
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      &nbsp;
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      &nbsp;
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      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch007"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER VII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      CORBYKNOWE
    </h3>
    <p>
      'Ye'll come in and say a word to mother, Steenie?' said
      Kirsty, as they came near the door of the house.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a long, low building, with a narrow paving in front
      from end to end, of stones cast up by the plough. Its walls,
      but one story high, rough-cast and white-washed, shone dim in
      the twilight. Under a thick projecting thatch the door stood
      wide open, and from the kitchen, whose door was also open,
      came the light of a peat-fire and a fish-oil-lamp. Throughout
      the summer Steenie was seldom in the house an hour of the
      twenty-four, and now he hesitated to enter. In the winter he
      would keep about it a good part of the day, and was generally
      indoors the greater part of the night, but by no means
      always.
    </p>
    <p>
      While he hesitated, his mother appeared in the doorway of the
      kitchen. She was a tall, fine-looking woman, with soft gray
      eyes, and an expression of form and features which left
      Kirsty accounted for.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come awa in by, Steenie, my man!' she said, in a tone that
      seemed to wrap its object in fold upon fold of tenderness,
      enough to make the peat-smoke that pervaded the kitchen seem
      the very atmosphere of the heavenly countries. 'Come and hae
      a drappy o' new-milkit milk, and a piece (<i>a piece of
      bread</i>)'.
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie stood smiling and undecided on the slab in front of
      the doorstep.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dreid naething, Steenie,' his mother went on. 'There's no
      are to interfere wi' yer wull, whatever it be. The hoose is
      yer ain to come and gang as ye see fit. But ye ken that, and
      Kirsty kens that, as weel's yer father and mysel.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother, I ken what ye say to be the trowth, and I hae a
      gran' pooer o' believin the trowth. But a'body believes their
      ain mither: that's i' the order o' things as they war first
      startit! Still I wud raither no come in the nicht. I wud
      raither hand awa and no tribble ye wi' mair o' the sicht o'
      me nor I canna help&#8212;that is, till the cheenge come, and
      things be set richt. I dinna aye ken what I'm aboot, but I
      aye ken 'at I'm a kin' o' a disgrace to ye, though I canna
      tell hoo I'm to blame for 't. Sae I'll jist bide theroot wi'
      the bonny stars 'at's aye theroot, and kens a' aboot it, and
      disna think nane the waur o' me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Laddie! laddie! wha on the face o' God's yerth thinks the
      waur o' ye for a wrang dune ye?&#8212;though wha has the wyte
      o' that same I daurna think, weel kennin 'at a'thing's aither
      ordeent or allooed, makin muckle the same. Come winter, come
      summer, come richt, come wrang, come life, come deith, what
      are ye, what can ye be, but my ain, ain laddie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie stepped across the threshold and followed his mother
      into the kitchen, where the pot was already on the fire for
      the evening's porridge. To hide her emotion she went straight
      to it, and lifted the lid to look whether boiling point had
      arrived. The same instant the stalwart form of her husband
      appeared in the doorway, and there stood for a single moment
      arrested.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was a good deal older than his wife, as his long gray
      hair, among other witnesses, testified. He was six feet in
      height, and very erect, with a rather stiff, military
      carriage. His face wore an expression of stern goodwill, as
      if he had been sent to do his best for everybody, and knew
      it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie caught sight of him ere he had taken a step into the
      kitchen. He rushed to him, threw his arms round him, and hid
      his face on his bosom.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bonny, bonny man!' he murmured, then turned away and went
      back to the fire.
    </p>
    <p>
      His mother was casting the first handful of meal into the
      pot. Steenie fetched a <i>three-leggit creepie</i> and sat
      down by her, looking as if he had sat there every night since
      first he was able to sit.
    </p>
    <p>
      The farmer came forward, and drew a chair to the fire beside
      his son. Steenie laid his head on his father's knee, and the
      father laid his big hand on Steenie's head. Not a word was
      uttered. The mother might have found them in her way had she
      been inclined, but the thought did not come to her, and she
      went on making the porridge in great contentment, while
      Kirsty laid the cloth. The night was as still in the house as
      in the world, save for the bursting of the big blobs of the
      porridge. The peat fire made no noise.
    </p>
    <p>
      The mother at length took the heavy pot from the fire, and,
      with what to one inexpert might have seemed wonderful skill,
      poured the porridge into a huge wooden bowl on the table.
      Having then scraped the pot carefully that nothing should be
      lost, she put some water into it, and setting it on the fire
      again, went to a hole in the wall, took thence two eggs, and
      placed them gently in the water.
    </p>
    <p>
      She went next to the dairy, and came back with a jug of the
      richest milk, which she set beside the porridge, whereupon
      they drew their seats to the table&#8212;all but Steenie.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come, Steenie,' said his mother, 'here's yer supper.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dinna care aboot ony supper the nicht, mother,' answered
      Steenie.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Guidsake, laddie, I kenna hoo ye live!' she returned in an
      accent almost of despair,
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm thinkin I dinna need sae muckle as ither fowk,' rejoined
      Steenie, whose white face bore testimony that he took far
      from nourishment enough. 'Ye see I'm no a' there,' he added
      with a smile, 'sae I canna need sae muckle!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's eneuch o' ye there to fill my hert unco fou,'
      answered his mother with a deep sigh. 'Come awa, Steenie, my
      bairn!' she went on coaxingly. 'Yer father winna ate a moufu'
      gien ye dinna: ye'll see that!&#8212;Eh, Steenie,' she broke
      out, 'gien ye wad but tak yer supper and gang to yer bed like
      the lave o' 's! It gars my hert swall as gien 't wud burst
      like a blob to think o' ye oot i' tho mirk nicht! Wha's to
      tell what michtna be happenin ye! Oor herts are whiles that
      sair, yer father's and mine, i' oor beds, 'at we daurna say a
      word for fear the tane set the tither greetin.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll bide in, gien that be yer wull,' replied Steenie; 'but
      eh, gien ye kent the differ to me, ye wudna wuss 't. I seldom
      sleep at nicht as ye ken, and i' the hoose it's jist as gien
      the darkness wan inside o' me and was chokin me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But it's as dark theroot as i' the hoose&#8212;whiles,
      onygait!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, mother; it's never sae dark theroot but there's licht
      eneuch to ken I'm theroot and no i' the hoose. I can aye draw
      a guid full breath oot i' the open.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lat the laddie gang his ain gait, 'uman,' interposed David.
      'The thing born in 'im 's better for him nor the thing born
      in anither. A man maun gang as God made him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, whether he be man or dog!' assented Steenie solemnly.
    </p>
    <p>
      He drew his stool close to his father where he sat at the
      table, and again laid his head on his knee. The mother sighed
      but said nothing. She looked nowise hurt, only very sad. In a
      minute, Steenie spoke again:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm thinkin nane o' ye kens,' he said, 'what it's like whan
      a' the hillside 's gien up to the ither anes!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What ither anes?' asked his mother. 'There can be nane there
      but yer ain lane sel!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, there 's a' the lave o' 's,' he rejoined, with a wan
      smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      The mother looked at him with something almost of fear in her
      eyes of love.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Steenie has company we ken little aboot,' said Kirsty. 'I
      whiles think I wud gie him my wits for his company.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, the bonny man!' murmured Steenie. '&#8212;I maun be
      gauin!'
    </p>
    <p>
      But he did not rise, did not even lift his head from his
      father's knee: it would be rude to go before the supper was
      over&#8212;the ruder that he was not partaking of it!
    </p>
    <p>
      David had eaten his porridge, and now came the almost nightly
      difference about the eggs. Marion had been 'the perfect spy
      o' the time' in taking them from the pot; but when she would
      as usual have her husband eat them, he as usual declared he
      neither needed nor wanted them. This night, however, he did
      not insist, but at once proceeded to prepare one, with which,
      as soon as it was nicely mixed with salt, he began to feed
      Steenie. The boy had been longer used to being thus fed than
      most children, and having taken the first mouthful
      instinctively, now moved his head, but without raising it
      from his knee, so that his father might feed him more
      comfortably. In this position he took every spoonful given
      him, and so ate both the eggs, greatly to the delight of the
      rest of the company.
    </p>
    <p>
      A moment more and Steenie got up. His father rose also.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll convoy ye a bit, my man,' he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, na! ye needna that, father! It's near-ban' yer bedtime!
      I hae naegait to be convoyt. I'll jist be aboot i' the
      nicht&#8212;maybe a stane's-cast frae the door, maybe the
      tither side o' the Horn. Here or there I'm never frae ye. I
      think whiles I'm jist like are o' them 'at ye ca' deid: I'm
      no awa; I'm only deid! I'm aboot somegait!'
    </p>
    <p>
      So saying, he went. He never on any occasion wished them
      good-night: that would be to leave them, and he was not
      leaving them! he was with them all the time!
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch008"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER VIII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      DAVID AND HIS DAUGHTER
    </h3>
    <p>
      The instant he was gone, Kirsty went a step or two nearer to
      her father, and, looking up in his face, said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I saw Francie Gordon the day, father.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, lassie, I reckon that wasna ony ferly (<i>strange
      occurrence</i>)! Whaur saw ye him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He cam to me o' the Hornside, whaur I sat weyvin my stockin,
      ower the bog on 's powny&#8212;a richt bonny thing, and
      clever&#8212;a new are he's gotten frae 's mither. And it's
      no the first time he's been owre there to see me sin' he cam
      hame!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whatfor gaed he there? That wasna the best o' places to gang
      ridin in!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He kenned whaur he was likest to see me: it was me he
      wantit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He wantit you, did he? And he's been mair nor ance efter
      ye?&#8212;Whatfor didna ye tell me afore, Kirsty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We war bairns thegither, ye ken, father, and I never ance
      thoucht the thing worth fashin ye aboot till the day. We've
      aye been used to Francie comin and gaein! I never tellt my
      mither onything, he said, and I tell her a'thing worth
      tellin, and mony a thing forby. I aye leuch at him as I wud
      at a bairn till the day. He spak straucht oot the day, and I
      did the same, and angert him; and syne he angert me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And whatfor are ye tellin me the noo?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cause it cam intil my heid 'at maybe it would be
      better&#8212;no 'at it maks ony differ I can see.'
    </p>
    <p>
      During this conversation Marion was washing the
      supper-things, putting them away, and making general
      preparation for bed. She heard every word, and went about her
      work softly that she might hear, never opening her mouth to
      speak.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's something ye want to tell me and dinna like,
      lassie!' said David. 'Gien ye be feart at yer father, gang
      til yer mither.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Feart at my father! I wad be, gien I bed onything to be
      ashamet o'. Syne I micht gang to my mither, I daursay&#8212;I
      dinna ken.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye wud that, lassie. Fathers maun sometimes be fearsome to
      lass-bairns!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whan I'm feart at you, father, I'll be a gey bit on i' the
      ill gait!' returned Kirsty, with a solemn face, looking
      straight into her father's eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Than it'll never be, or I maun hae a heap to blame mysel
      for. I think whiles, gien bairns kenned the terrible wyte
      their fathers micht hae to dree for no duin better wi' them,
      they wud be mair particlar to hand straucht. I hae been ower
      muckle taen up wi' my beasts and my craps&#8212; mair, God
      forgie me! nor wi' my twa bairns; though, he kens, ye're mair
      to me, the twa, than oucht else save the mither o' ye!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The beasts and the craps cudna weel du wi' less; and there
      was aye oor mither to see efter hiz!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's true, lassie! I only houp it wasna greed at the hert
      o' me! At the same time, wha wud I be greedy for but
      yersels?&#8212;Weel, and what's it a' aboot? What garred ye
      come to me aboot Francie? I'm some feart for him whiles, noo
      'at he's sae muckle oot o' oor sicht. The laddie's no by
      natur an ill laddie&#8212;far frae 't! but it's a sore pity
      he cudna hae been a' his father's, and nane o' him his
      mither's!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That wudna hae been sae weel contrived, I doobt!' remarked
      Kirsty. 'There wudna hae been the variety, I'm thinkin!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye're richt there, lass!&#8212;But what's this aboot
      Francie?' 'Ow naething, father, worth mentionin! The daft
      loon wud hae bed me promise to merry him&#8212;that's a'!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Lord preserve's!&#8212;Aff han'?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's no tellin what micht hae been i' the heid o' 'im: he
      didna win sae far as to say that onygait!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'God forbid!' exclaimed her father with solemnity, after a
      short pause.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm thinkin God's forbidden langsyne!' rejoined Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What said ye til 'im, lassie?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'First I leuch at him&#8212;as weel as I can min' tho
      nonsense o' 't&#8212;and ca'd him the gowk he was; and syne I
      sent him awa wi' a flee in 's lug: hadna he the impidence to
      fa' oot upo' me for carin mair aboot Steenie nor the likes o'
      him! As gien ever <i>he</i> cud come 'ithin sicht o'
      Steenie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her father looked very grave.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are ye no pleased, father? I did what I thoucht richt.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye cudna hae dune better, Kirsty. But I'm sorry for the
      callan, for eh but I loed his father! Lassie, for his
      father's sake I cud tak Francie intil the hoose, and work for
      him as for you and Steenie&#8212;though it's little guid
      Steenie ever gets o' me, puir sowl!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dinna say that, father. It wud be an ill thing for Steenie
      to hae onybody but yersel to the father o' 'im! A muckle
      pairt o' the nicht he wins ower in loein at you and his
      mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And yersel, Kirsty.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm thinkin I hae my share i' the daytime.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And hoo, think ye, gangs the lave o' the nicht wi' 'im?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The bonny man has the maist o' 't, I dinna doobt, and what
      better cud we desire for 'im!&#8212;But, father, gien Francie
      come back wi' the same tale&#8212;I dinna think he wull efter
      what I telled him, but he may&#8212;what wud ye hae me say
      til 'im?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Say what ye wull, lassie, sae lang as ye dinna lat him for a
      moment believe there's a grain o' possibility i' the thing.
      Ye see, Kirsty,&#8212;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye dinna imagine, father, I cud for ae minute think
      itherwise aboot it nor ye du yersel! Div I no ken 'at his
      father gied him in chairge to you? and haena I therefore to
      luik efter him? Didna ye tell me a' aboot yer gran' freen'
      and hoo, and hoo lang ye had loed him? and didna that mak
      Francie my business as weel's yer ain? I'm verra sure his
      father wud never appruv o' ony gaeins on atween him and a
      lassie sic like's mysel; and fearna ye, father, but I s' hand
      him weel ootby. No that it's ony tyauve (<i>struggle</i>) to
      me, though I aye likit Francie! Haena I my ain Steenie?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Glaidly wud I shaw Francie the ro'd to sic a wife as ye wud
      mak him, my bonny Kirsty! But ye see clearly the thing
      itsel's no to be thoucht upon.&#8212;Eh, Kirsty, but it's
      gran' to an auld father's hert to hear ye tak yer pairt in
      his devours efter sic a wumanly fashion!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Am I no yer ain lass-bairn, father? Whaur wud I be wi' a
      father 'at didna keep his word? and what less cud I du nor
      help ony man to keep his word? Gien breach o' the
      faimily-word cam throuw me, my life wud gang frae
      me.&#8212;Wad ye hae me tell the laddie's mither? I wudna
      like to expose the folly o' him, but gien ye think it
      necessar, I'll gang the morn's mornin.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dinna think that wud be weel. It wad but raise a strife
      atween the twa, ohn dune an atom o' guid. She wud only rage
      at the laddie, and pit him in sic a reid heat as wad but wald
      thegither him and his wull sae 'at they wud maist never come
      in twa again. And though ye gaed and tauld her yer ain sel,
      my leddy wad lay a' the wyte upo' you nane the less. There's
      no rizzon, tap nor tae, i' the puir body, and ye're naewise
      b'und to her farther nor to du richt by her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm glaid ye dinna want me to gang,' answered Kirsty. 'She
      carries hersel that gran' 'at ye're maist driven to the
      consideration hoo little she's worth; and that's no the richt
      speerit anent onybody or thing God thoucht worth makin.'
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch009"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER IX
    </h2>
    <h3>
      AT CASTLE WEELSET
    </h3>
    <p>
      Francie's anger had died down a good deal by the time he
      reached home. He was, as his father's friend had just said,
      by no means a bad sort of fellow, only he was full of
      himself, and therefore of little use to anybody. His mother
      and he, when not actually at strife, were constantly on the
      edge of a quarrel. The two must have their own way, each of
      them. Francie's way was sometimes good, his mother's
      sometimes not bad, but both were usually selfish. The boy had
      fits of generosity, the woman never, except toward her son.
      If she thought of something to please him, good and well! if
      he wanted anything of her, it would never do! The idea must
      be her own, or meet with no favour. If she imagined her son
      desired a thing, she felt it one she never could grant, and
      told him so: thereafter Francis would not rest until he had
      compassed the thing. Sudden division and high words would
      follow, with speechlessness on the mother's part in the rear,
      which might last for days. Becoming all at once tired of it,
      she would in the morning appear at breakfast looking as if
      nothing had ever come between them, and they would be the
      best of friends for a few days, or perhaps a week, seldom
      longer. Some fresh discord, nowise different in character
      from the preceding, would arise between them, and the same
      weary round be tramped again, each always in the right, and
      the other in the wrong. Every time they made it up, their
      relation seemed unimpaired, but it was hardly possible things
      should go on thus and not at length quite estrange their
      hearts.
    </p>
    <p>
      In matters of display, to which Francis had much tendency,
      his mother's own vanity led her to indulge and spoil him,
      for, being hers, she was always pleased he should look his
      best. On his real self she neither had nor sought any
      influence. Insubordination or arrogance in him, her dignity
      unslighted, actually pleased her: she liked him to show his
      spirit: was it not a mark of his breeding?
    </p>
    <p>
      She was a tall and rather stout woman, with a pretty,
      small-featured, regular face, and a thin nose with the
      nostrils pinched.
    </p>
    <p>
      Castle Weelset was not much of a castle: to an ancient round
      tower, discomfortably habitable, had been added in the last
      century a rather large, defensible house. It stood on the
      edge of a gorge, crowning one of its stony hills of no great
      height. With scarce a tree to shelter it, the situation was
      very cold in winter, and it required a hardy breeding to live
      there in comfort. There was little of a garden, and the
      stables were somewhat ruinous. For the former fact the
      climate almost sufficiently accounted, and for the latter, a
      long period of comparative poverty.
    </p>
    <p>
      The young laird did not like farming, and had no love for
      books: in this interval between school and college, he found
      very little to occupy him, and not much to amuse him. Had
      Kirsty and her family proved as encouraging as he had
      expected, he would have made use of his new pony almost only
      to ride to Corbyknowe in the morning and back to the castle
      at night.
    </p>
    <p>
      His mother knew old Barclay, as she called him, well
      enough&#8212;that is, not at all, and had never shown him any
      cordiality, anything, indeed, better than condescension. To
      treat him like a gentleman, even when he sat at her own
      table, she would have counted absurd. He had never been to
      the castle since the day after her husband's funeral, when
      she received him with such emphasized superiority that he
      felt he could not go again without running the risk either of
      having his influence with the boy ruined, or giving occasion
      to a nature not without generosity to take David's part
      against his mother. Thenceforward, therefore, he contented
      himself with giving Francis invariable welcome, and doing
      what he could to make his visits pleasant. Chiefly, on such
      not infrequent occasions, the boy delighted in drawing from
      his father's friend what tales about his father, and
      adventures of their campaigns together, he had to tell; and
      in this way David's wife and children heard many things about
      himself which would not otherwise have reached them.
      Naturally, Kirsty and Francie grew to be good friends; and
      after they went to the parish school, there were few days
      indeed on which they did not walk at least as far homeward
      together as the midway divergence of their roads permitted.
      It was not wonderful, therefore, that at length Francis
      should be, or should fancy himself in love with Kirsty. But I
      believe all the time he thought of marrying her as a heroic
      deed, in raising the girl his mother despised to share the
      lofty position he and that foolish mother imagined him to
      occupy. The anticipation of opposition from his mother
      naturally strengthened his determination; of opposition on
      the part of Kirsty, he had not dreamed. He took it as of
      course that, the moment he stated his intention, Kirsty would
      be charmed, her mother more than pleased, and the stern old
      soldier overwhelmed with the honour of alliance with the son
      of his colonel. I do not doubt, however, that he had an
      affection for Kirsty far deeper and better than his notion of
      their relations to each other would indicate. Although it was
      mainly his pride that suffered in his humiliating dismissal,
      he had, I am sure, a genuine heartache as he galloped home.
      When he reached the castle, he left his pony to go where he
      would, and rushed to his room. There, locking the door that
      his mother might not enter, he threw himself on his bed in
      the luxurious consciousness of a much-wronged lover. An
      uneducated country girl, for as such he regarded her, had
      cast from her, not without insult, his splendidly generous
      offer of himself!
    </p>
    <p>
      Poor king Cophetua did not, however, shed many tears for the
      loss of his recusant beggar-maid. By and by he forgot
      everything, found he had gone to sleep, and, endeavouring to
      weep again, did not succeed.
    </p>
    <p>
      He grew hungry soon, and went down to see what was to be had.
      It was long past the usual hour for dinner, but Mrs. Gordon
      had not seen him return, and had had it put back&#8212;so to
      make the most of an opportunity of quarrel not to be
      neglected by a conscientious mother. She let it slide
      nevertheless.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gracious, you've been crying!' she exclaimed, the moment she
      saw him.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now certainly Francis had not cried much; his eyes were,
      notwithstanding, a little red.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had not yet learned to lie, but he might then have made
      his first assay had he had a fib at his tongue's end; as he
      had not, he gloomed deeper, and made no answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You've been fighting!' said his mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I haena,' he returned with rude indignation. 'Gien I had
      been, div ye think I wud hae grutten?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You forget yourself, laird!' remarked Mrs. Gordon, more
      annoyed with his Scotch than the tone of it. 'I would have
      you remember I am mistress of the house!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Till I marry, mother!' rejoined her son.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oblige me in the meantime,' she answered, 'by leaving vulgar
      language outside it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Francis was silent; and his mother, content with her victory,
      and in her own untruthfulness of nature believing he had
      indeed been fighting and had had the worse of it, said no
      more, but began to pity and pet him. A pot of his favourite
      jam presently consoled the love-wounded hero&#8212;in the
      acceptance of which consolation he showed himself far less
      unworthy than many a grown man, similarly circumstanced, in
      the choice of his.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch010"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER X
    </h2>
    <h3>
      DAVID AND FRANCIS
    </h3>
    <p>
      One day there was a market at a town some eight or nine miles
      off, and thither, for lack of anything else to do, Francis
      had gone to display himself and his pony, which he was riding
      with so tight a curb that the poor thing every now and then
      reared in protest against the agony he suffered.
    </p>
    <p>
      On one of these occasions Don was on the point of falling
      backward, when a brown wrinkled hand laid hold of him by the
      head, half pulling the reins from his rider's hand, and ere
      he had quite settled again on his forelegs, had unhooked the
      chain of his curb, and fastened it some three links looser.
      Francis was more than indignant, even when he saw that the
      hand was Mr. Barclay's: was he to be treated as one who did
      not know what he was about!
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hoots, my man!' said David gently, 'there's no occasion to
      put a water-chain upo' the bonny beastie: he has a mou like a
      leddy's! and to hae 't linkit up sae ticht is naething less
      nor tortur til 'im!&#8212;It's a won'er to me he hasna broken
      your banes and his ain back thegither, puir thing!' he added,
      patting and stroking the spirited little creature that stood
      sweating and trembling. 'I thank you, Mr. Barclay,' said
      Francis insolently, 'but I am quite able to manage the brute
      myself. You seem to take me for a fool!'
    </p>
    <p>
      ''Deed, he's no far aff ane 'at cud ca' a bonny cratur like
      that a brute!' returned David, nowise pleased to discover
      such hardness in one whom he would gladly treat like a child
      of his own. It was a great disappointment to him to see the
      lad getting farther away from the possibility of being helped
      by him. 'What 'ud yer father say to see ye illuse ony
      helpless bein! Yer father was awfu guid til 's horse-fowk.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The last word was one of David's own: he was a great lover of
      animals.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll do with my own as I please!' cried Francis, and spurred
      the pony to pass David. But one stalwart hand held the pony
      fast, while the other seized his rider by the ankle. The old
      man was now thoroughly angry with the graceless youth.
    </p>
    <p>
      'God bless my sowl!' he cried, 'hae ye the spurs on as weel?
      Stick ane o' them intil him again, and I'll cast ye frae the
      seddle. I' the thick o' a fecht, the lang blades playin aboot
      yer father's heid like lichts i' the north, he never stack
      spur intil 's chairger needless!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't see,' said Francis, who had begun to cool down a
      little, 'how he could have enjoyed the fight much if he never
      forgot himself! I should forget everything in the delight of
      the battle!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yer father, laddie, never forgot onything but himsel.
      Forgettin himsel left him free to min' a'thing forbye.
      <i>Ye</i> wud forget ilka thing but yer ain rage! Yer father
      was a great man as weel's a great soger, Francie, and a
      deevil to fecht, as his men said. I hae mysel seen by the set
      mou 'at the teeth war clinched i' the inside o' 't, whan a'
      the time on the broo o' 'im sat never a runkle. Gien ever
      there was a man 'at cud think o' twa things at ance, your
      father cud think o' three; and thae three war God, his enemy,
      and the beast aneath him. Francie, Francie, i' the name o'
      yer father I beg ye to regaird the richts o' the neebour ye
      sit upo'. Gien ye dinna that, ye'll come or lang to think
      little o' yer human neebour as weel, carin only for what ye
      get oot o' 'im!'
    </p>
    <p>
      A voice inside Francis took part with the old man, and made
      him yet angrier. Also his pride was the worse annoyed that
      David Barclay, his tenant, should, in the hearing of two or
      three loafers gathered behind him, of whose presence the old
      man was unaware, not only rebuke him, but address him by his
      name, and the diminutive of it. So when David, in the appeal
      that burst from his enthusiastic remembrance of his officer
      in the battle-field, let the pony's head go, Francis dug his
      spurs in his sides, and darted off like an arrow. The old man
      for a moment stared open-mouthed after him. The fools around
      laughed: he turned and walked away, his head sunk on his
      breast.
    </p>
    <p>
      Francis had not ridden far before he was vexed with himself.
      He was not so much sorry, as annoyed that he had behaved in
      fashion undignified. The thought that his childish behaviour
      would justify Kirsty in her opinion of him, added its sting.
      He tried to console himself with the reflection that the sort
      of thing ought to be put an end to at once: how far,
      otherwise, might not the old fellow's interference go! I am
      afraid he even said to himself that such was a consequence of
      familiarity with inferiors. Yet angry as he was at his
      fault-finding, he would have been proud of any approval from
      the lips of the old soldier. He rode his pony mercilessly for
      a mile or so, then pulled up, and began to talk pettingly to
      him, which I doubt if the little creature found consoling,
      for love only makes petting worth anything, and the love here
      was not much to the front.
    </p>
    <p>
      About halfway home, he had to ford a small stream, or go
      round two miles by a bridge. There had been much rain in the
      night, and the stream was considerably swollen. As he
      approached the ford, he met a knife-grinder, who warned him
      not to attempt it: he had nearly lost his wheel in it, he
      said. But Francis always found it hard to accept advice. His
      mother had so often predicted from neglect of hers evils
      which never followed, that he had come to think counsel the
      one thing not to be heeded.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you,' he said; 'I think we can manage it!' and rode
      on.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he reached the ford, where of all places he ought to
      have left the pony's head free, he foolishly remembered the
      curb-chain, and getting off, took it up a couple of links.
    </p>
    <p>
      But when he remounted, whether from dread of the rush of the
      brown water, or resentment at the threat of renewed torture,
      the pony would not take the ford, and a battle royal arose
      between them, in which Francis was so far victorious that,
      after many attempts to run away, little Don, rendered
      desperate by the spur, dashed wildly into the stream, and
      went plunging on for two or three yards. Then he fell, and
      Francis found himself rolling in the water, swept along by
      the current.
    </p>
    <p>
      A little way lower down, at a sharp turn of the stream under
      a high bank, was a deep pool, a place held much in dread by
      the country lads and lasses, being a haunt of the kelpie.
      Francis knew the spot well, and had good reason to fear that,
      carried into it, he must be drowned, for he could not swim.
      Roused by the thought to a yet harder struggle, he succeeded
      in getting upon his feet, and reaching the bank, where he lay
      for a while, exhausted. When at length he came to himself and
      rose, he found the water still between him and home, and
      nothing of his pony to be seen. If the youth's good sense had
      been equal to his courage, he would have been a fine fellow:
      he dashed straight into the ford, floundered through it, and
      lost his footing no more than had Don, treated properly. When
      he reached the high ground on the other side, he could still
      see nothing of him, and with sad heart concluded him carried
      into the Kelpie's Hole, never more to be beheld
      alive:&#8212;what would his mother and Mr. Barclay say?
      Shivering and wretched, and with a growing compunction in
      regard to his behaviour to Don, he crawled wearily home.
    </p>
    <p>
      Don, however, had at no moment been much in danger. Rid of
      his master, he could take very good care of himself. He got
      to the bank without difficulty, and took care it should be on
      the home-side of the stream. Not once looking behind him
      after his tyrant, he set off at a good round trot, much
      refreshed by his bath, and rejoicing in the thought of his
      loose box at castle Weelset.
    </p>
    <p>
      In a narrow part of the road, however, he overtook a cart of
      Mr. Barclay's; and as he attempted to pass between it and the
      steep brae, the man on the shaft caught at his bridle, made
      him prisoner, tied him to the cart behind, and took him to
      Corbyknowe. When David came home and saw him, he conjectured
      pretty nearly what had happened, and tired as he was set out
      for the castle. Had he not feared that Francis might have
      been injured, he would not have cared to go, much as he knew
      it must relieve him to learn that his pony was safe.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Gordon declined to see David, but he ascertained from
      the servants that Francis had come home half-drowned, leaving
      Don in the Kelpie's Hole.
    </p>
    <p>
      David hesitated a little whether or not to punish him for his
      behaviour to the pony by allowing him to remain in ignorance
      of his safety, and so leaving him to the <i>agen-bite</i> of
      conscience; but concluding that such was not his part, he
      told them that the animal was safe at Corbyknowe, and went
      home again.
    </p>
    <p>
      But he wanted Francis to fetch the pony himself, therefore
      did not send him, and in the meantime fed and groomed him
      with his own hands as if he had been his friend's charger.
      Francis having just enough of the grace of shame to make him
      shrink from going to Corbyknowe, his mother wrote to David,
      asking why he did not send home the animal. David, one of the
      most courteous of men, would take no order from any but his
      superior officer, and answered that he would gladly give him
      up to the young laird in person.
    </p>
    <p>
      The next day Mrs. Gordon drove, in what state she could
      muster, to Corbyknowe. Arrived there, she declined to leave
      her carriage, requesting Mrs. Barclay, who came to the door,
      to send her husband to her. Mrs. Barclay thought it better to
      comply.
    </p>
    <p>
      David came in his shirt-sleeves, for he had been fetched from
      his work.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I understand your answer to my request, Mr. Barclay, you
      decline to send back Mr. Gordon's pony. Pray, on what
      grounds?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wrote, ma'am, that I should be glad to give him over to
      Mr. Francis himself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr. Gordon does not find it convenient to come all this way
      on foot. In fact he declines to do it, and requests that you
      will send the pony home this afternoon.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Excuse me, mem, but it's surely enough done that a man make
      known the presence o' strays, and tak proper care o' them
      until they're claimt! I was fain forbye to gie the bonny
      thing a bit pleesur in life: Francie's ower hard upon him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You forget, David Barclay, that Mr. Gordon is your
      landlord!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'His father, mem, was my landlord, and his father's father
      was my father's landlord; and the interests o' the landlord
      hae aye been oors. Ither nor Francie's herty freen I can
      never be!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You presume on my late husband's kindness to you, Barclay!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gien devotion be presumption, mem, I presume. Archibald
      Gordon was and is my freen, and will be for ever. We hae been
      throuw ower muckle thegither to change to are anither. It was
      for his sake and the laddie's ain that I wantit him to come
      to me. I wantit a word wi' him aboot that powny o' his. He'll
      never be true man 'at taks no tent (<i>care</i>) o' dumb
      animals! You 'at's sae weel at hame i' the seddle yersel,
      mem, micht tak a kin'ly care o' what's aneth his!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I will have no one interfere with my son. I am quite capable
      of teaching him his duty myself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'His father requestit me to do what I could for him, mem.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'His <i>late</i> father, if you please, Barclay!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He s' never be Francie's <i>late</i> father to Francie, gien
      I can help it, mem! He may be your <i>late</i> husband, mem,
      but he's my cornel yet, and I s' keep my word til him! It'll
      no be lang noo, i' the natur o' things, till I gang til him;
      and sure am I his first word 'll be aboot the laddie: I wud
      ill like to answer him, "Archie, I ken naething aboot him but
      what I cud weel wuss itherwise!" Hoo wud ye like to gie sic
      an answer yersel, mem?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm surprised at a man of your sense, Barclay, thinking we
      shall know one another in heaven! We shall have to be content
      with God there!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I said naething about h'aven, mem! Fowk may ken are anither
      and no be in ae place. I took note i' the kirk last Sunday
      'at Abrahaam kent the rich man, and the rich man him, and
      they warna i' the same place.&#8212;But ye'll lat the yoong
      laird come and see me, mem?' concluded David, changing his
      tone and speaking as one who begged a favour; for the thought
      of meeting his old friend and having nothing to tell him
      about his boy, quenched his pride.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Home, Thomas!' cried her late husband's wife to her
      coachman, and drove away.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dod! they'll hae to gie that wife a hell til hersel!' said
      David, turning to the door discomfited.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And maybe she'll no like it whan she hes't!' returned his
      wife, who had heard every word. 'There's fowk 'at's no fit
      company for onybody! and I'm thinkin she's ane gien there
      bena anither!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll sen' Jeamie hame wi' the powny the nicht,' said David.
      'A body canna insist whaur fowk are no frien's. That weud
      grow to enmity, and the en' o' a' guid. Na, we maun sen' hame
      the powny; and gien there be ony grace i' the bairn, he canna
      but come and say thank ye!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Gordon rejoiced in her victory; but David's yielding
      showed itself the true policy. Francis did call and thank him
      for taking care of Don. He even granted that perhaps he had
      been too hard on the pony.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye cud richteously expeck naething o' a powny o' his size
      that that powny o' yours cudna du, Francie!' said David.
      'But, in God's name, dear laddie, be a richteous man. Gien ye
      requere no more than's fair frae man or beast, ye'll maistly
      aye get it. But gien yer ootluik in life be to get a'thing
      and gie naething, ye maun come to grief ae w'y and a' w'ys.
      Success in an ill attemp is the warst failyie a man can mak.'
    </p>
    <p>
      But it was talking to the wind, for Francis thought, or tried
      to think David only bent, like his mother, on finding fault
      with him. He made haste to get away, and left his friend with
      a sad heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      He rode on to the foot of the Horn, to the spot where Kirsty
      was usually at that season to be found; but she saw him
      coming, and went up the hill. Soon after, his mother
      contrived that he should pay a visit to some relatives in the
      south, and for a time neither the castle nor the Horn saw
      anything of him. Without returning home he went in the winter
      to Edinburgh, where he neither disgraced nor distinguished
      himself. David was to hear no ill of him. To be beyond his
      mother's immediate influence was perhaps to his advantage,
      but as nothing superior was substituted, it was at best but
      little gain. His companions were like himself, such as might
      turn to worse or better, no one could tell which.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch011"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XI
    </h2>
    <h3>
      KIRSTY AND PHEMY
    </h3>
    <p>
      During the first winter which Francis spent at college, his
      mother was in England, and remained there all the next summer
      and winter. When at last she came home, she was even less
      pleasant than before in the eyes of her household, no one of
      which had ever loved her. Throughout the summer she had a
      succession of visitors, and stories began to spread
      concerning strange doings at the castle. The neighbours
      talked of extravagance, and the censorious among them of
      riotous living; while some of the servants more than hinted
      that the amount of wine and whisky consumed was far in excess
      of what served when the old colonel was alive.
    </p>
    <p>
      One of them who, in her mistress's frequent fits of laziness,
      acted as housekeeper, had known David Barclay from his
      boyhood, and understood his real intimacy with her late
      master: it was not surprising, therefore, that she should
      open her mind to him, while keeping toward everyone else a
      settled silence concerning her mistress's affairs: none of
      the stories current in the country-side came from her. David
      was to Mrs. Bremner the other side of a deep pit, into the
      bottom of which whatever was said between them dropped.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There'll come a catastrophe or lang,' said Mrs. Bremner one
      evening when David Barclay overtook her on the road to the
      town, 'and that'll be seen! The property's jist awa to the
      dogs! There's Maister Donal, the factor, gaein aboot like are
      in a dilemm as to cuttin 's thro't or blawin his harns oot!
      He daursna say a word, ye see! The auld laird trustit him,
      and he's feart 'at he be blamit, but there's nae duin
      onything wi' that wuman: the siller maun be forthcomin whan
      she's wantin 't!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The siller's no hers ony mair nor the Ian'; a' 's the yoong
      laird's!' remarked David.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's true; but she's i' the pooer o' 't till he come o'
      age; and Maister Donal, puir man, mony's the time he 's jist
      driven to are mair to get what's aye wantit and wantit! What
      comes o' the siller it jist blecks me to think: there's no a
      thing aboot the hoose to shaw for 't! And hearken, David, but
      latna baith lugs hear 't, for dreid the tane come ower't
      again to the tither&#8212;I'm doobtin the drink's gettin a
      sair grup o' her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      ''Deed I wudna be nane surprised!' returned David. 'Whatever
      micht want in at her door, there's naething inside to baud it
      oot. Eh, to think o' Archie Gordon takin til himsel sic a
      wife! that a man like him, o' guid report, and come to years
      o' discretion&#8212;to think o' brains like his turnin as
      fozy as an auld neep at sicht o' a bonny front til an ae wa'
      hoose (<i>a house of but one wall</i>)! It canna be 'at
      witchcraft's clean dune awa wi'!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bonny, Dawvid! Ca'd ye the mistress bonny?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She used to be&#8212;bonny, that is, as a button or a buckle
      micht be bonny. What she may be the noo, I dinna ken, for I
      haena set ee upon her sin' she cam to the Knowe orderin me to
      sen' back Francie's powny: she was suppercilly eneuch than
      for twa cornels and a corporal, but no ill luikin. Gien she
      hae a spot o' beaouty left, the drink 'll tak it or it hae
      dune wi' her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Or she hae dune wi' hit, Dawvid! It's ta'en ae colour frae
      her a'ready, and begud to gie her anither! But it concerns me
      mair aboot Francie nor my leddy: what's to come o' him when
      a' 's gane? what'll there be for him to come intil?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Gladly would David have interfered, but he was helpless; he
      had no legal guardianship over or for the boy! Nothing could
      be done till he was a man!&#8212;'gien ever he be a man!'
      said David to himself with a sigh, and the thought how much
      better off he was with his half-witted Steenie than his
      friend with his clever Francie.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Bremner was sister-in-law to the schoolmaster, and was
      then on her way to see him and his daughter Phemy. From
      childhood the girl had been in the way of going to the castle
      to see her aunt, and so was well known about the place. Being
      an engaging child, she had become not only welcome to the
      servants but something of a favourite with the mistress, whom
      she amused with her little airs, and pleased with her winning
      manners. She was now about fourteen, a half-blown beauty of
      the red and white, gold and blue kind. She had long been a
      vain little thing, approving of her own looks in the glass,
      and taking much interest in setting them off, but so simple
      as to make no attempt at concealing her self-satisfaction.
      Her pleased contemplation of this or that portion of her
      person, and the frantic attempts she was sometimes espied
      making to get a sight of her back, especially when she wore a
      new frock, were indeed more amusing than hopeful, but her
      vanity was not yet so pronounced as to overshadow her better
      qualities, and Kirsty had not thought it well to take notice
      of it, although, being more than anyone else a mother to her,
      she was already a little anxious on the score of it, and the
      rather that her aunt, like her father, neither saw nor
      imagined fault in her.
    </p>
    <p>
      That the child had no mother, drew to her the heart of the
      girl whose mother was her strength and joy; while gratitude
      to the child's father, who, in opening for her some doors of
      wisdom and more of knowledge, had put her under eternal
      obligations, moved her to make what return she could. It
      deepened her sense of debt to Phemy that the schoolmaster did
      not do for his daughter anything like what he had years long
      been doing for his pupil, whence she almost felt as if she
      had diverted to her own use much that rightly belonged to
      Phemy. At the same time she knew very well that had she never
      existed the relation between the father and the daughter
      would have been the same. The child of his dearly loved wife,
      the schoolmaster was utterly content with his Phemy; for he
      felt as if she knew everything her mother knew, had the same
      inward laws of being and the same disposition, and was
      simply, like her, perfect.
    </p>
    <p>
      That she should ever do anything wrong was an idea
      inconceivable to him. Nor was there much chance of his
      discovering it if she did. When not at work, he was
      constantly reading. Most people close a book without having
      gained from it a single germ of thought; Mr. Craig seldom
      opened one without falling directly into a brown study over
      something suggested by it. But I believe that, even when thus
      absorbed, Phemy was never far from his thought. At the same
      time, like many Scots, while she was his one joy, he seldom
      showed her sign of affection, seldom made her feel, and never
      sought to make her feel how he loved her. His love was taken
      by him for understood by her, and was to her almost as if it
      did not exist.
    </p>
    <p>
      That his child required to be taught had scarcely occurred to
      the man who could not have lived without learning, or enjoyed
      life without teaching&#8212;as witness the eagerness with
      which he would help Kirsty along any path of knowledge in
      which he knew how to walk. The love of knowledge had grown in
      him to a possessing passion, paralyzing in a measure those
      powers of his life sacred to life&#8212;that is, to God and
      his neighbour.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty could not do nearly what she would to make up for his
      neglect. For one thing, the child did not take to learning,
      and though she loved Kirsty and often tried to please her,
      would not keep on doing anything without being more
      frequently reminded of her duty than the distance between
      their two abodes permitted. Kirsty had her to the farm as
      often as the schoolmaster would consent to her absence, and
      kept her as long as he went on forgetting it; while Phemy was
      always glad to go to Corbyknowe, and always glad to get away
      again. For Mrs. Barclay thought it her part to teach her
      household matters, and lessons of that sort Phemy relished
      worse than some of a more intellectual nature. If left with
      her, the moment Kirsty appeared again, the child would fling
      from her whatever might be in her hand, and flee as to her
      deliverer from bondage and hard labour. Then would Kirsty
      always insist on her finishing what she had been at, and
      Phemy would obey, with the protest of silent tears, and the
      airs of a much injured mortal. Had Kirsty been backed by the
      child's father, she might have made something of her; but it
      grew more and more painful to think of her future, when her
      self-constituted guardian should have lost what influence she
      had over her.
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy was rather afraid of Steenie. Her sunny nature shrank
      from the shadow, as of a wall, in which Steenie appeared to
      her always to stand. From any little attention he would offer
      her, she, although never rude to him, would involuntarily
      recoil, and he soon learned to leave her undismayed. That the
      child's repugnance troubled him, though he never spoke of it,
      Kirsty saw quite plainly, for she could read his face like a
      book, and heard him sigh when even his mother did not. Her
      eyes were constantly regarding him, like sheep feeding on the
      pasture of his face:&#8212;I think I have used a figure of
      sir Philip Sidney's. But say rather&#8212;the thoughts that
      strayed over his face were the sheep to which all her life
      she had been the devoted shepherdess.
    </p>
    <p>
      At Corbyknowe things went on as hitherto. Kirsty was in no
      danger of tiring of the even flow of her life. Steenie's
      unselfish solitude of soul made him every day dearer to her.
      Books she sought in every accessible, and found occasionally
      in an unhopeful quarter. She had no thought of distinguishing
      herself, no smallest ambition of becoming learned; her soul
      was athirst to understand, and what she understood found its
      way from her mind into her life. Much to the advantage of her
      thinking were her keen power and constant practice of
      observation. I utterly refuse the notion that we cannot think
      without words, but certainly the more forms we have ready to
      embody our thoughts, the farther we shall be able to carry
      our thinking. Richly endowed, Kirsty required the more mental
      food, and was the more able to use it when she found it. To
      such of the neighbours as had no knowledge of any diligence
      save that of the hands, she seemed to lead an idle life; but
      indeed even Kirsty's hands were far from idle. When not with
      Steenie she was almost always at her mother's call, who, from
      the fear that she might grow up incapable of managing a
      house, often required a good deal of her. But the mother did
      not fail to note with what alacrity she would lay her book
      aside, sometimes even dropping it in her eagerness to answer
      her summons. Dismissed for the moment, she would at once take
      her book again and the seat nearest to it: she could read
      anywhere, and gave herself none of the student-airs that make
      some young people so pitifully unpleasant. At the same time
      solitude was preferable for study, and Kirsty was always glad
      to find herself with her books in the little hut, Steenie
      asleep on the heather carpet on her feet, and the assurance
      that there no one would interrupt her.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was not wonderful that, in the sweet absence of selfish
      cares, her mind full of worthy thoughts, and her heart going
      out in tenderness, her face should go on growing in beauty
      and refinement. She was not yet arrived at physical full
      growth, and the forms of her person being therefore in a
      process of change were the more easily modelled after her
      spiritual nature. She seemed almost already one that would
      not die, but live for ever, and continue to inherit the
      earth. Neither her father nor her mother could have imagined
      anything better to be made of her.
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie had not changed his habits, neither seemed to grow at
      all more like other people. He was now indeed seldom so much
      depressed as formerly, but he showed no sign of less
      dependence on Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch012"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      THE EARTH-HOUSE
    </h3>
    <p>
      About a year after Francis Gordon went to Edinburgh, Kirsty
      and Steenie made a discovery.
    </p>
    <p>
      Between Corbyknowe and the Horn, on whose sides David Barclay
      had a right of pasturage for the few sheep to which Steenie
      and Snootie were the shepherds, was a small glen, through
      which, on its way to join the little river with the
      kelpie-pot, ran a brook, along whose banks lay two narrow
      breadths of nice grass. The brother and sister always crossed
      this brook when they wanted to go straight to the top of the
      hill.
    </p>
    <p>
      One morning, having each taken the necessary run and jump,
      they had began to climb on the other side, when Kirsty, who
      was a few paces before him, turned at an exclamation from
      Steenie.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a' the weicht o' my muckle feet!' he cried, as he
      dragged one of the troublesome members out of a hole. 'Losh,
      I dinna ken hoo far it michtna hae gane doon gien I hadna
      gotten a haud o' 't in time and pu'd it oot!'
    </p>
    <p>
      How much of humour, how much of silliness, and how much of
      truth were wrapt up together in some of the things he said,
      it was impossible to determine. I believe Kirsty came pretty
      near knowing, but even she was not always sure where wilful
      oddity and where misapprehension was at the root of a remark.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gien ye set yer fit upon a hole,' said Kirsty, 'what can the
      puir thing du but gang doon intil 't? Ye maunna be
      oonrizzonable wi' the craturs, Steenie! Ye maun be fair til
      them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But there was nae hole!' returned Steenie. 'There cudna hae
      been. There's the hole noo! My fit made it, and there it'll
      hae to bide! It's a some fearsome thing, divna ye think, 'at
      what aiven the fit o' a body dis, bides? What for disna the
      hole gang awa whan the fit lifts? Luik ye there! Ye see thae
      twa stanes stan'in up by themsels, and there's the
      hole&#8212;atween the twa! There cudna hae been a hole there
      afore the weicht o' my fit cam doon upo' the spot and ca'd it
      throuw! I gaed in maist til my knee!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lat's luik!' said Kirsty, and proceeded to examine the
      place.
    </p>
    <p>
      She thought at first it must be the burrow of some animal,
      but the similarity in shape of the projecting stones
      suggesting that their position might not be fortuitous, she
      would look a little farther, and began to pull away the
      heather about the mouth of the opening. Steenie set himself,
      with might and main, to help her. Kirsty was much the
      stronger of the two, but Steenie always did his best to
      second her in anything that required exertion.
    </p>
    <p>
      They soon spied the lump of sod and heather which Steenie's
      heavy foot had driven down, and when they had pulled that
      out, they saw that the hole went deeper still, seeming a very
      large burrow indeed&#8212;therefore a little fearsome. Having
      widened the mouth of it by clearing away a thick growth of
      roots from its sides, and taken out a quantity of soft earth,
      they perceived that it went sloping into the ground still
      farther. With growing curiosity they leant down into it,
      lying on the edge, and reaching with their hands removed the
      loose earth as low as they could. This done, the descent
      showed itself about two feet square, as far down as they had
      cleared it, beyond which a little way it was lost in the
      dark.
    </p>
    <p>
      What were they to do next? There was yet greater inducement
      to go on, but considerations came which were not a little
      deterrent. Although Steenie had worked well, Kirsty knew he
      had a horror of dark places, associating them somehow with
      the weight of his feet: whether such places had for him any
      suggestion of the grave, I cannot tell; certainly to get rid
      of his feet was the form his idea of the salvation he needed
      was readiest to take. Then might there not be some animal
      inside? Steenie thought not, for there was no opening until
      he made it! and Kirsty also thought not, on the ground that
      she knew no wild animal larger than fox or badger, neither of
      which would have made such a big hole. One moment, however,
      her imagination was nearly too much for her: what if some
      huge bear had been asleep in it for hundreds of years, and
      growing all the time! Certainly he could not get out, but if
      she roused him, and he got a hold of her! The next instant
      her courage revived, for she would have been ashamed to let
      what she did not believe influence any action. The passage
      must lead somewhere, and it was large enough for her to
      explore it!
    </p>
    <p>
      Because of her dress, she must creep in head
      foremost&#8212;in which lay the advantage that so she would
      meet any danger face to face! Telling Steenie that if he
      heard her cry out, he must get hold of her feet and pull, she
      laid herself on the ground and crawled in. She thought it
      must lead to an ancient tomb, but said nothing of the
      conjecture for fear of horrifying Steenie, who stood
      trembling, sustained only by his faith in Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      She went down and down and quite disappeared. Not a foot was
      left for Steenie to lay hold of. Terrible and long seemed the
      time to him as he stood there forsaken, his darling out of
      sight in the heart of the earth. He knew there were wolves in
      Scotland once; who could tell but a she-wolf had been left,
      and a whole clan of them lived there underground, never
      issuing in the daytime! there might be the open mouth of a
      passage, under a rock and curtained with heather, in some
      other spot of the hill! What if one of them got Kirsty by the
      throat before she had time to cry out! Then he thought she
      might have gone till she could go no father, and not having
      room to turn, was trying to creep backward, but her clothes
      hindered her. Forgetting his repugnance in over-mastering
      fear, the faithful fellow was already half inside the hole to
      go after her, when up shot the head of Kirsty, almost in his
      face. For a moment he was terribly perplexed: he had been
      expecting to come on her feet, not her head: how could she
      have gone in head foremost, and not come back feet foremost?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, wuman,' he said in a fear-struck whisper, 'it's awfu' to
      see ye come oot o' the yird like a muckle worm!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye saw me gang in, Steenie, ye gowk!' returned Kirsty,
      dismayed herself at sight of his solemn dread.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay,' answered Steenie, 'but I didna see ye come oot! Eh,
      Kirsty, wuman, hae ye a heid at baith en's o' ye?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty's laughter blew Steenie's discomposure away, and he
      too laughed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come back hame,' said Kirsty; 'I maun get haud o' a can'le!
      Yon's a place maun be seen intil. I never saw, or raither
      faun' (<i>felt</i>) the like o' 't, for o' seein there's
      nane, or next to nane. There's room eneuch; ye can see that
      wi' yer airms!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is there room eneuch for?' asked Steenie.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For you and me, and twenty or thirty mair, mebbe&#8212;I
      dinna ken,' replied Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I s' mak ye a present o' my room intil 't,' returned
      Steenie. 'I want nane o' 't.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ill gang doon wi' the can'le,' said Kirsty, 'and see whether
      't be a place for ye. Gien I cry oot, "Ay is't," wull ye
      come?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That I wull, gien 't war the whaul's belly!' replied
      Steenie.
    </p>
    <p>
      They set out for the house, and as they walked they talked.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I div won'er what the place cud ever hae been for!' said
      Kirsty, more to herself than Steenie. 'It's bigger nor ony
      thoucht I had o' 't.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is 't like, Kirsty?' inquired Steenie.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hoo can I tell whan I saw naething!' replied Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But,' she added thoughtfully, 'gien it warna that we're in
      Scotlan', and they're nigh-han' Rom', I wud hae been 'maist
      sure I had won intil ane o' the catacombs!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, losh, lat me awa to the hill!' cried Steenie, stopping
      and half turning. 'I canna bide the verra word o' the
      craturs!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What word than?' asked Kirsty, a little surprised; for how
      did Steenie know anything about the catacombs?
    </p>
    <p>
      'To think,' he went on, 'o' a haill kirk o' cats aneath the
      yird&#8212;a' sittin kaimin themsels wi' kaims!&#8212;Kirsty,
      ye <i>winna</i> think it a place for <i>me</i>? Ye see I'm no
      like ither fowk, and sic a thing micht ca (<i>drive</i>) me
      oot o' a' the sma' wits ever I hed!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hoots!' rejoined Kirsty, with a smile, 'the catacombs has
      naething to du wi' cats or kaims!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tell me what are they, than.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The catacombs,' answered Kirsty, 'was what in auld times,
      and no i' this cuintry ava, they ca'd the places whaur they
      laid their deid.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, Kirsty, but that's waur!' returned Steenie. 'I wudna
      gang intil sic a place wi' feet siclike's my ain&#8212;na, no
      for what the warl cud gie me!&#8212;no for lang Lowrie's
      fiddle and a' the tunes intil't! I wud never get my feet oot
      o' 't! They'd haud me there!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Then Kirsty began to tell him, as she would have taught a
      child, something of the history of the catacombs, knowing how
      it must interest him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I' the days langsyne,' she said, 'there was fowk, like you
      and me, unco fain o' the bonny man. The verra soun o' the
      name o' 'im was eneuch to gar their herts loup wi' doonricht
      glaidness. And they gaed here and there and a' gait, and
      tellt ilka body aboot him; and fowk 'at didna ken him, and
      didna want to ken him, cudna bide to hear tell o' him, and
      they said, "Lat's hae nae mair o' this! Hae dune wi' yer
      bonny man! Haud yer tongues," they cryit. But the ithers,
      they wadna hear o' haudin their tongues. A'body maun ken
      aboot him! "Sae lang's we <i>hae</i> tongues, and can wag
      them to the name o' him," they said, "we'll no haud them!"
      And at that they fell upo' them, and ill-used them sair; some
      o' them they tuik and burnt alive&#8212;that is, brunt them
      deid; and some o' them they flang to the wild beasts, and
      they bitit them and tore them to bits. And&#8212;,
    </p>
    <p>
      'Was the bitin o' the beasts terrible sair?' interrupted
      Steenie.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, I reckon it was some sair; but the puir fowk aye said
      the bonny man was wi' them; and lat them bite!&#8212;they
      didna care!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, of coorse, gien he was wi' them they wadna min' 't a
      hair, or at least, no twa hairs! Wha wud! Gien he be in yon
      hole, Kirsty, I'll gang back and intil't my lee lane. I wull
      noo!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie turned and had run some distance before Kirsty
      succeeded in stopping him. She did not run after him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Steenie! Steenie!' she cried, 'I dinna doobt he's there, for
      he's a'gait; but ye ken yersel ye canna aye see him, and
      maybe ye wudna see him there the noo, and micht think he
      wasna there, and turn fleyt. Bide till we hae a licht, and I
      gang doon first.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie was persuaded, and turned and came back to her. To
      father, mother, and sister he was always obedient, even on
      the rare occasions when it cost him much to be so.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye see, Steenie,' she continued, 'yon's no the place! I
      dinna ken yet what place yon is. I was only gaein to tell ye
      aboot the places it min't me o'! Wud ye like to hear aboot
      them?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wad that, richt weel! Say awa, Kirsty.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The fowk, than, ye see, 'at lo'ed the bonny man, gethert
      themsels aye thegither to hae cracks and newses wi' ane
      anither aboot him; and, as I was tellin ye, the fowk 'at
      didna care aboot him war that angert 'at they set upo' them,
      and jist wud hae nane o' them nor him. Sae to hand oot o'
      their grip, they coonselled thegither, and concludit to
      gether in a place whaur naebody wud think o' luikin for
      them&#8212;whaur but i' the booels o' the earth, whaur they
      laid their deid awa upo' skelfs, like in an aumry!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, but that was fearsome!' interposed Steenie. 'They maun
      hae been sair set!&#8212;Gien I had been there, wud they hae
      garred me gang wi' them?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, no gien ye didna like. But ye wud hae likit weel to
      gang. It wasna an ill w'y to beery fowk, nor an ill place to
      gang til, for they aye biggit up the skelf, ye ken. It was
      howkit oot&#8212;whether oot o' hard yird or saft stane, I
      dinna ken; I reckon it wud be some no sae hard kin' o' a
      rock&#8212;and whan the deid was laid intil 't, they biggit
      up the mou o' the place, that is, frae that same skelf to the
      ane 'at was abune 't, and sae a' was weel closed in.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But what for didna they beery their deid mensefulike i'
      their kirkyairds?'
    </p>
    <p>
      ''Cause theirs was a great muckle toon, wi' sic a heap o'
      hooses that there wasna room for kirkyards; sae they tuik
      them ootside the toon, and gaed aneth wi' them a'thegither.
      For there they howkit a lot o' passages like trances, and
      here and there a wee roomy like, wi' ither trances gaein frae
      them this gait and that. Sae, whan they tuik themsels there,
      the freens o' the bonny man wud fill ane o' the roomies, and
      stan' awa in ilk ane o' the passages 'at gaed frae 't; and
      that w'y, though there cudna mony o' them see ane anither at
      ance, a gey lottie wud hear, some a', and some a hantle o'
      what was said. For there they cud speyk lood oot, and a body
      abune hear naething and suspec naething. And jist think,
      Steenie, there's a pictur o' the bonny man himsel paintit
      upo' the wa' o' ane o' thae places doon aneth the grun'!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I reckon it'll be unco like him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Maybe: I canna tell aboot that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gien I cud see 't, I cud tell; but I'm thinkin it'll be some
      gait gey and far awa?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, it 's far, far.&#8212;It wud tak a body&#8212;lat me
      see&#8212;maybe half a year to trevel there upo' 's ain fit,'
      answered Kirsty, after some meditation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And me a hantle langer, my feet's sae odious heavy!'
      remarked Steenie with a sigh.
    </p>
    <p>
      As they drew near the house, their mother saw them coming,
      and went to the door to meet them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We're wantin a bit o' a can'le, and a spunk or twa, mother,'
      said Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye s' get that,' answered Marion. 'But what want ye a can'le
      for i' the braid mids o' the daylicht?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We want to gang doon a hole,' replied Steenie with flashing
      eyes, 'and see the pictur o' the bonny man.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hoot, Steenie! I tellt ye it wasna there,' interposed
      Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na,' returned Steenie; 'ye only said yon hole wasna that
      place. Ye said the bonny man <i>was</i> there, though I
      michtna see him. Ye didna say the pictur wasna there.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The pictur 's no there, Steenie.&#8212;We've come upon a
      hole, mother, 'at we want to gang doon intil and see what
      it's like,' said Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The weicht o' my feet brak throu intil 't,' added Steenie.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Preserve 's, lassie! tak tent whaur ye cairry the bairn!'
      cried the mother. 'But, eh, tak him whaur ye like,' she
      substituted, correcting herself. 'Weel ken I ye'll tak him
      naegait but whaur it's weel he sud gang! The laddie needs twa
      mithers, and the Merciful has gien him the twa! Ye're full
      mair his mither nor me, Kirsty!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She asked no more questions, but got them the candle and let
      them go. They hastened back, Steenie in his most jubilant
      mood, which seemed always to have in it a touch of deathly
      frost and a flash as of the primal fire. What could be the
      strange displacement or maladjustment which, in the brain
      harbouring the immortal thing, troubled it so, and made it
      yearn after an untasted liberty? The source of his jubilance
      now was easy to tell: the idea of the bonny man was
      henceforth, in that troubled brain of his, associated with
      the place into which they were about to descend.
    </p>
    <p>
      The moment they reached the spot, Kirsty, to the renewed
      astonishment of Steenie, dived at once into the ground at her
      feet, and disappeared.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Kirsty! Kirsty!' he cried out after her, and danced like a
      terrified child. Then he shook with a fresh dismay at the
      muffled sound that came back to him in answer from the unseen
      hollows of the earth.
    </p>
    <p>
      Already Kirsty stood at the bottom of the sloping tunnel, and
      was lighting her candle. When it burned up, she found herself
      looking into a level gallery, the roof of which she could
      touch. It was not an excavation, but had been trenched from
      the surface, for it was roofed with great slabs of stone. Its
      sides, of rough stones, were six or seven feet apart at the
      floor, which was paved with small boulders, but sloped so
      much toward each other that at the top their distance was
      less by about two and a half feet. Kirsty was, as I have
      said, a keen observer, and her power of seeing had been
      greatly developed through her constant conscientious
      endeavour to realize every description she read.
    </p>
    <p>
      She went on about ten or twelve yards, and came to a bend in
      the gallery, succeeded by a sort of chamber, whence branched
      a second gallery, which soon came to an end. The place was in
      truth not unlike a catacomb, only its two galleries were
      built, and much wider than the excavated thousands in the
      catacombs. She turned back to the entrance, there left her
      candle alight, and again startled Steenie, still staring into
      the mouth of the hole, with her sudden reappearance.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wud ye like to come doon, Steenie?' she said. 'It's a queer
      place.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is 't awfu' fearsome?' asked Steenie, shrinking.
    </p>
    <p>
      His feeling of dismay at the cavernous, the terrene dark, was
      not inconsistent with his pleasure in being out on the wild
      waste hillside, when heaven and earth were absolutely black,
      not seldom the whole of the night, in utter loneliness to eye
      or ear, and his never then feeling anything like dread. Then
      and there only did he seem to have room enough. His terror
      was of the smallest pressure on his soul, the least hint at
      imprisonment. That he could not rise and wander about among
      the stars at his will, shaped itself to him as the heaviness
      of his feet holding him down. His feet were the loaded gyves
      that made of the world but a roomy prison. The limitless was
      essential to his conscious wellbeing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No a bittock,' answered Kirsty, who felt awe
      anywhere&#8212;on hilltop, in churchyard, in sunlit silent
      room&#8212;but never fear. 'It's as like the place I was
      tellin ye aboot&#8212;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, the cat-place!' interrupted Steenie.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The place wi' the pictur,' returned Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie darted forward, shot head-first into the hole as he
      had seen Kirsty do, and crept undismayed to the bottom of the
      slope. Kirsty followed close behind, but he was already on
      his feet when she joined him. He grasped her arm eagerly, his
      face turned from her, and his eyes gazing fixedly into the
      depth of the gallery, lighted so vaguely by the candle on the
      floor of its entrance.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think I saw him!' he said in a whisper full of awe and
      delight. 'I think I did see him!&#8212;but, Kirsty, hoo am I
      to be sure 'at I saw him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Maybe ye did and maybe ye didna see him,' replied Kirsty;
      'but that disna metter sae muckle, for he's aye seem you; and
      ye'll see him, and be sure 'at ye see him, whan the richt
      time comes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye div think that, Kirsty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay div I,' returned Kirsty, confidently.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I s' wait,' answered Steenie, and in silence followed Kirsty
      along the gallery.
    </p>
    <p>
      This was Steenie's first, and all but his last descent into
      the <i>earth-house,</i> or <i>Picts' House</i>, or
      <i>weem</i>, as a place of the sort is called: there are many
      such in the east of Scotland, their age and origin objects of
      merest conjecture. The moment he was out of it, he fled to
      the Horn.
    </p>
    <p>
      The next Sunday he heard read at church the story of the
      burial and resurrection of the Lord, and unavoidably after
      their talk about the catacombs, associated the chamber they
      had just discovered with the tomb in which 'they laid him,'
      at the same time concluding the top of the hill, where he
      had, as he believed, on certain favoured nights met the bonny
      man, the place whence he ascended&#8212;to come again as
      Steenie thought he did! The earth-house had no longer any
      attraction for Steenie: the bonny man was not there; he was
      risen! He was somewhere above the mountain-top haunted by
      Steenie, and that he sometimes descended upon it Steenie
      already knew, for had he not seen him there!
    </p>
    <p>
      Happy Steenie! Happier than so many Christians who, more in
      their brain-senses, but far less in their heart-senses than
      he, haunt the sepulchre as if the dead Jesus lay there still,
      and forget to walk the world with him who dieth no more, the
      living one!
    </p>
    <p>
      But his sister took a great liking to the place, nor was
      repelled by her mistaken suspicion that there the people of
      the land in times unknown had buried some of their dead. In
      the hot days, when the earth-house was cool, and in the
      winter when the thick blanket of the snow lay over it, and it
      felt warm as she entered it from the frosty wind, she would
      sit there in the dark, sometimes imagining herself one of the
      believers of the old time, thinking the Lord was at hand,
      approaching in person to fetch her and her friends. When the
      spring came, she carried down sod and turf, and made for
      herself a seat in the central chamber, there to sit and
      think. By and by she fastened an oil lamp to the wall, and
      would light its rush-pith-wick, and read by it. Occasionally
      she made a good peat fire, for she had found a chimney that
      went sloping into the upper air; and if it did not always
      draw well, peat-smoke is as pleasant as wholesome, and she
      could bear a good deal of its smothering. Not unfrequently
      she carried her book there when no one was likely to want
      her, and enjoyed to the full the rare and delightful sense of
      absolute safety from interruption. Sometimes she would make a
      little song there, with which as she made it its own music
      would come, and she would model the air with her voice as she
      wrote the words in a little book on her knee.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch013"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XIII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      A VISIT FROM FRANCIS GORDON
    </h3>
    <p>
      The summer following Gordon's first session at college,
      castle Weelset and Corbyknowe saw nothing of him. No one
      missed him much, and but for his father's sake no one would
      have thought much about him. Kirsty, as one who had told him
      the truth concerning himself, thought of him oftener than
      anyone except her father.
    </p>
    <p>
      The summer after, he paid a short visit to castle Weelset,
      and went one day to Corbyknowe, where he left a favourable
      impression upon all, which impression Kirsty had been the
      readier to receive because of the respect she felt for him as
      a student. The old imperiousness which made him so unlike his
      father had retired into the background; his smile, though not
      so sweet, came oftener; and his carriage was full of
      courtesy. But something was gone which his old friends would
      gladly have seen still. His behaviour in the old time was not
      so pleasant, but he had been as one of the family. Often
      disagreeable, he was yet loving. Now, he laid himself out to
      make himself acceptable as a superior. Freed so long from his
      mother's lowering influences, what was of his father in him
      might by this time have come more to the surface but for
      certain ladies in Edinburgh, connections of the family, who,
      influenced by his good looks and pleasant manners, and
      possibly by his position in the Gordon country, sought his
      favour by deeds of flattery, and succeeded in spoiling him
      not a little.
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie happening to be about the house when he came, Francis
      behaved to him so kindly that the gentle creature, overcome
      with grateful delight, begged him to go and see a house he
      and Kirsty were building.
    </p>
    <p>
      In some families the games of the children mainly consist in
      the construction of dwellings, of this kind or
      that&#8212;castle, or ship, or cave, or nest in the
      treetop&#8212;according to the material attainable. It is an
      outcome of the aboriginal necessity for shelter, this
      instinct of burrowing: Welbeck Abbey is the development of a
      <i>weem</i> or <i>Picts' house</i>. Steenie had very early
      shown it, probably from a vague consciousness of weakness,
      and Kirsty came heartily to his aid in following it, with the
      reaction of waking in herself a luxurious idea of sheltered
      safety. Northern children cherish in their imaginations the
      sense of protection more, I fancy, than others. This is
      partly owing to the severity of their climate, the snow and
      wind, the rain and sleet, the hail and darkness they
      encounter. I doubt whether an English child can ever have
      such a sense of protection as a Scots bairn in bed on a
      winter night, his mother in the nursery, and the wind howling
      like a pack of wolves about the house.
    </p>
    <p>
      Francis consented to go with Steenie to see his house, and
      Kirsty naturally accompanied them. By this time she had
      gathered the little that was known, and there is very little
      known yet, concerning <i>Picts' houses</i>, and as they went
      it occurred to her that it would be pleasant to the laird to
      be shown a thing on his own property of which he had never
      heard, and which, in the eyes of some, would add to its
      value. She took the way, therefore, that led past the weem.
    </p>
    <p>
      She had so well cleared out its entrance, that it was now
      comparatively easy of access, else I doubt if the young laird
      would have risked the spoiling of his admirably fitting
      clothes to satisfy the mild curiosity he felt regarding
      Kirsty's discovery. As it was, he pulled off his coat before
      entering, despite her assurance that he 'needna fear blaudin
      onything.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She went in before him to light her candle and he followed.
      As she showed him the curious place, she gave him the results
      of her reading about such constructions, telling him who had
      written concerning them, and what they had written. 'There's
      mair o' them, I gether,' she said, 'and mair remarkable anes,
      in oor ain coonty nor in ony ither in Scotlan'. I hae mysel
      seen nane but this.' Then she told him how Steenie had led
      the way to its discovery. By the time she ended, Gordon was
      really interested&#8212;chiefly, no doubt, in finding himself
      possessor of a thing which many men, learned and unlearned,
      would think worth coming to see.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did you find this in it?' he asked, seating himself on her
      little throne of turf.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na; I put that there mysel,' answered Kirsty. 'There was
      naething intil the place, jist naething ava! There was
      naething ye cud hae pickit aff o' the flure. Gien it hadna
      been oot o' the gait o' the win', ye wud hae thoucht it had
      sweepit it clean. Ye cud hae tellt by naething intil't what
      ever it was meant for, hoose or byre or barn, kirk or
      kirkyard. It had been jist a hidy-hole in troubled times,
      whan the cuintry wud be swarmin wi' stravaguin marauders!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What made ye the seat for, Kirsty?' asked Gordon, calling
      her by her name for the first time, and falling into the
      mother tongue with a flash of his old manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I come here whiles,' she answered, 'to be my lane and read a
      bit. It's sae quaiet. Eternity seems itsel to come and hide
      in 't whiles. I'm tempit whiles to bide a' nicht.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Isna 't awfu' cauld?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, no aften that. It's fine and warm i' the winter. And I
      can licht a fire whan I like.&#8212;But ye hae na yer coat
      on, Francie! I oucht na to hae latten ye bide sae lang!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He shivered, rose, and made his way out. Steenie stood in the
      sunlight waiting for them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, Steenie,' said Gordon, 'you brought me to see your
      house: why didn't you come in with me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, na! I'm feart for my feet: this is no <i>my</i> hoose!'
      answered Steenie. 'I'm biggin ane. Kirsty's helpin me: I
      cudna big a hoose wantin Kirsty! That's what I wud hae ye
      see, no this ane. This is Kirsty's hoose. It was Kirsty
      wantit ye to see this ane.&#8212;Na, it's no mine,' he added
      reflectively. 'I ken I maun come til 't some day, but I s'
      bide oot o' 't as lang's I can. I like the hill a heap
      better.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What <i>does</i> he mean?' asked Francis, turning to Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ow, he has a heap o' notions o' 's ain!' answered Kirsty,
      who did not care, especially in his presence, to talk about
      her brother save to those who loved him.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Francis turned again, he saw Steenie a good way up the
      hill.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where does he want to take me, Kirsty? Is it far?' he asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, it's a gey bitty; it's nearhan' at the tap o' the Horn,
      a wee ayont it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then I think I shall not go,' returned Francis. 'I will come
      another day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Steenie! Steenie!' cried Kirsty, 'he'll no gang the day. He
      maun gang hame. He says he'll come anither time. Haud ye awa
      on to yer hoose; I s' be wi' ye by and by.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie went up the hill, and Kirsty and Francis walked
      toward Corbyknowe.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Has no young man appeared yet to put Steenie's nose out of
      joint, Kirsty?' asked Gordon.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty thought the question rude, but answered, with quiet
      dignity, 'No ane. I never had muckle opinion o' <i>yoong</i>
      men, and dinna care aboot their company.&#8212;But what are
      ye thinkin o' duin yersel&#8212;I mean, whan ye're throu wi'
      the college?' she continued. 'Ye'll surely be comin hame to
      tak things intil yer ain han'? My father says whiles he's
      some feart they're no bein made the maist o'.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The property must look after itself, Kirsty. I will be a
      soldier like my father. If it could do without him when he
      was in India, it may just as well do without me. As long as
      my mother lives, she shall do what she likes with it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus talking, and growing more friendly as they went, they
      walked slowly back to the house. There Francis mounted his
      horse and rode away, and for more than two years they saw
      nothing of him.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch014"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XIV
    </h2>
    <h3>
      STEENIE'S HOUSE
    </h3>
    <p>
      Steenie seemed always to experience a strange sort of terror
      while waiting for anyone to come out of the weem, into which
      he never entered; and it was his repugnance to the place that
      chiefly moved him to build a house of his own. He may have
      also calculated on being able, with such a refuge at hand, to
      be on the hill in all weathers. They still made use of their
      little hut as before, and Kirsty still kept her library in
      it, but it was at the root of the Horn, and Steenie loved the
      peak of it more than any other spot in his narrow world.
    </p>
    <p>
      I have already said that when, on the occasion of its
      discovery, Steenie, for the first and the last time, came out
      of the weem, he fled to the Horn. There he roamed for hours,
      possessed with the feeling that he had all but lost Kirsty
      who had taken possession of a house into which he could never
      accompany her. For himself he would like a house on the very
      top of the Horn, not one inside it!
    </p>
    <p>
      Near the top was a little scoop out of the hill, sheltered on
      all sides except the south, which, the one time I saw it,
      reminded me strongly of Dante's <i>grembo</i> in the
      purgatorial hill, where the upward pilgrims had to rest
      outside the gate, because of the darkness during which no man
      could go higher. Here, it is true, were no flowers to weave a
      pattern upon its carpet of green; true also, here were no
      beautiful angels, in green wings and green garments, poised
      in the sweet night-air, watchful with their short, pointless,
      flaming swords against the creeping enemy; but it was,
      nevertheless, the loveliest carpet of grass and moss, and as
      to the angels, I find it impossible to imagine, even in the
      heavenly host, one heart more guardant than that of Kirsty,
      one truer, or more devoted to its charge. The two were
      together as the child of earth, his perplexities and terrors
      ever shot through with flashes of insight and hope, and the
      fearless, less imaginative, confident angel, appointed to
      watch and ward and see him safe through the loose-cragged
      mountain-pass to the sunny vales beyond.
    </p>
    <p>
      On the northern slope of the hollow, full in the face of the
      sun, a little family of rocks had fallen together, odd in
      shapes and positions but of long stable equilibrium, with
      narrow spaces between them. The sun was throwing his last red
      rays among these rocks when Steenie the same evening wandered
      into the little valley. The moment his eyes fell upon them,
      he said in his heart, 'Yon's the place for a hoose! I'll get
      Kirsty to big ane, and mebbe she 'll come and bide in 't wi'
      me whiles!'
    </p>
    <p>
      In his mind there were for some years two conflicting ideas
      of refuge, one embodied in the heathery hut with Kirsty, the
      other typified by the uplifted loneliness, the air and the
      space of the mountain upon which the bonny man sometimes
      descended: for the last three years or more the latter idea
      had had the upper hand: now it seemed possible to have the
      two kinds of refuge together, where the more material would
      render the more spiritual easier of attainment! Such were not
      Steenie's words; indeed he used none concerning the matter;
      but such were his vague thoughts&#8212;feelings rather, not
      yet thoughts.
    </p>
    <p>
      The spot had indeed many advantages. For one thing, the group
      of rocks was the ready skeleton of the house Steenie wanted.
      Again, if the snow sometimes lay deeper there than in other
      parts of the hill, there first it began to melt. A third
      advantage was that, while, as I have said, the valley was
      protected by higher ground everywhere but on the south, it
      there afforded a large outlook over the boggy basin and over
      the hills beyond its immediate rim, to a horizon in which
      stood some of the loftier peaks of the highland mountains.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Steenie's soul was able for a season to banish the
      nameless forms that haunt the dim borders of insanity, he
      would sit in that valley for hours, regarding the
      wider-spread valley below him, in which he knew every height
      and hollow, and, with his exceptionally keen sight, he could
      descry signs of life where another would have beheld but an
      everyway dead level. Not a live thing, it seemed almost,
      could spread wing or wag tail, but Steenie would become
      thereby aware of its presence. Kirsty, boastful to her
      parents of the faculty of Steenie, said to her father one
      day,
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dinna believe, father, wi' Steenie on the bog, a reid worm
      cud stick up his heid oot o' 't ohn him seen 't!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm thinkin that's no sayin over muckle, wuman!' returned
      David. 'I never jist set mysel to luik, but I dinna think I
      ever did tak notice o' a worm settin up that heid o' his oot
      o' a bog. I dinna think it's a sile they care aboot. I kenna
      what they would get to please them there. It's the yerd they
      live upo'. Whaur craps winna grow, I doobt gien worms can
      live.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty laughed: she had made herself ridiculous, but the
      ridicule of some is sweeter than the praise of others.
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie set about his house-building at once, and when he had
      got as far as he could without her, called for help from
      Kirsty, who never interfered with, and never failed him.
      Divots he was able to cut, and of them he provided a good
      quantity, but when it came to moving stones, two pairs of
      hands were often wanted. Indeed, before the heavier work of
      'Steenie's hoosie' was over, the two had to beg the help of
      more&#8212;of their father, and of men from the farm.
    </p>
    <p>
      During its progress, Phemy Craig paid rather a lengthened
      visit to Corbyknowe, and often joined the two in their labour
      on the Horn. She was not very strong, but would carry a good
      deal in the course of the day; and through this association
      with Steenie, her dread of him gradually vanished, and they
      became comrades.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Steenie's design was at length carried out, they had
      built up with stone and lime the open spaces between several
      of the rocks; had cased these curtain-walls outside and lined
      them inside with softer and warmer walls of fells or divots
      cut from the green sod of the hill; and had covered in the
      whole as they found it possible&#8212;very irregularly no
      doubt, but smoothing up all the corners and hollows with turf
      and heather. This done, one of the men who was a good
      thatcher, fastened the whole roof down with strong lines, so
      that the wind should not get under and strip it off. The
      result was a sort of burrow, consisting of several irregular
      compartments with open communication&#8212;or rather,
      perhaps, of a single chamber composed of recesses. One small
      rock they included quite: Steenie would make it serve for a
      table, and some of its inequalities for shelves. In one of
      the compartments or recesses, they contrived a fireplace, and
      in another a tolerably well concealed exit; for Steenie, like
      a trap-door-spider, could not endure the thought of only one
      way out: one way was enough for getting in, but two were
      needful for getting out, his best refuge being the open hill.
    </p>
    <p>
      The night came at length when Steenie, in whose heart was a
      solemn, silent jubilation, would take formal possession of
      his house. It was soft and warm, in the middle of the month
      of July. The sun had been set about an hour when he got up to
      leave the parlour, where the others always sat in the summer,
      and where Steenie would now and then appear among them. As
      usual he said goodnight to no one of them, but stole gently
      out.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty knew what was in his mind, but was careful not to show
      that she took any heed of his departure. As soon as her
      father and mother retired, however, when he had been gone
      about half an hour, she put aside her work, and hastened out.
      She felt a little anxious about him, though she could not
      have said why. She had no dread of displeasing by rejoining
      him; nothing, but a sight of the bonny man could, she knew,
      give him more delight than having her to share his
      night-watch with him. This she had done several times, and
      they were the only occasions on which, so far as he could
      tell, he had slept any part of the night.
    </p>
    <p>
      Folded in the twilight, Earth lay as still and peaceful as if
      she had never done any wrong, never seen anything wrong in
      one of her children. There was light everywhere, and darkness
      everywhere to make it strange. A pale green gleam prevailed
      in the heavens, as if the world were a glow-worm that sent
      abroad its home-born radiance into space, and coloured the
      sky. In the green light rested a few small solid clouds with
      sharp edges, and almost an assertion of repose. Throughout
      the night it would be no darker! The sun seemed already to
      have begun to rise, only he would be all night about it. From
      the door she saw the point of the Horn clear against the
      green sky: Steenie would be up there soon! he was hurrying
      thither! Sometimes he went very leisurely, stopping and
      gazing, or sitting down to meditate: he would not do so that
      night! A special solemnity in his countenance made her sure
      that he would go straight to his new house. But she could
      walk faster than he, and would not be long behind him!
    </p>
    <p>
      The sky was full of pale stars, and Kirsty amused herself, as
      she went, with arranging them&#8212;not into their
      constellations, though she knew the shapes and names of most
      of them, but into mathematical figures. The only star Steenie
      knew by name was the pole star, which, however, he always
      called <i>The bonny man's lantern.</i> Kirsty believed he had
      thoughts of his own about many another, and a name for it
      too.
    </p>
    <p>
      She had climbed the hill, and was drawing near the house,
      when she was startled by a sound of something like singing,
      and stopped to listen. She had never heard Steenie attempt to
      sing, and the very thought of his doing so moved her greatly:
      she was always expecting something marvellous to show itself
      in him. She drew nearer. It was not singing, but it was
      something like it, or something trying to be like it&#8212;a
      succession of broken, harsh, imperfect sounds, with here and
      there a tone of brief sweetness. She thought she perceived in
      it an attempt at melody, but the many notes that refused to
      be made, prevented her from finding the melody intended, or
      the melody, rather, after which he was feeling. The broken
      music ceased suddenly, and a different kind of sound
      succeeded. She went yet nearer. He could not be reading: she
      had tried to teach him to read, but the genuine effort he put
      forth to learn made his head ache, and his eyes feel wild, he
      said, and she at once gave up the endeavour. When she reached
      the door, she could plainly hear him praying.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had been accustomed to hear his father pray&#8212;always
      extempore. To the Scots mind it is a perplexity how prayer
      and reading should ever seem one. Kirsty went a little deeper
      into the matter when she said:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'The things that I want, I ken; and I maun hae them! There's
      nae necessity ava to tell me what I want. The buik may wauk a
      sense o' want, I daursay, I dinna ken, but it maistly pits
      intil me the thoucht o' something a body micht weel want,
      withoot makin me awaur o' wantin 't at that preceese moment.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Prayer, with Steenie, as well as with Kirsty, was the
      utterance, audible or silent, in the ever open ear, of what
      was moving in him at the time. This was what she now heard
      him say:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bonny man, I ken ye weel: there's naebody in h'aven or earth
      'at's like ye! Ye ken yersel I wad jist dee for ye; or gien
      there be onything waur to bide nor deein, that's what I would
      du for ye&#8212;gien ye wantit it o' me, that is, for I'm
      houpin sair 'at ye winna want it, I'm that awfu cooardly! Oh
      bonny man, tak the fear oot o' my hert, and mak me ready just
      to walk aff o' the face o' the warl', weichty feet and a', to
      du yer wull, ohn thoucht twise aboot it! And eh, bonny man,
      willna ye come doon sometime or lang, and walk the hill here,
      that I may luik upo' ye ance mair&#8212;as i' the days of
      old, whan the starlicht muntain shook wi' the micht o' the
      prayer ye heavit up til yer father in h'aven? Eh, gien ye war
      but ance to luik in at the door o' this my hoose that ye hae
      gien me, it wud thenceforth be to me as the gate o' paradise!
      But, 'deed, it's that onygait, forit's nigh whaur ye tak yer
      walks abro'd. But gien ye <i>war</i> to luik in at the door,
      and cry, <i>Steenie</i>! sune wud ye see whether I was in the
      hoose or no!&#8212;I thank ye sair for this hoose: I'm gaein
      to hae a rich and a happy time upo' this hill o' Zion, whaur
      the feet o' the ae man gangs walkin!&#8212;And eh, bonny man,
      gie a luik i' the face o' my father and mither i' their bed
      ower at the Knowe; and I pray ye see 'at Kirsty's gettin a
      fine sleep, for she has a heap o' tribble wi' me. I'm no
      worth min'in', yet ye min' me: she is worth
      min'in'!&#8212;and that clever!&#8212;as ye ken wha made her!
      And luik upo' this bit hoosie, 'at I ca' my ain, and they a'
      helpit me to bigg, but as a lean-to til the hoose at hame,
      for I'm no awa frae it or them&#8212;jist as that hoose and
      this hoose and a' the hooses are a' jist but bairnies'
      hooses, biggit by themsels aboot the big flure o' thy kitchie
      and i' the neuks o' the same&#8212;wi' yer ain truffs and
      stanes and divots, sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie's voice ceased, and Kirsty, thinking his prayer had
      come to an end, knocked at the door, lest her sudden
      appearance should startle him. From his knees, as she knew by
      the sound of his rising, Steenie sprang up, came darting to
      the door with the cry, 'It's yersel! It's yersel, bonny man!'
      and seemed to tear it open. Oh, how sorry was Kirsty to stand
      where the loved of the human was not! She had almost turned
      and fled.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's only me, Steenie!' she faltered, nearly crying.
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie stood and stared trembling. Neither, for a moment or
      two, could speak.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, Steenie,' said Kirsty at length, 'I'm richt sorry I
      disapp'intit ye! I didna ken what I was duin. I oucht to hae
      turnt and gane hame again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye cudna help it,' answered Steenie. 'Ye cudna be him, or ye
      wud! But ye're the neist best, and richt welcome. I'm as
      glaid as can be to see ye, Kirsty. Come awa ben the hoose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty followed him in silence, and sat down dejected. The
      loving heart saw it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Maybe ye're him efter a'!' said Steenie. 'He can tak ony
      shape he likes. I wudna won'er gien ye was him! Ye're unco
      like him ony gait!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, na, Steenie! I'm far frae that! But I wud fain be what
      he wud hae me, jist as ye wud yersel. Sae ye maun tak me,
      what I am, for his sake, Steenie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      This was the man's hour, not the dog's, yet Steenie threw
      himself at her feet.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gang oot a bit by yersel, Steenie,' she said, caressing him
      with her hand. 'That's what ye'll like best, I ken! Ye needna
      min' me! I only cam to see ye sattlet intil yer ain hoose.
      I'll bide a gey bit. Gang ye oot, an ken 'at I'm i' the
      hoose, and that ye can come back to me whan ye like. I hae my
      bulk, and can sit and read fine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye're aye richt, Kirsty!' answered Steenie, rising. 'Ye aye
      ken what I'm needin. I maun win oot, for I'm some chokin
      like.&#8212;But jist come here a minute first,' he went on,
      leading the way to the door. There he pointed up into the
      wild of stars, and said, 'Ye see yon star o' the tap o' that
      ither ane 'at's brichter nor itsel?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I see 't fine, and ken 't weel,' answered Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, whan that starnie comes richt ower the white tap o'
      yon stane i' the mids o' that side o' the howe, I s' be here
      at the door.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty looked at the stone, saw that the star would arrive at
      the point indicated in about an hour, and said, 'Weel, I'll
      be expeckin ye, Steenie!' whereupon he departed, going
      farther up the hill to court the soothing of the silent
      heaven.
    </p>
    <p>
      In conditions of consciousness known only to himself and
      incommunicable, the poor fellow sustained an all but
      continuous hand-to-hand struggle with insanity, more or less
      agonized according to the nature and force of its varying
      assault; in which struggle, if not always victorious, he had
      yet never been defeated. Often tempted to escape misery by
      death, he had hitherto stood firm. Some part of every
      solitary night was spent, I imagine, in fighting that or
      other evil suggestion. Doubtless, what kept him lord of
      himself through all the truth-aping delusions that usurped
      his consciousness, was his unyielding faith in the bonny man.
    </p>
    <p>
      The name by which he so constantly thought and spoke of the
      saviour of men was not of his own finding. The story was well
      known of the idiot, who, having partaken of the Lord's
      supper, was heard, as he retired, murmuring to himself, 'Eh,
      the bonny man! the bonny man!' And persons were not wanting,
      sound in mind as large of heart, who thought the idiot might
      well have seen him who came to deliver them that were bound.
      Steenie took up the tale with most believing mind. Never
      doubting the man had seen the Lord, he responded with the
      passionate desire himself to see <i>the bonny man</i>. It
      awoke in him while yet quite a boy, and never left him, but,
      increasing as he grew, became, as well it might, a fixed
      idea, a sober, waiting, unebbing passion, urging him to
      righteousness and lovingkindness.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty took from her pocket an old translation of Plato's
      Phaedo, and sat absorbed in it until the star, unheeded of
      her, attained its goal, and there was Steenie by her side!
      She shut the book and rose.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm a heap better, Kirsty,' said Steenie. 'The ill colour's
      awa doon the stair, and the saft win' 's made its w'y oot o'
      the lift, an' 's won at me. I 'maist think a han' cam and
      clappit my heid. Sae noo I'm jist as weel 's there's ony need
      to be o' this side the mist. It helpit me a heap to ken 'at
      ye was sittin there: I cud aye rin til ye!&#8212;Noo gang awa
      to yer bed, and tak a guid sleep. I'm some thinkin I'll be
      hame til my br'akfast.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, mother's gaein to the toon the morn, and I'll be
      wantit fell air; I may as weel gang!' answered Kirsty, and
      without a goodnight, or farewell of any sort, for she knew
      how he felt in regard to leave-takings, Kirsty left him, and
      went slowly home. The moon was up and so bright that every
      now and then she would stop for a moment and read a little
      from her book, and then walk on thinking about it.
    </p>
    <p>
      From that night, even in the stormy dark of winter, Kirsty
      was not nearly so anxious about Steenie away from the house:
      on the Horn he had his place of refuge, and she knew he never
      ventured on the bog after sunset. He always sought her when
      he wanted to sleep in the daytime, but he was gradually
      growing quieter in his mind, and, Kirsty had reason to think,
      slept a good deal more at night.
    </p>
    <p>
      But the better he grew the more had he the look of one
      expecting something; and Kirsty often heard him saying to
      himself&#8212;'It's comin! it's comin!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And at last,' she said, telling his story many years after,
      'at last it cam; and ahint it, I doobtna! cam the face o' the
      bonny man!'
    </p>
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    <h2>
      CHAPTER XV
    </h2>
    <h3>
      PHEMY CRAIG
    </h3>
    <p>
      Things went on in the same way for four years more, the only
      visible change being that Kirsty seldomer went about
      bare-footed. She was now between two and three and twenty.
      Her face, whose ordinary expression had always been of quiet,
      was now in general quieter still; but when heart or soul was
      moved, it would flash and glow as only such a face could.
      Live revelation of deeps rarely rippled save by the breath of
      God, how could it but grow more beautiful! Cloud or shadow of
      cloud was hardly ever to be seen upon it. Her mother, much
      younger than her father, was still well and strong, and
      Kirsty, still not much wanted at home, continued to spend the
      greater part of her time with her brother and her books. As
      to her person, she was now in the first flower of harmonious
      womanly strength. Nature had indeed done what she could to
      make her a lady, but Nature was not her mother, and Kirsty's
      essential ladyhood came from higher-up, namely, from the
      Source itself of Nature. Simple truth was its crown, and
      grace was the garment of it. To see her walk or run was to
      look on the divine idea of Motion.
    </p>
    <p>
      As for Steenie, he looked the same loose lank lad as before,
      with a smile almost too sad to be a smile, and a laugh in
      which there was little hilarity. His pleasures were no doubt
      deep and high, but seldom, even to Kirsty, manifested
      themselves except in the afterglow.
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy was now almost a woman. She was rather little, but had
      a nice figure, which she knew instinctively how to show to
      advantage. Her main charm lay in her sweet
      complexion&#8212;strong in its contrast of colours, but
      wonderfully perfect in the blending of them: the gradations
      in the live picture were exquisite. She was gentle of temper,
      with a shallow, birdlike friendliness, an accentuated
      confidence that everyone meant her well, which was very
      taking. But she was far too much pleased with herself to be a
      necessity to anyone else. Her father grew more and more proud
      of her, but remained entirely independent of her; and Kirsty
      could not help wondering at times how he would feel were he
      given one peep into the chaotic mind which he fancied so
      lovely a cosmos. A good fairy godmother would for her
      discipline, Kirsty imagined, turn her into the prettiest wax
      doll, but with real eyes, and put her in a glass case for the
      admiration of all, until she sickened of her very
      consciousness. But Kirsty loved the pretty doll, and
      cherished any influence she had with her against a possible
      time when it might be sorely needed. She still encouraged
      her, therefore, to come to Corbyknowe as often as she felt
      inclined. Her father never interfered with any of her goings
      and comings. At the present point of my narrative, however,
      Kirsty began to notice that Phemy did not care so much for
      being with her as hitherto.
    </p>
    <p>
      She had been, of course, for some time the cynosure of many
      neighbouring eyes, but had taken only the more pleasure in
      the cynosure, none in the persons with the eyes, all of whom
      she regarded as much below her. To herself she was the only
      young lady in Tiltowie, an assurance strengthened by the fact
      that no young man had yet ventured to make love to her, which
      she took as a general admission of their social inferiority,
      behaving to all the young men the more sweetly in
      consequence.
    </p>
    <p>
      The tendency of a weakly artistic nature to occupy itself
      much with its own dress was largely developed in her. It was
      wonderful, considering the smallness of her father's income,
      how well she arrayed herself. She could make a poor and
      scanty material go a great way in setting off her
      attractions. The judicial element of the neighbourhood, not
      content with complaining that she spent so much of her time
      in making her dresses, accused her of spending much money
      upon them, whereas she spent less than most of the girls of
      the neighbourhood, who cared only for a good stuff, a fast
      colour, and the fashion: fit to figure and fitness to
      complexion they did not trouble themselves about. The
      possession of a fine gown was the important thing. As to how
      it made them look, they had not imagination enough to
      consider that.
    </p>
    <p>
      She possessed, however, another faculty on which she prided
      herself far more, her ignorance and vanity causing her to
      mistake it for a grand accomplishment&#8212;the faculty of
      verse-making. She inherited a certain modicum of her father's
      rhythmic and riming gift; she could string words almost as
      well as she could string beads, and many thought her clever
      because she could do what they could not. Her aunt judged her
      verses marvellous, and her father considered them full of
      promise. The minister, on the other hand, held them
      unmistakably silly&#8212;as her father would had they not
      been hers and she his. Only the poorest part of his poetic
      equipment had propagated in her, and had he taught her
      anything, she would not have overvalued it so much. Herself
      full of mawkish sentimentality, her verses could not fail to
      be foolish, their whole impulse being the ambition that
      springs from self-admiration. She had begun to look down on
      Kirsty, who would so gladly have been a mother to the
      motherless creature; she was not a lady! Neither in speech,
      manners, nor dress, was she or her mother genteel! Their
      free, hearty, simple bearing, in which was neither smallest
      roughness nor least suggestion of affected refinement, was
      not to Phemy's taste, and she began to assume condescending
      ways.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was of course a humiliation to Phemy to have an aunt in
      Mrs. Bremner's humble position, but she loved her after her
      own feeble fashion, and, although she would willingly have
      avoided her upon occasion, went not unfrequently to the
      castle to see her; for the kindhearted woman spoiled her. Not
      only did she admire her beauty, and stand amazed at her
      wonderful cleverness, but she drew from her little store a
      good part of the money that went to adorn the pretty
      butterfly. She gave her at the same time the best of advice,
      and imagined she listened to it; but the young who take
      advice are almost beyond the need of it. Fools must
      experience a thing themselves before they will believe it;
      and then, remaining fools, they wonder that their children
      will not heed their testimony. Faith is the only charm by
      which the experience of one becomes a vantage-ground for the
      start of another.
    </p>
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    </p><a name="ch016"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XVI
    </h2>
    <h3>
      SHAM LOVE
    </h3>
    <p>
      One day Phemy went to Castle Weelset to see her aunt, and,
      walking down the garden to find her, met the young laird.
    </p>
    <p>
      Through respect for the memory of his father, he had just
      received from the East India Company a commission in his
      father's regiment; and having in about six weeks to pass the
      slight examination required, and then sail to join it, had
      come to see his mother and bid her goodbye. He was a youth no
      longer, but a handsome young fellow, with a pale face and a
      rather weary, therefore what some would call an interesting
      look. For many months he had been leading an idle life.
    </p>
    <p>
      He lifted his hat to Phemy, looked again, and recognised her.
      They had been friends when she was a child, but since he saw
      her last she had grown a young woman. She was gliding past
      him with a pretty bow, and a prettier blush and smile, when
      he stopped and held out his hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's not possible!' he said; 'you can't be little
      Phemy!&#8212;Yet you must be!&#8212;Why, you're a grown lady!
      To think how you used to sit on my knee, and stroke my face!
      How is your father?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy murmured a shy answer, a little goose but blushing a
      very flamingo. In her heart she saw before her the very man
      for her hero. A woman's hero gives some measure, not of what
      she is, hardly of what she would like to be, but of what she
      would like to pass for: here was the ideal for which Phemy
      had so long been waiting, and wherein consisted his glory? In
      youth, position, and good looks! She gazed up at him with a
      mixture of shyness and boldness not uncommon in persons of
      her silly kind, and Francis not only saw but felt that she
      was an unusually pretty girl: although he had long ceased to
      admire his mother, he still admired the sort of beauty she
      once had. He saw also that she was very prettily dressed,
      and, being one of those men who, imagining themselves
      gentlemen, feel at liberty to take liberties with women
      socially their inferiors, he plucked a pheasant-eye-narcissus
      in the border, and said&#8212;at the same time taking the
      leave he asked,&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let me finish your dress by adding this to it! Have you got
      a pin?&#8212;There!&#8212;all you wanted to make you just
      perfect!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her face was now in a very flame. She saw he was right in the
      flower he had chosen, and he saw, not his artistic success
      only, but her recognition of it as well, and was gratified.
      He had a keen feeling of harmony in form and colour, and
      flattered women, while he paraded his own insight, by
      bringing it to bear on their dress.
    </p>
    <p>
      The flower, in its new position, seemed radiant with
      something of the same beauty in which it was set; it was
      <i>like</i> the face above it, and hinted a sympathetic
      relation with the whole dainty person of the girl. But in
      truth there was more expression in the flower than was yet in
      the face. The flower expressed what God was thinking of when
      he made it; the face what the girl was thinking of herself.
      When she ceased thinking of herself then, like the flower,
      she would show what God was thinking of when he made her.
    </p>
    <p>
      Francis, like the man he was, thought what a dainty little
      lady she would make if he had the making of her, and at once
      began talking as he never would have talked had she been what
      is conventionally called a lady&#8212;with a familiarity,
      namely, to which their old acquaintance gave him no right,
      and which showed him not his sister's keeper. She, poor
      child, was pleased with his presumption, taking it for a sign
      that he regarded her as a lady; and from that moment her head
      at least was full of the young laird. She had forgotten all
      she came about. When he turned and walked down the garden,
      she walked alongside of him like a linnet by a tall stork,
      who thought of her as a very pretty green frog. Lost in
      delight at his kindness, and yet more at his admiration, she
      felt as safe in his hands as if he had been her guardian
      angel: had he not convinced her that her notion of herself
      was correct! Who should know better whether she was a lady,
      whether she was lovely or not, than this great, handsome,
      perfect gentleman! Unchecked by any question of propriety,
      she accompanied him without hesitation into a little arbour
      at the bottom of the garden, and sat down with him on the
      bench there provided for the weary and the idle&#8212;in this
      case a going-to-be gallant officer, bored to death by a week
      at home with his mother, and a girl who spent the most of her
      time in making, altering, and wearing her dresses.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How good it was of you, Phemy,' he said, 'to come and see
      me! I was ready to cut my throat for want of something pretty
      to look at. I was thinking it the ugliest place with the
      ugliest of people, wondering how I had ever been able to live
      in it. How unfair I was! The whole country is beautiful now!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am so glad,' answered poor Phemy, hardly knowing what she
      said: it was to her the story of a sad gentleman who fell in
      love at first sight with a beautiful lady who was learning to
      love him through pity.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her admiration of him was as clear as the red and white on
      her face; and foolish Francis felt in his turn flattered, for
      he too was fond of himself. There is no more pitiable sight
      to lovers of their kind, or any more laughable to its haters,
      than two persons falling into the love rooted in self-love.
      But possibly they are neither to be pitied nor laughed at;
      they may be plunging thus into a saving hell.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You would like to make the world beautiful for me, Phemy?'
      rejoined Francis.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should like to make it a paradise!' returned Phemy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A garden of Eden, and you the Eve in it?' suggested Francis.
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy could find no answer beyond a confused look and a yet
      deeper blush.
    </p>
    <p>
      Talk elliptical followed, not unmingled with looks bold and
      shy. They had not many objects of thought in common,
      therefore not many subjects for conversation. There was no
      poetry in Gordon, and but the flimsiest sentiment in Phemy.
      Her mind was feebly active, his full of tedium. Hers was open
      to any temptation from him, and his to the temptation of
      usurping the government of her world, of constituting himself
      the benefactor of this innocent creature, and enriching her
      life with the bliss of loving a noble object. Of course he
      meant nothing serious! Equally of course he would do her no
      harm! To lose him would make her miserable for a while, but
      she would not die of love, and would have something to think
      about all her dull life afterward!
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy at length got frightened at the thought of being found
      with him, and together they went to look for her aunt.
      Finding her in an outhouse that was used for a laundry,
      Francis told Mrs. Bremner that they had been in the garden
      ever so long searching for her, and he was very glad of the
      opportunity of hearing about his old friend, Phemy's father!
      The aunt was not quite pleased, but said little.
    </p>
    <p>
      The following Sunday she told the schoolmaster what had taken
      place, and came home in a rage at the idiocy of a man who
      would not open his eyes when his house was on fire. It was
      all her sister's fault, she said, for having married such a
      book-idiot! She felt indeed very uncomfortable, and did her
      best in the way of warning; but Phemy seemed so incapable of
      understanding what ill could come of letting the young laird
      talk to her, that she despaired of rousing in her any sense
      of danger, and having no authority over her was driven to
      silence for the present. She would have spoken to her
      mistress, had she not plainly foreseen that it would be of no
      use, that she would either laugh, and say young men must have
      their way, or fly into a fury with Phemy for trying to entrap
      her son, and with Mrs. Bremner for imagining he would look at
      the hussey; while one thing was certain&#8212;that, if his
      mother opposed him, Francis would persist.
    </p>
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    </p><a name="ch017"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XVII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      A NOVEL ABDUCTION
    </h3>
    <p>
      Phemy went seldom to the castle, but the young laird and she
      met pretty often: there was solitude enough in that country
      for an army of lovers. Once or twice Gordon, at Phemy's
      entreaty, went and took tea with her at her father's, and was
      cordially received by the schoolmaster, who had no sense of
      impropriety in their strolling out together afterward,
      leaving him well content with the company of his books.
      Before this had happened twice, all the town was talking
      about it, and predicting evil. Phemy heard nothing and feared
      nothing; but if feeling had been weather and talk tempest,
      she would have been glad enough to keep within. So rapidly,
      however, did the whirlwind of tongues extend its giration
      that within half a week it reached Kirsty, and cast her into
      great trouble: her poor silly defenceless Phemy, the child of
      her friend, was in danger from the son of her father's
      friend! Her father could do nothing, for Francis would not
      listen to him, therefore she herself must do something! She
      could not sit still and look on at the devil's work! Having
      always been on terms of sacred intimacy with her mother, she
      knew more of the dangers of the world, while she was far
      safer from them, than such girls as their natural guardians
      watch instead of fortifying, and understood perfectly that an
      unwise man is not to be trusted with a foolish girl. She
      felt, therefore, that inaction on her part would be
      faithlessness to the teaching of her mother, as well as
      treachery to her father, whose friend's son was in peril of
      doing a fearful wrong to one to whom he owed almost a
      brother's protection for his schoolmaster's sake. She did not
      believe that Francis <i>meant</i> Phemy any harm, but she was
      certain he thought too much of himself ever to marry her, and
      were the poor child's feelings to go for nothing? She had no
      hope that Phemy would listen to expostulation from her, but
      she must in fairness, before she <i>did</i> anything, have
      some speech with her!
    </p>
    <p>
      She made repeated efforts, therefore, to see her, but without
      success. She tried one time of the day after another, but,
      now by accident and now by clever contrivance, Phemy was not
      to be come at. She had of late grown tricky. One of the
      windows of the schoolmaster's house commanded the street in
      both directions, and Phemy commanded the window. When she saw
      Kirsty coming, she would run into the garden and take refuge
      in the summer-house, telling the servant on her way that she
      was going out, and did not know what time she would be in. On
      more occasions than one Kirsty said she would wait, when
      Phemy, learning she was not gone, went out in earnest, and
      took care she had enough of waiting. Such shifts of cunning
      no doubt served laughter to the lovers when next they met,
      but they showed that Phemy was in some degree afraid of
      Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      Had Kirsty known the schoolmaster no better than his
      sister-in-law knew him, she would, like her, have gone to
      him; but she was perfectly certain that it would be almost
      impossible to rouse him, and that, once convinced that his
      confidence had been abused, he would be utterly furious, and
      probably bear himself in such fashion as to make Phemy
      desperate, perhaps make her hate him. As it was, he turned a
      deaf ear and indignant heart to every one of the reports that
      reached him. To listen to it would be to doubt his child! Why
      should not the young laird fall in love with her? What more
      natural? Was she not worth as much honour as any man, be he
      who he might, could confer upon her? He cursed the gossips of
      the town, and returned to his book.
    </p>
    <p>
      Convinced at length that Phemy declined an interview, Kirsty
      resolved to take her own way. And her way was a somewhat
      masterful one.
    </p>
    <p>
      About a mile from castle Weelset, in the direction of
      Tiltowie, the road was, for a few hundred yards,
      close-flanked by steep heathery braes. Now Kirsty had heard
      of Phemy's being several times seen on this road of late; and
      near the part of it I have just described, she resolved to
      waylay her. From the brae on the side next Corbyknowe she
      could see the road for some distance in either direction.
    </p>
    <p>
      For a week she watched in vain. She saw the two pass together
      more than once, and she saw Francis pass alone, but she had
      never seen Phemy alone.
    </p>
    <p>
      One morning, just as she arrived at her usual outlook, she
      saw Mrs. Bremner in the road below, coming from the castle,
      and ran down to speak to her. In the course of their
      conversation she learned that Francis was to start for London
      the next morning. When they parted, the old woman resuming
      her walk to Tiltowie, Kirsty climbed the brae and sat down in
      the heather. She was more anxious than ever. She had done her
      best, but it had come to nothing, and now she had but one
      chance more! That Francis Gordon was going away so soon was
      good news, but what might not happen even yet before he went!
      At the same time she could think of nothing better than keep
      watch as hitherto, firm as to her course if she saw Phemy
      alone, but now determined to speak to both if Francis was
      with her, and all but determined to speak to Francis alone,
      if an opportunity of doing so should be given her.
    </p>
    <p>
      All the morning and afternoon she watched in vain, eating
      nothing but a piece of bread that Steenie brought her. At
      last, in the evening&#8212;it was an evening in September,
      cold and clear, the sun down, and a melancholy glory hanging
      over the place of his vanishing&#8212;she spied the solitary
      form of Phemy hastening along the road in the direction of
      the castle. Although she had been on the outlook for her all
      day, she was at the moment so taken up with the sunset, that
      Phemy was almost under where she stood before she saw her.
      She ran at full speed a hundred yards, then slid down a part
      of the brae too steep to climb, and leaped into the road a
      few feet in front of Phemy&#8212;so suddenly that the girl
      started with a cry, and stopped. The moment she saw who it
      was, however, she drew herself up, and would have passed with
      a stiff greeting. But Kirsty stood in front of her, and would
      not permit her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you want, Kirsty Barclay?' demanded Phemy, who had
      within the last week or two advanced considerably in
      confidence of manner; 'I am in a hurry!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye're in a waur hurry nor ye ken, for yer hurry sud be the
      ither gait!' answered Kirsty; 'and I'm gaein to turn ye, or
      at least no gaein to lat ye gang, ohn heard a bit o' the
      trowth frae a woman aulder nor yersel! Lassie, ye seem to
      think naebody worth hearkenin til a word frae 'cep ae man,
      but I mean ye to hearken to me! Ye dinna ken what ye're
      aboot! I ken Francie Gordon a heap better nor you, and though
      I ken nae ill o' him, I ken as little guid: he never did
      naething yet but to please himsel, and there never cam
      salvation or comfort to man, woman, or bairn frae ony puir
      cratur like <i>him</i>!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How dare you speak such lies of a gentleman behind his
      back!' cried Phemy, her eyes flashing. 'He is a friend of
      mine, and I will not hear him maligned!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's sma' hairm can come to ony man frae the trowth,
      Phemy!' answered Kirsty. 'Set the man afore me, and I'll say
      word for word intil his face what I'm sayin to you ahint his
      back.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Barclay,' rejoined Phemy, with a rather pitiable
      attempt at dignity, 'I can permit no one to call me by my
      Christian name who speaks ill of the man to whom I am
      engaged!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That s' be as ye please, Miss Craig. But I wud lat you ca'
      me a' the ill names in the dictionar to get ye to heark to
      me! I'm tellin ye naething but what's true as death.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I call no one names. I am always civil to my neighbours
      whoever they may be! I will not listen to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, lassie, there's but feow o' yer neebours ceevil to yer
      name, whatever they be to yersel! There's hardly ane has a
      guid word for ye, Phemy!&#8212;Miss Craig&#8212;I beg yer
      pardon!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Their lying tongues are nothing to me! I know what I am
      about! I will not stay a moment longer with you! I have an
      important engagement.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Once more, as several times already, she would have passed
      her, but Kirsty stepped yet again in front of her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can weel tak yer word,' replied Kirsty, ''at ye hae an
      engagement; but ye said a minute ago 'at ye was engaged til
      him: tell me in ae word&#8212;has Francie Gordon promised to
      merry ye?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He has as good as asked me,' answered Phemy, who had fits of
      apprehensive recoil from a downright lie.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Noo there I cud 'maist believe ye! Ay, that wud be ill
      eneuch for Francie! He never was a doonricht leear, sae
      lang's I kenned him&#8212;ony mair nor yersel! But, for God's
      sake, Phemy, dinna imagine he'll ever merry ye, for that he
      wull not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is really insufferable!' cried Phemy, in a voice that
      began to tremble from the approach of angry tears. 'Pray,
      have <i>you</i> a claim upon him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nane, no a shedow o' ane,' returned Kirsty. 'But my father
      and his father war like brithers, and we hae a' to du what we
      can for his father's son. I wud fain hand him ohn gotten into
      trouble wi' you or ony lass.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>I</i> get him into trouble! Really, Miss Barclay, I do
      not know how to understand you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I see I maun be plain wi' ye: I wudna hae ye get him into
      trouble by lattin him get you into trouble!&#8212;and that's
      plain speykin!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You insult me!' said Phemy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye drive me to speyk plain!' answered Kirsty. 'That lad,
      Francie Gordon,&#8212;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Speak with respect of your superiors,' interrupted Phemy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll speyk wi' respec o' ony body I hae respec for!'
      answered Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let me pass, you rude young woman!' cried Phemy, who had of
      late been cultivating in her imagination such speech as she
      thought would befit Mrs. Gordon of castle Weelset.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I winna lat ye pass,' answered Kirsty; '&#8212;that is, no
      til ye hear what I hae to say to ye.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then you must take the consequences!' rejoined Phemy, and,
      in the hope that her lover would prove within earshot, began
      a piercing scream.
    </p>
    <p>
      It roused something in Kirsty which she could not afterward
      identify: she was sure it had nothing to do with anger. She
      felt, she said, as if she had to deal with a child who
      insisted on playing with fire beside a barrel of gunpowder.
      At the same time she did nothing but what she had beforehand,
      in case of the repulse she expected, resolved upon. She
      caught up the little would-be lady, as if she had been that
      same naughty child, and the suddenness of the action so
      astonished her that for a moment or two she neither moved nor
      uttered a sound. The next, however, she began to shriek and
      struggle wildly, as if in the hug of a bear or the coils of
      an anaconda, whereupon Kirsty closed her mouth with one hand
      while she held her fast with the other. It was a violent
      proceeding, doubtless, but Kirsty chose to be thus far an
      offender, and yet farther.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bearing her as she best could in one arm, she ran with her
      toward Tiltowie until she reached a place where the road was
      bordered by a more practicable slope; there she took to the
      moorland, and made for Corbyknowe. Her resolve had been from
      the first, if Phemy would not listen, to carry her, like the
      unmanageable child she was, home to the mother whose voice
      had always been to herself the oracle of God. It was in a
      loving embrace, though hardly a comfortable one, and to a
      heart full of pity, that she pressed the poor little runaway
      lamb: her mother was God's vicar for all in trouble: she
      would bring the child to reason! Her heart beating mightily
      with love and labour, she waded through the heather, hurrying
      along the moor.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a strange abduction; but Kirsty was divinely simple,
      and that way strange. Not until they were out of sight of the
      road did she set her down.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Noo, Phemy,' she said, panting as she spoke, 'haud yer
      tongue like a guid lassie, and come awa upo' yer ain feet.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy took at once to her heels and her throat, and ran
      shrieking back toward the road, with Kirsty after her like a
      grayhound. Phemy had for some time given up struggling and
      trying to shriek, and was therefore in better breath than
      Kirsty whose lungs were pumping hard, but she had not a
      chance with her, for there was more muscle in one of Kirsty's
      legs than in Phemy's whole body. In a moment she had her in
      her arms again, and so fast that she could not even kick. She
      gave way and burst into tears. Kirsty relaxed her hold.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What are you gaein to du wi' me?' sobbed Phemy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm takin ye to the best place I ken&#8212;hame to my
      mother,' answered Kirsty, striding on for home-heaven as
      straight as she could go.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I winna gang!' cried Phemy, whose Scotch had returned with
      her tears.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye <i>are</i> gaein,' returned Kirsty dryly; '&#8212;at
      least I'm takin ye, and that's neist best.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What for? I never did ye an ill turn 'at I ken o'!' said
      Phemy, and burst afresh into tears of self-pity and sense of
      wrong.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, my bonny doo,' answered Kirsty, 'ye never did me ony ill
      turn! It wasna in ye. But that's the less rizzon 'at I sudna
      du you a guid ane. And yer father has been like the Bountiful
      himsel to me! It's no muckle I can du for you or for him, but
      there's ae thing I'm set upo', and that's haudin ye frae
      Francie Gordon the nicht. He'll be awa the morn!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wha tellt ye that?' returned Phemy with a start.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Jist yer ain aunt, honest woman!' answered Kirsty, 'and sair
      she grat as she telled me, but it wasna at his gaein!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She micht hae held the tongue o' her till he was gane! What
      was there to greit about!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Maybe she thocht o' her sister's bairn in a tribble 'at
      silence wadna hide!' answered Kirsty. 'Ye haena a notion,
      lassie, what ye're duin wi' yersel! But my mither 'll lat ye
      ken, sae that ye gangna blinlins intil the tod's hole.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye dinna ken Frank, or ye wudna speyk o' 'im that gait!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I ken him ower weel to trust you til him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's naething but ye're eenvious o' me, Kirsty, 'cause ye
      canna get him yersel! He wud never luik at a lass like you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's weel a'body sees na wi' the same een, Phemy! Gien I had
      yer Francie i' the parritch-pat, I wudna pike him oot, but
      fling frae me pat and parritch. For a' that, I hae a haill
      side o' my hert saft til him: my father and his lo'd like
      brithers.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That canna be, Kirsty&#8212;and it's no like ye to blaw!
      Your father was a common so'dier and his was cornel o' the
      regiment!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Allooin!' was all Kirsty's answer. Phemy betook herself to
      entreaty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lat me gang, Kirsty! Please! I'll gang doon o' my knees til
      ye! I canna bide him to think I've played him fause.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He'll play you fause, my lamb, whatever ye du or he think!
      It maks my hert sair to ken 'at no guid will your hert get o'
      his.&#8212;He s' no see ye the nicht, ony gait!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy uttered a childish howl, but immediately choked it with
      a proud sob.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye're hurtin me, Kirsty!' she said, after a minute or so of
      silence. 'Lat me doon, and I'll gang straucht hame to my
      father. I promise ye.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll set ye doon,' answered Kirsty, 'but ye maun come hame
      to my mither.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What'll my father think?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I s' no forget yer father,' said Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      She sent out a strange, piercing cry, set Phemy down, took
      her hand in hers, and went on, Phemy making no resistance. In
      about three minutes there was a noise in the heather, and
      Snootie came rushing to Kirsty. A few moments more and
      Steenie appeared. He lifted his bonnet to Phemy, and stood
      waiting his sister's commands.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Steenie,' she said, 'tak the dog wi' ye, and rin doon to the
      toon, and tell Mr. Craig 'at Phemy here's comin hame wi' me,
      to bide the nicht. Ye winna be langer nor ye canna help, and
      ye'll come to the hoose afore ye gang to the hill?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll du that, Kirsty. Come, doggie,'
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie never went to the town of his own accord, and Kirsty
      never liked him to go, for the boys were rude, but to-night
      it would be dark before he reached it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye're no surely gaun to gar me bide a' nicht!' said Phemy,
      beginning again to cry.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am that&#8212;the nicht, and maybe the morn's nicht, and
      ony nummer o' nichts till we're sure he's awa!' answered
      Kirsty, resuming her walk.
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy wept aloud, but did not try to escape.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And him gaein to promise this verra nicht 'at he would merry
      me!' she cried, but through her tears and sobs her words were
      indistinct.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty stopped, and faced round on her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He promised to merry ye?' she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I didna say that; I said he was gaein to promise the nicht.
      And noo he'll be gane, and never a word said!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He promised, did he, 'at he would promise the
      nicht?&#8212;Eh, Francie! Francie! ye're no yer father's
      son!&#8212;He promised to promise to merry ye! Eh, ye puir
      gowk o' a bonny lassie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gien I met him the nicht&#8212;ay, it cam to that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      All Kirsty's inborn motherhood awoke. She turned to her, and,
      clasping the silly thing in her arms, cried out&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Puir wee dauty! Gien he hae a hert ony bigger nor Tod
      Lowrie's <i>(the fox's)</i> ain, he'll come to ye to the
      Knowe, and say what he has to say!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He winna ken whaur I am!' answered Phemy with an agonized
      burst of dry sobbing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will he no? I s' see to that&#8212;and this verra nicht!'
      exclaimed Kirsty. 'I'll gie him ilka chance o' doin the richt
      thing!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But he'll be angert at me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What for? Did he tell ye no to tell?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay did he.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Waur and waur!' cried Kirsty indignantly. 'He wad hae ye a'
      in his grup! He tellt ye, nae doobt, 'at ye was the bonniest
      lassie 'at ever was seen, and bepraised ye 'at yer ain minnie
      wouldna hae kenned ye! Jist tell me, Phemy, dinna ye think a
      hantle mair o' yersel sin' he took ye in han'?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She would have Phemy see that she had gathered from him no
      figs or grapes, only thorns and thistles. Phemy made no
      reply: had she not every right to think well of herself? He
      had never said anything to her on that subject which she was
      not quite ready to believe.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty seemed to divine what was passing in her thought.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A man,' she said, ''at disna tell ye the trowth aboot himsel
      's no likly to tell ye the trowth aboot <i>your</i>sel! Did
      he tell ye hoo mony lassies he had said the same thing til
      afore ever he cam to you? It maitered little sae lang as they
      war lasses as hertless and toom-heidit as himsel, and ower
      weel used to sic havers; but a lassie like you, 'at never
      afore hearkent to siclike, she taks them a' for trowth, and
      the leein sough o' him gars her trow there was never on earth
      sic a won'erfu cratur as her! What pleesur there can be i'
      leein 's mair nor I can faddom! Ye're jist a gey bonnie
      lassie, siclike as mony anither; but gien ye war a' glorious
      within, like the queen o' Sheba, or whaever she may happen to
      hae been, there wad be naething to be prood o' i' that, seem
      ye didna contrive yersel. No ae stane, to bigg yersel, hae
      <i>ye</i> putten upo' the tap o' anither!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy was nowise capable of understanding such statement and
      deduction. If she was lovely, as Frank told her, and as she
      saw in the glass, why should she not be pleased with herself?
      If Kirsty had been made like her, she would have been just as
      vain as she!
    </p>
    <p>
      All her life the doll never saw the beauty of the woman.
      Beside Phemy, Kirsty walked like an Olympian goddess beside
      the naiad of a brook. And Kirsty was a goddess, for she was
      what she had to be, and never thought about it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy sank down in the heather, declaring she could go no
      farther, and looked so white and so pitiful that Kirsty's
      heart filled afresh with compassion. Like the mother she was,
      she took the poor girl yet again in her arms, and, carrying
      her quite easily now that she did not struggle, walked with
      her straight into her mother's kitchen.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Barclay sat darning the stocking which would have been
      Kirsty's affair had she not been stalking Phemy. She took it
      out of her mother's hands, and laid the girl in her lap.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's a new bairnie til ye, mother! Ye maun daut her a
      wee, she's unco tired!' she said, and seating herself on a
      stool, went on with the darning of the stocking.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mistress Barclay looked down on Phemy with such a face of
      loving benignity that the poor miserable girl threw her arms
      round her neck, and laid her head on her bosom. Instinctively
      the mother began to hush and soothe her, and in a moment more
      was singing a lullaby to her. Phemy fell fast asleep. Then
      Kirsty told what she had done, and while she spoke, the
      mother sat silent brooding, and hushing, and thinking.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch018"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XVIII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      PHEMY'S CHAMPION
    </h3>
    <p>
      When she had told all, Kirsty rose, and laying aside the
      stocking, said,
    </p>
    <p>
      'I maun awa to Weelset, mother. I promised the bairn I would
      lat Francie ken whaur she was, and gie him the chance o'
      sayin his say til her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Verra weel, lassie! ye ken what ye're aboot, and I s' no
      interfere wi' ye. But, eh, ye'll be tired afore ye win to yer
      bed!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll no tramp it, mother; I'll tak the gray mear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She's gey and fresh, lassie; ye maun be on yer guaird.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A' the better!' returned Kirsty. 'To hear ye, mother, a body
      wud think I cudna ride!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Forbid it, bairn! Yer father says, man or wuman, there's no
      ane i' the countryside like ye upo' beast-back.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'They tak to me, the craturs! It was themsels learnt me to
      ride!' answered Kirsty, as she took a riding whip from the
      wall, and went out of the kitchen.
    </p>
    <p>
      The mare looked round when she entered the stable, and
      whinnied. Kirsty petted and stroked her, gave her two or
      three handfuls of oats, and while she was eating strapped a
      cloth on her back: there was no side-saddle about the farm.
      Kirsty could ride well enough sideways on a man's, but she
      liked the way her father had taught her far better. Utterly
      fearless, she had, in his training from childhood until he
      could do no more for her, grown a horsewoman such as few.
    </p>
    <p>
      The moment the mare had finished her oats she bridled her,
      led her out, and sprang on her back; where sitting as on a
      pillion, she rode quietly out of the farm-close. The moment
      she was beyond the gate, she leaned back, and, throwing her
      right foot over the mare's crest, rode like an Amazon, at
      ease, and with mastery. The same moment the mare was away, up
      hill and down dale, almost at racing speed. Had the coming
      moon been above the horizon, the Amazon farm-girl would have
      been worth meeting! So perfectly did she yield her lithe,
      strong body to every motion of the mare, abrupt or undulant,
      that neither ever felt a jar, and their movements seemed the
      outcome of a vital force common to the two. Kirsty never
      thought whether she was riding well or ill, gracefully or
      otherwise, but the mare knew that all was right between them.
      Kirsty never touched the bridle except to moderate the mare's
      pace when she was too much excited to heed what she said to
      her.
    </p>
    <p>
      Doubtless, to many eyes, she would have looked better in a
      riding habit, but she would have felt like an eagle in a
      nightgown. She wore a full winsey petticoat, which she
      managed perfectly, and stockings of the same colour.
    </p>
    <p>
      On her head she had nothing but the silk net at that time and
      in that quarter much worn by young unmarried women. In the
      rush of the gallop it slipped, and its content escaped: she
      put the net in her pocket, and cast a knot upon her long hair
      as if it had been a rope. This she did without even
      slackening her speed, transferring from her hand to her teeth
      the whip she carried. It was one colonel Gordon had given her
      father in remembrance of a little adventure they had
      together, in which a lash from it in the dark night was
      mistaken for a sword-cut, and did them no small service.
    </p>
    <p>
      By the time they reached the castle, the moon was above the
      horizon. Kirsty brought the mare to a walk, and resuming her
      pillion-seat, remanded her hair to its cage, and readjusted
      her skirt; then, setting herself as in a side-saddle, she
      rode gently up to the castle-door.
    </p>
    <p>
      A manservant, happening to see her from the hall-window,
      saved her having to ring the bell, and greeted her
      respectfully, for everybody knew Corbyknowe's Kirsty. She
      said she wanted to see Mr. Gordon, and suggested that perhaps
      he would be kind enough to speak to her at the door. The man
      went to find his master, and in a minute or two brought the
      message that Mr. Gordon would be with her presently. Kirsty
      drew her mare back into the shadow which, the moon being yet
      low, a great rock on the crest of a neighbouring hill cast
      upon the approach, and waited.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was three minutes before Francis came sauntering
      bare-headed round the corner of the house, his hands in his
      pockets, and a cigar in his mouth. He gave a glance round,
      not seeing his visitor at once, and then with a nod, came
      toward her, still smoking. His nonchalance, I believe, was
      forced and meant to cover uneasiness. For all that had passed
      to make him forget Kirsty, he yet remembered her
      uncomfortably, and at the present moment could not help
      regarding her as an angelic <i>bete noir</i>, of whom he was
      more afraid than of any other human being. He approached her
      in a sort of sidling stroll, as if he had no actual business
      with her, but thought of just asking whether she would sell
      her horse. He did not speak, and Kirsty sat motionless until
      he was near enough for a low-voiced conference.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What are ye aboot wi' Phemy Craig, Francie?' she began,
      without a word of greeting.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty was one of the few who practically deny time; with
      whom what was, is; what is, will be. She spoke to the tall
      handsome man in the same tone and with the same forms as when
      they were boy and girl together.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had meant their conversation to be at arm's length, so to
      say, but his intention broke down at once, and he answered
      her in the same style.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I ken naething aboot her. What for sud I?' he answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I ken ye dinna ken whaur she is, for I div,' returned
      Kirsty. 'Ye answer a queston I never speired! What are ye
      aboot wi' Phemy, I challenge ye again! Puir lassie, she has
      nae brither to say the word!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's a' verra weel; but ye see, Kirsty,' he
      began&#8212;then stopped, and having stared at her a moment
      in silence, exclaimed, 'Lord, what a splendid woman you've
      grown!'&#8212;He had probably been drinking with his mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty sat speechless, motionless, changeless as a soldier on
      guard. Gordon had to resume and finish his sentence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'As I was going to say, <i>you</i> can't take the place of a
      brother to her, Kirsty, else I should know how to answer
      you!&#8212;It's awkward when a lady takes you to task,' he
      added with a drawl.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dinna trouble yer heid aboot that, Francie: hert ye hae
      little to trouble aboot onything!' rejoined Kirsty. Then
      changing to English as he had done, she went on: 'I claim no
      consideration on that score.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Francis Gordon felt very uncomfortable. It was deuced hard to
      be bullied by a woman!
    </p>
    <p>
      He stood silent, because he had nothing to say.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you mean to marry my Phemy?' asked Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Really, Miss Barclay,' Francis began, but Kirsty interrupted
      him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr. Gordon,' she said sternly, 'be a man, and answer me. If
      you mean to marry her, say so, and go and tell her
      father&#8212;or my father, if you prefer. She is at the
      Knowe, miserable, poor child! that she did not meet you
      to-night. That was my doing; she could not help herself.
    </p>
    <p>
      Gordon broke into a strained laugh.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, you've got her, and you can keep her!' he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have not answered my question!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Really, Miss Barclay, you must not be too hard on a man! Is
      a fellow not to speak to a woman but he must say at once
      whether or not he intends to marry her?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Answer my question.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is a ridiculous one!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have been trystin' with her almost every night for
      something like a month!' rejoined Kirsty, 'and the question
      is not at all ridiculous.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let it be granted then, and let the proper person ask me the
      question, and I will answer it. You, pardon me, have nothing
      to do with the matter in hand.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That is the answer of a coward,' returned Kirsty, her cheek
      flaming at last. 'You know the guileless nature of your old
      schoolmaster, and take advantage of it! You know that the
      poor girl has not a man to look to, and you will not have a
      woman befriend her! It is cowardly, ungrateful, mean,
      treacherous. You are a bad man, Francie! You always were a
      fool, but now you are a wicked fool! If I were her
      brother&#8212;if I were a man, I would thrash you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a good thing you're not able, Kirsty! I should be
      frightened!' said Gordon, with a laugh and a shrug, thinking
      to throw the thing aside as done with.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I said, if I was a man!' returned Kirsty. 'I did not say, if
      I was able. I <i>am</i> able.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't see why a woman should leave to any man what she's
      able to do for herself!' said Kirsty, as if communing with
      her own thoughts.&#8212; 'Francie, you're no gentleman; you
      are a scoundrel and a coward!' she immediately added aloud.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very well,' returned Francis angrily; 'since you choose to
      be treated as a man, and tell me I am no gentleman, I tell
      you I wouldn't marry the girl if the two of you went on your
      knees to me!&#8212;A common, silly, country-bred
      flirt!&#8212;ready for anything a man&#8212;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty's whip descended upon him with a merciless lash. The
      hiss of it, as it cut the air with all the force of her
      strong arm, startled her mare, and she sprang aside, so that
      Kirsty, who, leaning forward, had thrown the strength of her
      whole body into the blow, could not but lose her seat. But it
      was only to stand upright on her feet, fronting her&#8212;
      call him enemy, antagonist, victim, what you will. Gordon was
      grasping his head: the blow had for a moment blinded him. She
      gave him another stinging cut across the hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's frae yer father! The whup was his, and his swoord
      never did fairer wark!' she said.&#8212;'I hae dune for him
      what I cud!' she added in a low sorrowful voice, and stepped
      back, as having fulfilled her mission.
    </p>
    <p>
      He rushed at her with a sudden torrent of evil words. But he
      was no match for her in agility as, I am almost certain, he
      would have proved none in strength had she allowed him to
      close with her: she avoided him as she had more than once
      <i>jinkit</i> a charging bull, every now and then dealing him
      another sharp blow from his father's whip. The treatment
      began to bring him to his senses.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For God's sake, Kirsty,' he cried, ceasing his attempts to
      lay hold of her, 'behaud, or we'll hae the haill hoose oot,
      and what'll come o' me than I daurna think! I doobt I'll
      never hear the last o' 't as 'tis!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Am I to trust ye, Francie?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I winna lay a finger upo' ye, damn ye!' he said in mingled
      wrath and humiliation.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch019"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XIX
    </h2>
    <h3>
      FRANCIS GORDON'S CHAMPION
    </h3>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;for how could it be
      there but by the original energy? The wrath was gone, and the
      mother soul turned against itself&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;if it was indeed <i>all but</i>!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He saidna muckle to that. I dinna think he had been sair
      missin ye.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I see ye're no gaein to tell me the trowth, Kirsty! I ken by
      mysel he maun hae been missin me dreidfu'!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye can jeedge nae man by yersel, Phemy. Men's no like hiz
      lass-fowk!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy laughed superior.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What ken ye aboot men, Kirsty? There never cam a man near
      ye, i' the w'y o' makin up til ye!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&#8212;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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' <i>him</i>!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nor naething ever he said himsel?' asked Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Naething,' answered Phemy, with strength and decision.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No gien it was 'at naething wud ever gar him merry ye?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That he micht weel say, for he winna need garrin!&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He did say't, Phemy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wha tellt ye? It's lees! Somebody's leein!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He said it til me himsel. Never a lee has onybody had a
      chance o' puttin intil the tale!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He never said it, Kirsty!' cried Phemy, her cheeks now
      glowing, now pale as death. 'He daurna!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He daured; and he daured to <i>me</i>! He said, "I wudna
      merry her gien baith o' ye gaed doon upon yer knees to me!"'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye maun hae sair angert him, Kirsty, or he wudna hae said
      it! Of coorse he wasna to be guidit by you! He <i>cud</i>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'!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye never loot me gang, Phemy! It was my business to gang.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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'!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!&#8212; I'm jist ashamed to deny't!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hoo am I to ken? There's nae a wuman born but wad fain hae
      him til hersel!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty held her peace for pity, thinking what she could say
      to convince her of Gordon's faithlessness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He didna say he hadna promised?' resumed Phemy through her
      sobs.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We camna upo' that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's what I'm thinkin!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I kenna what ye're thinking, Phemy!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What did ye gie him, Kirsty, whan he tauld ye&#8212;no 'at I
      believe a word o' 't&#8212;'at he wud nane o' me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty laughed with a scorn none the less clear that it was
      quiet.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Jist a guid lickin,' she answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ha, ha!' laughed Phemy hysterically. 'I tellt ye ye was
      leein! Ye hae been naething but leein&#8212;a' for fun, of
      coorse, I ken that&#8212;to mak a fule o' me for bein fleyt!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He wud kill ye, Kirsty! <i>You</i> gie him his licks!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He micht kill me, but he'd hae a pairt o' his licks
      first!&#8212;And noo gien ye dinna believe me I winna answer
      a single question mair ye put to me. I hae been tellin
      ye&#8212;no God's trowth, it's true, but the
      deevil's&#8212;and it's no use, for ye winna believe a word
      o' 't!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy rose up a pygmy Fury.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And ye laid han' to cheek o' that king o' men, Kirsty
      Barclay? Lord, haud me ohn killt her! Little hauds me frae
      riven ye to bits wi' my twa han's!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I laidna han' to cheek o' Francie Gordon, Phemy; I jist
      throosh him wi' his father's ain ridin whup 'at my hert's
      like to brak to think o' 't. I doobt he'll carry the marks
      til's grave!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty broke into a convulsion of silent sobs and tears.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Kirsty Barclay, ye're a deevil!' cried Phemy in a hoarse
      whisper: she was spent with passion.
    </p>
    <p>
      The little creature stood before Kirsty, her hands clenched
      and shaking with rage, blue flashes darting about in her
      eyes. Kirsty, at once controlling the passion of her own
      heart, sat still as a statue, regarding her with a sad pity.
      A sparrow stood chattering at a big white brooding dove; and
      the dove sorrowed for the sparrow, but did not know how to
      help the fluttering thing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lord!' cried Phemy, 'I'll be cursin a' the warl' and God
      himsel, gien I gang on this gait!&#8212;Eh, ye fause wuman!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty sprang upon her at one bound from her seat, threw her
      arms round her so that she could not move hers, and sitting
      down with her on her lap, said&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Phemy, gien I was yer mither, I wad gie ye yer licks for
      sayin what ye didna i' yer hert believe! A' the time ye was
      keepin company wi' Francie Gordon, ye ken i' yer ain sowl ye
      was never richt sure o' him! And noo I tell ye plainly that,
      although I strack him times and times wi' my whup&#8212;and
      saired him weel!-I div not believe him sae ill-contrived as
      ye wad gar me think him. Him and me was bairns thegither, and
      I ken the natur o' him, and tak his pairt again ye, for, oot
      o' pride and ambition, ye're an enemy til him: I div not
      believe ever he promised to merry ye! He's behaved ill eneuch
      wantin that&#8212;lattin a gowk o' a lassie like you believe
      what ye likit, and him only carryin on wi' ye for the ploy o'
      't, haeing naething to du, and sick o' his ain toom heid and
      still toomer hert; but a man's word's his word, and Francie's
      no sae ill as your tale wud mak him! There, Phemy, I hae said
      my say!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She loosened her arms. But Phemy lay still, and putting her
      arms round Kirsty's neck, wept in a bitter silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch020"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XX
    </h2>
    <h3>
      MUTUAL MINISTRATION
    </h3>
    <p>
      In a minute or so the door opened, and Steenie coming one
      step into the kitchen, stood and stared with such a face of
      concern that Kirsty was obliged to speak. I do not believe he
      had ever before seen a woman weeping. He shivered visibly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Phemy's no that weel,' she said. 'Her hert's sae sair it
      gars her greit. She canna help greitin, puir dauty!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy lifted her face from Kirsty's bosom, where, like a
      miserable child, she had been pressing it hard, and, seeming
      to have lost in the depth of her grief all her natural
      shyness, looked at Steenie with the most pitiful look ever
      countenance wore: her rage had turned to self-commiseration.
      The cloud of mingled emotion and distress on the visage of
      Steenie wavered, shifted, changed, and settled into the
      divinest look of pity and protection. Kirsty said she never
      saw anything so unmistakably Godlike upon human countenance.
      Involuntarily she murmured, 'Eh, the bonny man!' He turned
      away from them, and, his head bent upon his breast, stood for
      a time utterly motionless. Even Phemy, overpowered and
      stilled by that last look he cast upon her, gazed at him with
      involuntary reverence. But only Kirsty knew that the
      half-witted had sought and found audience with the Eternal,
      and was now in his presence.
    </p>
    <p>
      He remained in this position, Kirsty thought, about three
      minutes. Then he lifted his head, and walked straight from
      the house, nor turned nor spoke. Kirsty did not go after him:
      she feared to tread on holy ground uninvited. Nor would she
      leave Phemy until her mother came.
    </p>
    <p>
      She got up, set the poor girl on the chair, and began to get
      ready the mid-day meal, hoping Phemy would help her, and gain
      some comfort from activity. Nor was she disappointed. With a
      childish air of abstraction, Phemy rose and began, as of old
      in the house, to busy herself, and Kirsty felt much relieved.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But, oh,' she said to herself, 'the sairness o' that wee
      herty i' the inside o' her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy never spoke, and went about her work mechanically. When
      at length Mrs. Barclay came into the kitchen, Kirsty thought
      it better to leave them together, and went to find Steenie.
      She spent the rest of the day with him. Neither said a word
      about Phemy, but Steenie's countenance shone all the
      afternoon, and she left him at night in his house on the
      Horn, still in the after-glow of the mediation which had
      irradiated him in the morning.
    </p>
    <p>
      When she came home, Kirsty found that her mother had put
      Phemy to bed. The poor child had scarcely spoken all day, and
      seemed to have no life in her. In the evening an attack of
      shivering, with other symptoms, showed she was physically
      ill. Mrs. Barclay had sent for her father, but the girl was
      asleep when he came. Aware that he would not hear a word
      casting doubt on his daughter's discretion, and fearing
      therefore that, if she told him how she came to be there, he
      would take her home at any risk, where she would not be so
      well cared for as at the Knowe, she had told him nothing of
      what had taken place; and he, thinking her ailment would
      prove but a bad cold, had gone back to his books without
      seeing her. At Mrs. Barclay's entreaty he had promised to
      send the doctor, but never thought of it again.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty found her very feverish, breathing with difficulty,
      and in considerable pain. She sat by her through the night.
      She had seen nothing of illness, but sympathetic insight is
      the first essential endowment of a good nurse.
    </p>
    <p>
      All the night long&#8212;and Kirsty knew he was
      near&#8212;Steenie was roving within sight of the window
      where the light was burning. He did not know that Phemy was
      ill; pity for her heart-ache drew him thither. As soon as he
      thought his sister would be up, he went in: the door was
      never locked. She heard him, and came to him. The moment he
      learned Phemy's condition, he said he would go for the
      doctor. Kirsty in vain begged him to have some breakfast
      first: he took a piece of oatcake in his hand and went.
    </p>
    <p>
      The doctor returned with him, and pronounced the attack
      pleurisy. Phemy did not seem to care what became of her. She
      was ill a long time, and for a fortnight the doctor came
      every day.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was now so much to be done, that Kirsty could seldom go
      with Steenie to the hill. Nor did Steenie himself care to go
      for any time, and was never a night from the house. When all
      were in bed, he would generally coil himself on a bench by
      the kitchen-fire, at any moment ready to answer the lightest
      call of Kirsty, who took pains to make him feel himself
      useful, as indeed he was. Although now he slept considerably
      better at night and less in the day, he would start to his
      feet at the slightest sound, like the dog he had almost
      ceased to imagine himself except in his dreams. In carrying
      messages, or in following directions, he had always shown
      himself perfectly trustworthy.
    </p>
    <p>
      Slowly, very slowly, Phemy recovered. But long before she was
      well, his family saw that the change for the better which had
      been evident in Steenie's mental condition for some time
      before Phemy's illness, was now manifesting itself plainly in
      his person. The intense compassion which, that memorable
      morning, roused his spirit even to the glorifying of his
      visage, seemed now settling in his looks and clarifying them.
      His eyes appeared to shine less from his brain, and more from
      his mind; he stood more erect; and, as encouraging a symptom,
      perhaps, as any, he had grown more naturally conscious of his
      body and its requirements. Kirsty, coming upon him one
      morning as he somewhat ruefully regarded his trowsers,
      suggested a new suit, and was delighted to see his face shine
      up, and hear him declare himself ready to go with her and be
      measured for it. She found also soon after, to her joy, that
      he had for some time been enlarging with hammer and chisel a
      certain cavity in one of the rocks inside his house on the
      Horn, that he might use it for a bath.
    </p>
    <p>
      In all these things she saw evident signs of a new start in
      the growth of his spiritual nature; and if she spied danger
      ahead, she knew that the God whose presence in him was making
      him grow, was ahead with the danger also.
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie not only now went attired as befitted David Barclay's
      son, but to an ordinary glance would have appeared nowise
      remarkable. Kirsty ceased to look upon him with the pity
      hitherto colouring all her devotion; pride had taken its
      place, which she buttressed with a massive hope, for Kirsty
      was a splendid hoper. People in the town, where now he was
      oftener seen, would remark on the wonderful change in
      him.&#8212;'What's come to fule Steenie?' said one of a group
      he had just passed. 'Haith, he's luikin 'maist like ither
      fowk!'&#8212;'I'm thinkin the deevil maun hae gane oot o'
      him!' said another, and several joined in with their
      remarks.&#8212;'Nae muckle o' a deevil was there to gang oot!
      He was aye an unco hairmless cratur!'&#8212;'And that
      saft-hertit til a' leevin thing!'&#8212;'He was that! I saw
      him ance face a score o' laddies to proteck a poddick they
      war puttin to torment, whan, the Lord kens, he had need o' a'
      his wits to tak care o' himsel!'&#8212;'Aye, jist like
      him!'&#8212;'Weel, the Lord taks care o' him, for he's ane o'
      his ain innocents!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty, before long, began to teach him to sit on a horse,
      and, after but a few weeks of her training, he could ride
      pretty well.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was many weeks before Phemy was fit to go home. Her father
      came to see her now and then, but not very often: he had his
      duties to attend to, and his books consoled him.
    </p>
    <p>
      As soon as Phemy was able to leave her room, Steenie
      constituted himself her slave, and was ever within her call.
      He seemed always to know when she would prefer having him in
      sight, and when she would rather be alone. He would sit for
      an hour at the other end of the room, and watch her like a
      dog without moving. He could have sat so all day, but, as
      soon as she was able to move about, nothing could keep Phemy
      in one place more than an hour at the utmost. By this time
      Steenie could read a little, and his reading was by no means
      as fruitless as it was slow; he would sit reading, nor at all
      lose his labour that, every other moment when within sight of
      her, he would look up to see if she wanted anything. To this
      mute attendance of love the girl became so accustomed that
      she regarded it as her right, nor had ever the spoiled little
      creature occasion to imagine that it was not yielded her; and
      if at a rare moment she threw him glance or small
      smile&#8212;a crumb from her table to her dog&#8212;Steenie
      would for one joyous instant see into the seventh heaven, and
      all the day after dwell in the fifth or sixth. On fine clear
      noontides she would walk a little way with him and Snootie,
      and then he would talk to her as he had never done except to
      Kirsty, telling her wonderful things about the dog and the
      sheep, the stars and the night, the clouds and the moon; but
      he never spoke to her of the bonny man. When, on their
      return, she would say they had had a pleasant walk together,
      his delight would be unutterable; but all the time Steenie
      had not once ventured a word belonging to any of the deeper
      thoughts in which his heart was most at home. Was it that in
      his own eyes he was but a worm glorified with the boon of
      serving an angel? was it that he felt as if she knew
      everything of that kind, and he had nothing to tell her but
      the things that entered at his eyes and ears? or was it that
      a sacred instinct of her incapacity for holy things kept him
      silent concerning such? At times he would look terribly sad,
      and the mood would last for hours.
    </p>
    <p>
      Not once since she began to get better, had Phemy alluded to
      her faithless lover. In its departure her illness seemed to
      have carried with it her unwholesome love for him; and
      certainly, as if overjoyed at her deliverance, she had become
      much more of a child. Kirsty was glad for her sake, and
      gladder still that Francie Gordon had done her no irreparable
      injury&#8212;seemed not even to have left his simulacrum in
      her memory and imagination. As her strength returned, she
      regained the childish merriment which had always drawn
      Kirsty, and the more strongly that she was not herself
      light-hearted. Kirsty's rare laugh was indeed a merry one,
      but when happiest of all she hardly smiled. Perhaps she never
      would laugh her own laugh until she opened her eyes in
      heaven! But how can any one laugh his real best laugh before
      that! Until then he does not even know his name!
    </p>
    <p>
      Phemy seemed more pleased to see her father every time he
      came; and Kirsty began to hope she would tell him the trouble
      she had gone through. But then Kirsty had a perfect faith in
      her father, and a girl like Phemy never has! Her father,
      besides, had never been father enough to her. He had been
      invariably kind and trusting, but his books had been more to
      his hourly life than his daughter. He had never drawn her to
      him, never given her opportunity of coming really near him.
      No story, however, ends in this world. The first volume may
      have been very dull, and yet the next be full of delight.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch021"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXI
    </h2>
    <h3>
      PHEMY YIELDS PLACE
    </h3>
    <p>
      It was the last week in November when the doctor came himself
      to take Phemy home to her father. The day was bright and
      blue, with a thin carpet of snow on the ground, beneath which
      the roads were in good condition. While she was getting
      ready, old David went out and talked to the doctor who would
      not go in, his wrinkled face full of light, and his heart
      glad with the same gladness as Kirsty's.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Barclay and Kirsty busied themselves about Phemy, who
      was as playful and teasing as a pet kitten while they dressed
      her, but Steenie kept in the darkest corner, watching every
      thing, but offering no unneeded help. Without once looking or
      asking for him, never missing him in fact, Phemy climbed,
      with David's aid, into the gig beside the doctor, at once
      began talking to him, and never turned her head as they drove
      away. The moment he heard the sound of the horse's hoofs,
      Steenie came quietly from the gloom and went out of the
      back-door, thinking no eye was upon him. But his sister's
      heart was never off him, and her eyes were oftener on him
      than he knew.
    </p>
    <p>
      Of late he had begun again to go to the hill at night, and
      Kirsty feared his old trouble might be returning. Glad as she
      was to serve Phemy, and the father through the daughter, she
      was far from regretting her departure, for now she would have
      leisure for Steenie and her books, and now the family would
      gather itself once more into the perfect sphere to which drop
      and ocean alike desires to shape itself!
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thoucht ye wud be efter me!' cried Steenie, as she opened
      the door of his burrow, within an hour of his leaving the
      house.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now Kirsty had expected to find him full of grief because of
      Phemy's going, especially as the heartless girl, for such
      Steenie's sister could not help thinking her, never said
      good-bye to her most loving slave. And she did certainly
      descry on his countenance traces of emotion, and in his eyes
      the lingering trouble as of a storm all but overblown. There
      was however in his face the light as of a far sunk aurora,
      the outmost rim of whose radiance, doubtfully visible, seemed
      to encircle his whole person. He was not lost in any gloom!
      She sat down beside him, and waited for him to speak.
    </p>
    <p>
      Never doubting she would follow him, he had already built up
      a good peat-fire on the hearth, and placed for her beside it
      a low settle which his father had made for him, and he had
      himself covered with a sheepskin of thickest fleece. They sat
      silent for a while.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wud ye say noo, Kirsty, 'at I was ony use til her?' he asked
      at length.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Jist a heap,' answered Kirsty. 'I kenna what ever she or I
      wud hae dune wantin ye! She nott (<i>needed</i>) a heap o'
      luikin til!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And ye think mebbe she'll be some the better, some way or
      ither, for 't?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, I div think that, Steenie. But to tell the trowth, I'm
      no sure she'll think verra aft aboot what ye did for her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ow, na! What for sud she? There's no need for that! It was
      for hersel, no for her think-aboot-it, I tried. I was jist
      fain to du something like wash the feet o' her. Whan I cam in
      that day&#8212;the day efter ye broucht her hame, ye
      ken&#8212;the luik of her puir, bonny, begrutten facy jist
      turnt my hert ower i' the mids o' me. I maist think, gien I
      hadna been able to du onything for her afore she gaed, I wud
      hae come hame here to my ain hoose like a deein sheep, and
      lain doon. Yon face o' hers comes back til me noo like the
      face o' a lost lammie 'at the shepherd didna think worth
      gaein oot to luik for. But gien I had sic a sair hert for
      her, the bonny man maun hae had a sairer, and he'll du for
      her what he can&#8212;and that maun be muckle&#8212;muckle!
      They ca' 'im the gude Shepherd, ye ken!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He sat silent for some minutes, and Kirsty's heart was too
      full to let her speak. She could only say to
      her-self&#8212;'And folk ca's him half-wuttit, div they!
      Weel, lat them! Gien he be half-wuttit, the Lord's made up
      the ither half wi' better!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay!' resumed Steenie, 'the gude shepherd tynes
      (<i>loses</i>) no ane o' them a'! But I'll miss her dreidfu'!
      Eh, but I likit to watch the wan bit facy grow and grow till
      't was roon' and rosy again! And, eh, sic a bonny reid and
      white as it was! And better yet I likit to see yon
      hert-brakin luik o' the lost are weirin aye awa and awa till
      't was clean gane!&#8212;And noo she's back til her father,
      bricht and licht and bonny as the lown starry
      nicht!&#8212;Eh, but it maks me happy to think o' 't!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sae it maks me!' responded Kirsty, feeling, as she regarded
      him, like a glorified mother beholding her child walking in
      the truth.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And noo,' continued Steenie, 'I'm richt glaid she's gane,
      and my min' 'll be mair at ease gien I tell ye what
      for:&#8212;I maun aye tell you a'thing 'at 'll bide tellin,
      Kirsty, ye ken!&#8212;Weel, a week or twa ago, I began to be
      troubled as I never was troubled afore. I canna weel say what
      was the cause o' 't, or the kin' o' thing it was, but
      something had come that I didna want to come, and couldna
      keep awa. Maybe ye'll ken what it was like whan I tell ye 'at
      I was aye think-thinkin aboot Phemy. Noo, afore she cam, I
      was maist aye thinkin aboot the bonny man; and it wasna that
      there was ony sic necessity for thinkin aboot Phemy, for by
      that time she was oot o' her meesery, whatever that was, or
      whatever had the wyte (<i>blame</i>) o' 't. I' the time afore
      her, whan my min' wud grow a bit quaiet, and the pooers o'
      darkness wud draw themsels awa a bit, aye wud come the face
      o' the bonny man intil the toom place, and fill me fresh up
      wi' the houp o' seein him or lang; but noo, at ilka moment,
      up wud come, no the face o' the bonny man, but the face o'
      Phemy; and I didna like that, and I cudna help it. And a
      scraichin fear grippit me, 'at I was turnin fause to the
      bonny man. It wisna that I thoucht he wud be vext wi' me, but
      that I cudna bide onything to come atween me and him. I teuk
      mysel weel ower the heckles, but I cudna mak oot 'at I cud
      a'thegither help it. Ye see, somehoo, no bein made
      a'thegither like ither fowk, I cudna think aboot twa things
      at ance, and I bude to think aboot the ane that cam o' 'tsel
      like. But, as I say, it troubled me. Weel, the day, my hert
      was sair at her gangin awa, for I had been lang used to seein
      her ilka hoor, maist ilka minute; and the ae wuss i' my hert
      at the time was to du something worth duin for her, and syne
      dee and hae dune wi' 't&#8212;and there, I doobt, I clean
      forgot the bonny man! Whan she got intil the doctor's gig and
      awa they drave, my hert grew cauld; I was like ane deid and
      beginnin to rot i' the grave. But that minute I h'ard, or it
      was jist as gien I h'ard&#8212;I dinna mean wi' my lugs, but
      i' my hert, ye ken&#8212;a v'ice cry, "Steenie! Steenie!" and
      I cried lood oot, "Comin, Lord!" but I kent weel eneuch the
      v'ice was inside o' me, and no i' my heid, but i' my
      hert&#8212;and nane the less i' me for that! Sae awa at ance
      I cam to my closet here, and sat doon, and hearkent i' the
      how o' my hert. Never a word cam, but I grew quaiet&#8212;eh,
      sae quaiet and content like, wi'oot onything to mak me sae,
      but maybe 'at he was thinkin aboot me! And I'm quaiet yet.
      And as sune 's it's dark, I s' gang oot and see whether the
      bonny man be onywhaur aboot. There's naething atween him and
      me noo; for, the moment I begin to think, it's him 'at comes
      to be thoucht aboot, and no Phemy ony mair!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Steenie,' said Kirsty, 'it was the bonny man sent Phemy til
      ye&#8212;to gie ye something to du for him, luikin efter ane
      o' his silly lambs.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay,' returned Steenie; 'I ken she wasna wiselike, sic as you
      and my mither. She needit a heap o' luikin efter, as ye
      said.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And wi' haein to luik efter her, he kenned that the thouchts
      that troubled ye wudna sae weel win in, and wud learn to bide
      oot. Jist luik at ye noo! See hoo ye hae learnt to luik efter
      yersel! Ye saw it cudna be agreeable to her to hae ye aboot
      her no that weel washed, and wi' claes ye didna keep tidy and
      clean! Sin' ever ye tuik to luikin efter Phemy, I hae had
      little trouble luikin efter you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I see't, Kirsty, I see't! I never thoucht o' the thing
      afore! I micht du a heap to mak mysel mair like ither fowk! I
      s' no forget, noo 'at I hae gotten a grip o' the thing. Ye'll
      see, Kirsty!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's my ain Steenie!' answered Kirsty. 'Maybe the bonny
      man cudna be aye comin to ye himsel, haein ither fowk a heap
      to luik til, and sae sent Phemy to lat ye ken what he would
      hae o' ye. Noo 'at ye hae begun, ye'll be growin mair and
      mair like ither fowk.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, but ye fleg me! I may grow ower like ither fowk! I maun
      awa oot, Kirsty! I'm growin fleyt.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What for, Steenie?' cried Kirsty, not a little frightened
      herself, and laying her hand on his arm. She feared his old
      trouble was returning in force.
    </p>
    <p>
      ''Cause ither fowk never sees the bonny man, they tell me,'
      he replied.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's their ain wyte,' answered Kirsty. 'They micht a' see
      him gien they wud&#8212;or at least hear him say they sud see
      him or lang.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, but I'm no sure 'at ever I did see him, Kirsty!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That winna haud ye ohn seen him whan the hoor comes. And the
      like's true o' the lave.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, for I canna du wantin him&#8212;and sae nouther can
      they!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Naebody can. A' maun hae seen him, or be gaein to see him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hae as guid as seen him, Kirsty! He was there! He helpit
      me whan the ill folk cam to pu' at me!&#8212;Ye div think
      though, Kirsty, 'at I'm b'un' to see him some day?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm thinkin the hoor's been aye set for that same!' answered
      Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Kirsty,' returned Steenie, not quite satisfied with her
      reply, 'I'll gang clean oot the wuts I hae, gien ye tell me
      I'm never to see him face to face!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Steenie,' rejoined Kirsty solemnly, 'I wud gang oot o' my
      wuts mysel gien I didna believe that! I believe 't wi' a' my
      heart, my bonny man.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, and that's a' richt! But ye maunna ca' me yer bonny
      man, Kirsty; for there's but ae bonny man, and we 're a'
      brithers and sisters. He said it himsel!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's verra true, Steenie; but whiles ye're sae like him I
      canna help ca'in ye by his name.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dinna du't again, Kirsty. I canna bide it. I'm no bonny! No
      but I wud sair like to be bonny&#8212;bonny like him,
      Kirsty!&#8212;Did ye ever hear tell 'at he had a father? I
      h'ard a man ance say 'at he bed. Sic a bonny man as that
      father maun be! Jist think o' his haein a son like
      <i>him</i>!&#8212; Dauvid Barclay maun be richt sair
      disappintit wi' sic a son as me&#8212;and him sic a man
      himsel! What for is't, Kirsty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That 'll be are o' the secrets the bonny man's gaein to tell
      his ain fowk whan he gets them hame wi' him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'His ain fowk, Kirsty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, siclike's you and me. Whan we gang hame, he'll tell's a'
      aboot a heap o' things we wad fain ken.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'His ain fowk! His ain fowk!' Steenie went on for a while
      murmuring to himself at intervals. At last he said,
    </p>
    <p>
      'What maks them his ain fowk, Kirsty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What maks me your fowk, Steenie?' she rejoined.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's easy to tell! It's 'cause we hae the same father and
      mither; I hae aye kenned that!' answered Steenie with a
      laugh.
    </p>
    <p>
      She had been trying to puzzle him, he thought, but had
      failed!
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, the bonny man and you and me, we hae a' the same
      father: that's what maks us his ain fowk!&#8212;Ye see noo?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, I see! I see!' responded Steenie, and again was silent.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty thought he had plenty now to meditate upon.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are ye comin hame wi' me,' she asked, 'or are ye gaein to
      bide, Steenie?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll gang hame wi' ye, gien ye like, but I wud raither bide
      the nicht,' he answered. 'I'll hae jist this ae nicht mair
      oot upo' the hill, and syne the morn I'll come hame to the
      hoose, and see gien I can help my mither, or maybe my father.
      That's what the bonny man wud like best, I'm sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty went home with a glad heart: surely Steenie was now in
      a fair way of becoming, as he phrased it, 'like ither fowk'!
      'But the Lord's gowk's better nor the warl's prophet!' she
      said to herself.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch022"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      THE HORN
    </h3>
    <p>
      The beginning of the winter had been open and warm, and very
      little snow had fallen. This was much in Phemy's favour, and
      by the new year she was quite well. But, notwithstanding her
      heartlessness toward Steenie, she was no longer quite like
      her old self. She was quieter and less foolish; she had had a
      lesson in folly, and a long ministration of love, and knew
      now a trifle about both. It is true she wrote nearly as much
      silly poetry, but it was not so silly as before, partly
      because her imagination had now something of fact to go upon,
      and poorest fact is better than mere fancy. So free was her
      heart, however, that she went of herself to see her aunt at
      the castle, to whom, having beheld the love between David and
      his daughter, and begun to feel injured by the little notice
      her father took of her, she bewailed his indifference.
    </p>
    <p>
      At Mrs. Bremner's request she had made an appointment to go
      with her from the castle on a certain Saturday to visit a
      distant relative, living in a lonely cottage on the other
      side of the Horn&#8212;a woman too old ever to leave her
      home. When the day arrived, both saw that the weather gave
      signs of breaking, but the heavy clouds on the horizon seemed
      no worse than had often shown themselves that winter, and as
      often passed away. The air was warm, the day bright, the
      earth dry, and Phemy and her aunt were in good spirits. They
      had purposed to return early to Weelset, but agreed as they
      went that Phemy, the days being so short, should take the
      nearer path to Tiltowie, over the Horn. By this arrangement,
      their visit ended, they had no great distance to walk
      together, Mrs. Bremner's way lying along the back of the
      hill, and Phemy's over the nearer shoulder of it.
    </p>
    <p>
      As they took leave of each other a little later than they had
      intended, Mrs. Bremner cast a glance at the gathering clouds,
      and said,
    </p>
    <p>
      'I doobt, lassie, it's gaein to ding on afore the nicht! I
      wuss we war hame the twa o' 's! Gien it cam on to snaw and
      blaw baith, we micht hae ill winnin there!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Noucht's to fear, auntie,' returned Phemy. 'It's a heap ower
      warm to snaw. It may rain&#8212;I wudna won'er, but there'll
      be nae snaw&#8212;no afore I win hame, onygait.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, min', gien there be ae drap o' weet, ye maun change
      ilka stic the minute ye're i' the hoose. Ye're no that stoot
      yet!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll be sure, auntie!' answered Phemy, and they parted
      almost at a right angle.
    </p>
    <p>
      Before Phemy got to the top of the hill-shoulder, which she
      had to cross by a path no better than a sheep-track, the wind
      had turned to the north, and was blowing keen, with gathering
      strength, from the regions of everlasting ice, bringing with
      it a cold terrible to be faced by such a slight creature as
      Phemy; and so rapidly did its force increase that in a few
      minutes she had to fight for every step she took; so that,
      when at length she reached the top, which lay bare to the
      continuous torrent of fierce and fiercer rushes, her strength
      was already all but exhausted. The wind brought up heavier
      and heavier snow-clouds, and darkness with them, but before
      ever the snow began to fall, Phemy was in evil case&#8212;in
      worse case, indeed, than she could know. In a few minutes the
      tempest had blown all energy out of her, and she sat down
      where was not a stone to shelter her. When she rose, afraid
      to sit longer, she could no more see the track through the
      heather than she could tell without it in which direction to
      turn. She began to cry, but the wind did not heed her tears;
      it seemed determined to blow her away. And now came the snow,
      filling the wind faster and faster, until at length the
      frightful blasts had in them, perhaps, more bulk of blinding
      and dizzying snowflakes than of the air which drove them.
      They threatened between them to fix her there in a pillar of
      snow. It would have been terrible indeed for Phemy on that
      waste hillside, but that the cold and the tempest speedily
      stupefied her.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty always enjoyed the winter heartily. For one thing, it
      roused her poetic faculty&#8212;oh, how different in its
      outcome from Phemy's!&#8212;far more than the summer. That
      very afternoon, leaving Steenie with his mother, she paid a
      visit to the weem, and there, in the heart of the earth, made
      the following little song, addressed to the sky-soaring
      lark:&#8212;
    </p>
    <pre>
  What gars ye sing sae, birdie,
    As gien ye war lord o' the lift?
  On breid ye're an unco sma' lairdie,
    But in hicht ye've a kingly gift!

  A' ye hae to coont yersel rich in,
    'S a wee mawn o' glory-motes!
  The whilk to the throne ye're aye hitchin
    Wi' a lang tow o' sapphire notes!

  Ay, yer sang's the sang o' an angel
    For a sinfu' thrapple no meet,
  Like the pipes til a heavenly braingel
    Whaur they dance their herts intil their feet!

  But though ye canna behaud, birdie,
    Ye needna gar a'thing wheesht!
  I'm noucht but a herplin herdie,
    But I hae a sang i' my breist!

  Len' me yer throat to sing throuw,
    Len' me yer wings to gang hie,
  And I'll sing ye a sang a laverock to cow,
    And for bliss to gar him dee!
</pre>
    <p>
      Long before she had finished writing it, the world was dark
      outside. She had heard but little heeded the roaring of the
      wind over her: when at length she put her head up out of the
      earth, it seized her by the hair as if it would drag it off.
      It took her more than an hour to get home.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the meantime Steenie had been growing restless. Coming
      wind often affected him so. He had been out with his father,
      who expected a storm, to see that all was snug about byres
      and stables, and feed the few sheep in an outhouse; now he
      had come in, and was wandering about the house, when his
      mother prevailed on him to sit down by the fireside with her.
      The clouds had gathered thick, and the afternoon was very
      dark, but all was as yet still. He called his dog, and
      Snootie lay down at his feet, ready for what might come.
      Steenie sat on a stool, with his head on his mother's knee,
      and for a while seemed lost in thought. Then, without moving
      or looking up, he said, as if thinking aloud,&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'It maun be fine fun up there amang thae cloods afore the
      flauks begin to spread!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What mean ye by that, Steenie, my man?' asked his mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'They maun be packit sae close, sae unco close i' their
      muckle pocks, like the feathers in a feather-bed! and syne,
      whan they lat them a' oot thegither, like haudin the bed i'
      their twa ban's by the boddom corners, they maun be smorin
      thick till they begin to spread!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And wha think ye shaks oot the muckle pocks, Steenie?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dinna ken. I hae aften thoucht aboot it. I dinna think
      it's likly to be the angels. It's mair like wark for the
      bairnies up yoner at the muckle ferm at hame, whaur ilk ane,
      to the littlest littlin, kens what he's aboot, and no ane o'
      them's like some o' 's doon here, 'at gangs a' day in a
      dream, and canna get oorsels waukent oot o' 't. I wud be
      surer but that I hae thoucht whiles I saw the muckle angels
      themsels gaein aboot, throu and throu the ondingin flauchter
      o' the snaw&#8212;no mony o' them, ye ken, but jist whiles
      ane and whiles anither, throu amo' the cauld feathers, gaein
      aye straught wi' their heids up, walkin comfortable, as gien
      they war at hame in't. I'm thinkin at sic a time they'll be
      efter helpin some puir body 'at the snaw's like to be ower
      muckle for. Eh me! gien I cud but get rid o' my feet, and win
      up to see!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What for yer feet, Steenie? What ails ye aye at yer feet?
      Feet's gey usefu' kin o' thing's to craturs, whether gien
      them in fours or twas!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, but mine's sic a weicht! It's them 'at's aye haudin me
      doon! I wad hae been up and awa lang syne gien it hadna been
      for them!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what wud hae been comin o' hiz wantin ye, Steenie?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye wad be duin sae weel wantin me, 'at ye wud be aye wantin
      to be up and efter me! A body's feet's nae doobt usefu to
      hand a body steady, and ohn gane blawin aboot, but eh,
      they're unco cummarsum! But syne they're unco guid tu to hand
      a body ohn thoucht owre muckle o' himsel! They're fine
      heumblin things, a body's feet! But, eh, it'll be fine wantin
      them!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whaur on earth gat ye sic notions aboot yer feet? Guid kens
      there's naething amiss wi' yer feet! Nouther o' ye hes ony
      rizzon to be ashamit o' yer feet. The fac is, your feet's by
      ordinar sma', Steenie, and can add but unco little to yer
      weicht!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a' 'at ye ken, mother!' answered Steenie with a smile.
      'But, 'deed, I got my information aboot the feet o' fowk frae
      naegate i' this warl'! The bonny man himsel sent word aboot
      them. He tellt the minister 'at tellt me, ance I was at the
      kirk wi' you, mother&#8212;lang, lang syne&#8212; twa or
      three hun'er years, I'm thinkin'. The bonny man tellt his ain
      fowk first that he was gaein awa in order that they michtna
      be able to do wantin him, and bude to stir themselves and
      come up efter him. And syne he slippit aff his feet, and gaed
      awa up intil the air whaur the snaw comes frae. And ever sin
      syne he comes and gangs as he likes. And efter that be telled
      the minister to tell hiz 'at we was to lay aside the weicht
      that sae easy besets us, and rin. Noo by <i>rin</i> he maun
      hae meaned <i>rin up</i>, for a body's no to rin frae the
      deevil but resist him; and what is't that hauds onybody frae
      rinnin up the air but his feet? There!&#8212;But he's
      promised to help me aff wi' my feet some day: think o'
      that!&#8212;Eh, gien I cud but get my feet aff! Eh, gien they
      wad but stick i' my shune, and gang wi' them whan I pu' them
      aff! They're naething efter a', ye ken, but the shune o' my
      sowl!'
    </p>
    <p>
      A gust of wind drove against the house, and sank as suddenly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That'll be ane o' them!' said Steenie, rising hastily.
      'He'll be wantin me! It's no that aften they want onything o'
      me ayont the fair words a' God's craturs luik for frae ane
      anither, but whiles they do want me, and I'm thinkin they
      want me the nicht. I maun be gaein!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hoots, laddie!' returned his mother, 'what can they be
      wantin, thae gran' offishers, o' siclike as you? Sit ye doon,
      and bide till they cry ye plain. I wud fain hae ye safe i'
      the hoose the nicht!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a' his hoose, mother! A' theroot's therein to him. He's
      in's ain hoose a' the time, and I'm jist as safe atween his
      wa's as atween yours. Didna naebody ever tell ye that,
      mother? Weel, I ken it to be true! And for wantin sic like as
      me, gien God never has need o' a midge, what for dis he mak
      sic a lot o' them?'
    </p>
    <p>
      ''Deed it's true eneuch ye say!' returned his mother. 'But I
      div won'er ye're no fleyt!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fleyt!' rejoined Steenie; 'what for wud I be fleyt? What is
      there to be fleyt at? I never was fleyt at face o' man or
      wuman&#8212;na, nor o' beast naither!&#8212;I was ance, and
      never but that ance, fleyt at the face o' a bairn!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what for that, Steenie?
    </p>
    <p>
      'He was rinnin efter his wee sister to lick her, and his face
      was the face o' a deevil. He nearhan' garred me hate him, and
      that wud hae been a terrible sin. But, eh, puir laddie, he
      bed a richt fearsome wife to the mither o' him! I'm thinkin
      the bonny man maun hae a heap o' tribble wi' siclike, be they
      bairns or mithers!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, but ye're i' the richt there, laddie!&#8212;Noo hearken
      to me: ye maunna gang the nicht!' said his mother anxiously.
      'Gien yer father and Kirsty wad but come in to persuaud ye!
      I'm clean lost wi'oot them!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'For the puir idiot hasna the sense to ken what's wantit o'
      him!' supplemented Steenie, with a laugh almost merry.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Daur ye,' cried his mother indignantly, 'mint at sic a word
      and my bairn thegither? He's my bonny man!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, mother, na! <i>He's</i> the bonny man at wha's feet I
      sall ae day sit, clothed and i' my richt min'. He <i>is</i>
      the bonny man!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank the Lord,' continued his mother, still harping on the
      outrage of such as called her child an idiot,' 'at ye're no
      an orphan&#8212;'at there's three o' 's to tak yer part!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Naebody can be an orphan,' said Steenie, 'sae lang's God's
      nae deid.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lord, and they ca' ye an idiot, div they!' exclaimed Marion
      Barclay.&#8212; 'Weel, be ye or no, ye're ane o' the babes in
      wha's mooth he perfecteth praise!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He'll du that some day, maybe!' answered Steenie.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But! eh, Steenie,' pursued his mother, 'ye winna gang the
      nicht!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother,' he answered, 'ye dinna ken, nor yet do I, what to
      mak o' me&#8212; what wits I hae, and what wits I haena; but
      this ye'll alloo, that, for onything ye ken, the bonny man
      may be cryin upon me to gang efter some puir little yowie o'
      his, oot her lane i' the storm the nicht!'
    </p>
    <p>
      With these words he walked gently from the kitchen, his dog
      following him.
    </p>
    <p>
      A terrible blast rushed right into the fire when he opened
      the door. But he shut it behind him easily, and his mother
      comforted herself that she had known him out in worse
      weather. Kirsty entered a moment after, and when her father
      came in from the loft he called his workshop, they had their
      tea, and sat round the fire after it, peacefully talking, a
      little troubled, but nowise uneasy that their Steenie, the
      darling of them all, was away on the Horn: he knew every foot
      of its sides better than the collie who, a moment ago asleep
      before the fire, was now following at his master's heel.
    </p>
    <p>
      The wind, which had fallen immediately after the second gust
      as after the first, now began to blow with gathering force,
      and it took Steenie much longer than usual to make his way
      over height and hollow from his father's house to his own.
      But he was in no hurry, not knowing where he was wanted. I do
      not think he met any angels as he went, but it was a pleasure
      to think they might be about somewhere, for they were sorry
      for his heavy feet, and always greeted him kindly. Not that
      they ever spoke to him, he said, but they always made a
      friendly gesture&#8212;nodding a stately head, waving a
      strong hand, or sending him a waft of cool air as they went
      by, a waft that would come to him through the fiercest
      hurricane as well as through the stillest calm.
    </p>
    <p>
      Before, strong-toiling against the wind, man and dog reached
      their refuge among the rocks, the snow had begun to fall, and
      the night seemed solid with blackness. The very flakes might
      have been black as the snow of hell for any gleam they gave.
      But they arrived at last, and Steenie, making Snootie go in
      before him, entered the low door with bent head, and closed
      it behind them. The dog lay down weary, but Steenie set about
      lighting the peats ready piled between the great stones of
      the hearth. The wind howled over the waste hill in
      multitudinous whirls, and swept like a level cataract over
      the ghastly bog at its foot, but scarce a puff blew against
      the door of their burrow.
    </p>
    <p>
      When his fire was well alight, Steenie seated himself by it
      on the sheepskin settle, and fell into a reverie. How long he
      had sat thus he did not know, when suddenly the wind fell,
      and with the lull master and dog started together to their
      feet: was it indeed a cry they had heard, or but a moan
      between wind and mountain? The dog flew to the door with a
      whine, and began to sniff and scratch at the crack of the
      threshold; Steenie, thinking it was still dark, went to get a
      lantern Kirsty had provided him with, but which he had never
      yet had occasion to use. The dog ran back to him, and began
      jumping upon him, indicating thus in the dark recess where he
      found him that he wanted him to open the door. A moment more
      and they were in the open universe, in a night all of snow,
      lighted by the wide swooning gleam of a hidden moon, whose
      radiance, almost absorbed, came filtering through miles of
      snow-cloud to reach the world. Nothing but snow was to be
      seen in heaven or earth, but for the present no more was
      falling. Steenie set the lighted lantern by the door, and
      followed Snootie, who went sniffing and snuffing about.
    </p>
    <p>
      Steenie always regarded inferior animals, and especially
      dogs, as a lower sort of angels, with ways of their own, into
      which it would be time to inquire by and by, when either they
      could talk or he could bark intelligently and
      intelligibly&#8212;in which it used to annoy him that he had
      not yet succeeded. It was in part his intense desire to enter
      into the thoughts of his dog, that used to make him imitate
      him the most of the day. I think he put his body as nearly
      into the shape of the dog's as he could, in order thus to aid
      his mind in feeling as the dog was feeling.
    </p>
    <p>
      As the dog seemed to have no scent of anything, Steenie,
      after considering for a moment what he must do, began to walk
      in a spiral, beginning from the door, with the house for the
      centre. He had thus got out of the little valley on to the
      open hill, and the wind had begun to threaten reawaking, when
      Snootie, who was a little way to one side of him, stopped
      short, and began scratching like a fury in the snow. Steenie
      ran to him, and dropped on his knees to help him: he had
      already got a part of something clear! It was the arm of a
      woman. So deep was the snow over her, that the cry he and the
      dog had heard, could not surely have been uttered by her! He
      was gently clearing the snow from the head, and the snow-like
      features were vaguely emerging, when the wind gave a wild
      howl, the night grew dark again, and in bellowing blackness
      the death-silent snow was upon them. But in a moment or two
      more, with Snootie's vigorous aid, he had drawn the body of a
      slight, delicately formed woman out of it's cold, white
      mould. Somehow, with difficulty, he got it on his back, the
      only way he could carry it, and staggered away with it toward
      his house. Thus laden, he might never have found it, near as
      it was, for he was not very strong, and the ground was very
      rough as well as a little deep in snow, but they had left
      such a recent track that the guidance of the dog was sure.
      The wise creature did not, however, follow the long track,
      but led pretty straight across the spiral for the hut.
    </p>
    <p>
      The body grew heavy on poor Steenie's back, and the cold of
      it came through to his spine. It was so cold that it must be
      a dead thing, he thought. His breathing grew very short,
      compelling him, several times, to stop and rest. His legs
      became insensible under him, and his feet got heavier and
      heavier in the snow-filled, entangling, impeding heather.
    </p>
    <p>
      What if it were Phemy! he thought as he struggled on. Then he
      would have the beautiful thing all to himself! But this was a
      dead thing, he feared&#8212;only a thing, and no woman at
      all! Of course it couldn't be Phemy! She was at home, asleep
      in her father's house! He had always shrunk from death; even
      a dead mouse he could not touch without a shudder; but this
      was a woman, and might come alive! It belonged to the bonny
      man, anyhow, and he would stay out with it all night rather
      than have it lie there alone in the snow! He would not be
      afraid of her: he was nearly dead himself, and the dead were
      not afraid of the dead! She had only put off her shoes! But
      she might be alive, and he must get her into the house! He
      would like to put off his feet, but most people would rather
      keep them on, and he must try to keep hers on for her!
    </p>
    <p>
      With fast failing energy he reached the door, staggered in,
      dropped his burden gently on his own soft heather-bed, and
      fell exhausted. He lay but a moment, came to himself, rose,
      and looked at the lovely thing he had laboured to redeem from
      'cold obstruction.' It lay just as it had fallen from his
      back, its face uppermost: it <i>was</i> Phemy!
    </p>
    <p>
      For a moment his blood seemed to stand still; then all the
      divine senses of the half-witted returned to him. There was
      no time to be sorrowful over her: he must save the life that
      might yet be in that frozen form! He had nothing in the house
      except warmth, but warmth more than aught else was what the
      cold thing needed! With trembling hands he took off her
      half-thawed clothes, laid her in the thick blankets of his
      bed, and covered her with every woollen thing in the hut.
      Then he made up a large fire, in the hope that some of its
      heat might find her.
    </p>
    <p>
      She showed no sign of life. Her eyes were fast shut: those
      who die of cold only sleep into a deeper sleep. Not a trace
      of suffering was to be seen on her countenance. Death alone,
      pure, calm, cold, and sweet, was there. But Steenie had never
      seen Death, and there was room for him to doubt and hope. He
      laid one fold of a blanket over the lovely white face, as he
      had seen a mother do with a sleeping infant, called his dog,
      made him lie down on her feet, and told him to watch; then
      turned away, and went to the door. As he passed the fire, he
      coughed and grew faint, but recovering himself, picked up his
      fallen stick, and set out for Corbyknowe and Kirsty. Once
      more the wind had ceased, but the snow was yet falling.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch023"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXIII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      THE STORM AGAIN
    </h3>
    <p>
      Kirsty woke suddenly out of a deep, dreamless sleep. A white
      face was bending over her&#8212;Steenie's&#8212;whiter than
      ever Kirsty had seen it. He was panting, and his eyes were
      huge. She started up.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come; come!' was all he was able to say.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's the metter, Steenie?' she gasped. For a quarter of a
      minute he stood panting, unable to speak.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm no thinkin onything's gane wrong,' he faltered at length
      with an effort, recovering breath and speech a little. 'The
      bonny man&#8212;'
    </p>
    <p>
      He burst into tears and turned his head away. A vision of the
      white, lovely, motionless thing, whose hand had fallen from
      his like a lump of lead, lying alone at the top of the Horn,
      with the dog on her feet, had overwhelmed him suddenly.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty was sore distressed. She dreaded the worst when she
      saw him thus lose the self-restraint hitherto so remarkable
      in him. She leaned from her bed, threw her arms round him,
      and drew him to her, kneeled, laid his head on her bosom, and
      wept as she had never known him weep.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll tak care o' ye, Steenie, my man!' she murmured. 'Fear
      ye naething.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It is amazing how much, in the strength of its own divinity,
      love will dare promise!
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, Kirsty, I ken ye wull, but it's no me!' said Steenie.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thereupon he gave a brief, lucid account of what had occurred
      in the night.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And noo 'at I hae telt ye,' he added, 'it luiks a' sae
      strange 'at maybe I hae been but dreamin, efter a'! But it
      maun be true, for that maun hae been what the angels cam
      cryin upo' me for. I'm thinkin they wud hae broucht me
      straucht til her themsels&#8212;they maistly gang aboot in
      twas, as whan they gaed and waukent the bonny man&#8212;gien
      it hadna been 'at the guid collie was aiqual to that!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty told him to go and rouse the kitchen fire, and she
      would be with him in a minute. She sprang out of bed, and
      dressed as fast as she could, thinking what she had best take
      with her. 'The puir lassie,' she said to herself, 'may be
      growin warm, and sleepin deith awa; and by the time we win
      there she'll be needin something, like the lassie 'at the
      Lord liftit!' But in her heart she had little hope: it would
      be a sad day for the schoolmaster.
    </p>
    <p>
      She went to her father and mother's room, found them awake,
      and told them Steenie's tale.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's time we war up, wuman!' said David.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay,' returned his wife, 'but Kirsty canna bide for 's. Ye
      maun be aff, lassie! Tak a wee whusky wi' ye; but min' it's
      no that safe wi' frozen fowk. Het milk's the best thing. Tak
      a drappie o' that wi' ye. I s' be efter ye wi' mair. And
      dinna forget a piece to uphaud ye as ye gang; it'll be ill
      fechtin the win'. Dinna lat Steenie gang back wi' ye; he
      canna be fit. Sen' him to me, and I'll persuaud
      him.&#8212;Dauvid, man, ye'll hae to saiddle and ride; the
      doctor maun gang wi' ye straught to Steenie's hoose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lat me up,' said David, making a motion to free himself of
      the bedclothes.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty went, and got some milk to make it hot. But when she
      reached the kitchen, Steenie was not there, and the fire,
      which he had tried to wake up, was all but black. The
      house-door was open, and the snow drifting in. Steenie was
      gone into the storm again! She hurriedly poured the milk into
      a small bottle, and thrust it into her bosom to grow warm as
      she went. Then she lighted a lantern, chiefly that Steenie
      might catch sight of it, and set out.
    </p>
    <p>
      She started running, certain, she thought, to overtake him.
      The wind was up again, but it was almost behind her, and the
      night was not absolutely dark, for the moon was somewhere.
      She was far stronger than Steenie, and could walk faster,
      but, keen as was her outlook on all sides, for the snow was
      not falling too thick to let her see a little way through it,
      she was at length near the top of the Horn without having
      caught a glimpse of him. Had he dropped on the way? Had she
      in her haste left him after all in the house? She might have
      passed him; that was easy to do. One thing she was sure
      of&#8212;he could not have got to his house before her!
    </p>
    <p>
      As she drew near the door she heard a short howl, and knew it
      for Snootie's. Perhaps Phemy had revived! But no! it was a
      desolate, forsaken cry! The next moment came a glad bark: was
      it the footstep of Kirsty it greeted, or the soul of Phemy?
    </p>
    <p>
      With steady hand, and heart prepared, she opened the door and
      went in. The dog came bounding to her: either he counted
      himself relieved, or could bear it no longer. He cringed at
      her feet; he leaped upon her; he saw in her his saviour from
      the terrible silence and cold and motionlessness. Then he
      stood still before her, looking up to her, and wagging his
      tail, but his face said plainly: <i>It is there</i>!
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty hesitated a moment; a weary sense of uselessness had
      overtaken her, and she shrank from encountering the
      unchanging and unchangeable; but she cast off the oppression,
      and followed the dog to the bedside. He jumped up, and lay
      down where his master had placed him, as if to say he knew
      his duty, had been lying there all the time, and had only got
      up the moment she came. It was the one warm spot in all the
      woollen pile; the feet beneath it were cold as the snow
      outside, and the lovely form lay motionless as a thing that
      would never move again. Kirsty lifted the blanket: there was
      Phemy's face, blind with the white death! It did not look at
      her, did not recognise her: Phemy was there and not there!
      Phemy was far away! Phemy could not move from where she lay!
    </p>
    <p>
      Hopeless, Kirsty yet tried her best to wake her from her
      snow-sleep, shrinking from nothing, except for the despair of
      it. But long ere she gave up the useless task, she was
      thinking far more about Steenie than Phemy.
    </p>
    <p>
      He did not come! 'He must be safe with his mother!' she kept
      saying in her heart; but she could not reassure herself. The
      forsaken fire, the open door haunted her. She would succeed
      for a moment or two in quieting her fears, calling them
      foolish; the next they would rush upon her like a cataract,
      and almost overwhelm her. While she was busy with the dead,
      he might be slowly sinking into the sleep from which she
      could not wake Phemy!
    </p>
    <p>
      She laid the cold snow-captive straight, and left her to
      sleep on. Then, calling the dog, she left the hut, in the
      hope of meeting her mother, and learning that Steenie was at
      home.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now and then, while at her sad task, she had been reminded of
      the wind by its hollow roaring all about the hill, but not
      until she opened the door had she any notion how the snow was
      falling; neither until she left the hollow for the bare
      hill-side did she realize how the wind was raging. Then
      indeed the world looked dangerous! If Steenie was out, if her
      mother had started, they were lost! She would have gone back
      into the hut with the dead, but that she might get home in
      time to prevent her mother from setting out, or might meet
      her on the way. At the same time the tempest between her and
      her home looked but a little less terrible to her than a sea
      breaking on a rocky shore.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXIV
    </h2>
    <h3>
      HOW KIRSTY FARED
    </h3>
    <p>
      It was quite dark, and round her swept as it were a whirlpool
      of snow. The swift fakes struck at her eyes and ears like a
      swarm of vicious flies. In such a wind, the blows of the soft
      thin snow, beating upon her face, now from one quarter, now
      from another, were enough to bewilder even a strong woman
      like Kirsty. They were like hail to a horse. After trying for
      a while to force her way, she suddenly became aware of utter
      ignorance as to the direction in which she was going, and,
      for the first time in her life, a fell terror possessed
      her&#8212;not for herself, but for Steenie and her father and
      mother. To herself, Kirsty was nobody, but she belonged to
      David and Marion Barclay, and what were they and Steenie to
      do without her! They would go on looking for her till they
      too died, and were buried yards deep in the snow!
    </p>
    <p>
      She kept struggling on, her head bent, and her body leaning
      forward, forcing herself against, it hardly seemed through,
      the snow-filled wind&#8212;but whither? It was only by the
      feel of the earth under her feet, that she could tell, and at
      times she was by no means sure, whether she was going up or
      down hill. She kept on and on, almost hopeless of getting
      anywhere, certain of nothing but that, if once she sat down,
      she would never rise again. Fatigue that must not yield, and
      the in-roads of the cold sleep, at length affected her brain,
      and her imagination began to take its own way with her. She
      thought herself condemned to one of those awful dust-towers,
      for she had read Prideaux, specially devilish invention of
      the Persians, in which by the constant stirring of the dust
      so that it filled the air, the lungs of the culprit were at
      length absolutely choked up. Dead of the dust, she revived to
      the snow: it was fearfully white, for it was all dead faces;
      she crushed and waded through those that fell, while
      multitudes came whirling upon her from all sides. Gladly
      would she have thrown herself down among them, but she must
      walk, walk on for ever!
    </p>
    <p>
      All the time, she felt in her dim suffering as if not she but
      those at home suffered: she had deserted them in trouble, and
      do what she might she would never get back to them! She
      could, she thought, if she but put forth the needful energy,
      but the last self-exhaustive effort never would come!
    </p>
    <p>
      Where was the dog? He had left her! he was nowhere near her!
      She tried to call him, but the storm choked every sound in
      her very throat. He would never have left her to save
      himself! He who makes the dogs must be at least as faithful
      as they! So she was not left comfortless!
    </p>
    <p>
      Then she heard, or thought she heard the church-bell, and
      that may have had something to do with the strange dream out
      of which she came gradually to herself.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXV
    </h2>
    <h3>
      KIRSTY'S DREAM
    </h3>
    <p>
      Her dream was this:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      She sat at the communion-table in her own parish-church, with
      many others, none of whom she knew. A man with piercing eyes
      went along the table, examining the faces of all to see if
      they were fit to partake. When he came to Kirsty, he looked
      at her for a moment sharply, then said, 'That woman is dead.
      She has been in the snow all night. Lay her in the vault
      under the church.' She rose to go because she was dead, and
      hands were laid upon her to guide her as she went. They
      brought her out of the church into the snow and wind, and
      turned away to leave her. But she remonstrated: 'The man with
      the eyes,' she said, 'gave the order that I should be taken
      to the vault of the church!'&#8212;'Very well,' answered a
      voice, 'there is the vault! creep into it.' She saw an
      opening in the ground, at the foot of the wall of the church,
      and getting down on her hands and knees, crept through it,
      and with difficulty got into the vault. There all was still.
      She heard the wind raving, but it sounded afar off. Who had
      guided her thither? One of Steenie's storm-angels, or the
      Shepherd of the sheep? It was all one, for the storm-angels
      were his sheep-dogs! She had been bewildered by the terrible
      beating of the snow-wind, but her own wandering was another's
      guiding! Beyond the turmoil of life and unutterably glad, she
      fell asleep, and the dream left her. In a little while,
      however, it came again.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was lying, she thought, on the stone-floor of the
      church-vault, and wondered whether the examiner,
      notwithstanding the shining of his eyes, might not have made
      a mistake: perhaps she was not so very dead! Perhaps she was
      not quite unfit to eat of the bread of life after all! She
      moved herself a little; then tried to rise, but failed; tried
      again and again, and at last succeeded. All was dark around
      her, but something seemed present that was known to
      her&#8212;whether man, or woman, or beast, or thing, she
      could not tell. At last she recognised it; it was a familiar
      odour, a peculiar smell, of the kind we call earthy:&#8212;it
      was the air of her own earth-house, in days that seemed far
      away! Perhaps she was in it now! Then her box of matches
      might be there too! She felt about and found it. With
      trembling hands she struck one, and proceeded to light her
      lamp.
    </p>
    <p>
      It burned up. Something seized her by the heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      A little farther in, stretched on the floor, lay a human form
      on its face. She knew at once that it was Steenie's. The feet
      were toward her, and between her and them a pair of shoes: he
      was dead!&#8212;he had got rid of his feet!&#8212;he was gone
      after Phemy&#8212;gone to the bonny man! She knelt, and
      turned the body over. Her heart was like a stone. She raised
      his head on her arm: it was plain he was dead. A small stream
      of blood had flowed from his mouth, and made a little pool,
      not yet quite frozen. Kirsty's heart seemed about to break
      from her bosom to go after him; then the eternal seemed to
      descend upon her like a waking sleep, a clear consciousness
      of peace. It was for a moment as if she saw the Father at the
      heart of the universe, with all his children about his knees:
      her pain and sorrow and weakness were gone; she wept glad
      tears over the brother called so soon from the nursery to the
      great presence chamber. 'Eh, bonny man!' she cried; 'is 't
      possible to expec ower muckle frae your father and mine!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She sat down beside what was left of Steenie, and ate of the
      oatcake, and drink of the milk she had carried forgotten
      until now.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I won'er what God 'll du wi' the twa!' she said to herself.
      'Gien <i>I</i> lo'ed them baith as I did, <i>he</i> lo'es
      them better! <i>I</i> wud hae dee'd for them; <i>he</i> did!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She rose and went out.
    </p>
    <p>
      Light had come at last, but too dim to be more than gray. The
      world was one large white sepulchre in which the earth lay
      dead. Warmth and hope and spring seemed gone for ever. But
      God was alive; his hearth-fire burned; therefore death was
      nowhere! She knew it in her own soul, for the Father was
      there, and she knew that in his soul were all the loved. The
      wind had ceased, but the snow was still falling, here and
      there a flake. A faint blueness filled the air, and was
      colder than the white. Whether the day was at hand or the
      night, she could not distinguish. The church bell began to
      ring, sounding from far away through the silence: what
      mountains of snow must yet tower unfallen in the heavens,
      when it was nearly noon, and still so dark! But Steenie was
      out of the snow&#8212;that was well! Or perhaps he was beside
      her in it, only he could leave it when he would! Surely
      anyhow Phemy must be with him! She could not be left all
      alone and she so silly! Steenie would have her to teach! His
      trouble must have gone the moment he died, but Phemy would
      have to find out what a goose she was! She would be very
      miserable, and would want Steenie! Kirsty's thoughts cut
      their own channels: she was as far ahead of her church as the
      woman of Samaria was ahead of the high priest at Jerusalem.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus thinking, thinking, she kept on walking through the snow
      to weep on her mother's bosom. Suddenly she remembered, and
      stood still: her mother was going to follow her to Steenie's
      house! She too must be dead in the snow!&#8212;Well, let
      Heaven take all! They were born to die, and it was her turn
      now to follow her mother! She started again for home, and at
      length drew near the house.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was more like a tomb than a house. The door looked as if
      no one had gone in there or out for ages. Had she slept in
      the snow like the seven sleepers in the cave? Were the need
      and the use of houses and doors long over? Or was she a ghost
      come to have one look more at her old home in a long dead
      world? Perhaps her father and mother might have come back
      with like purpose, and she would see and speak to them! Or
      was she, alas! only in a dream, in which the dead would not
      speak to her? But God was not dead, and while God lived she
      was not alone even in a dream!
    </p>
    <p>
      A dark bundle lay on the door-step: it was Snootie. He had
      been scratching and whining until despair came upon him, and
      he lay down to die.
    </p>
    <p>
      She lifted the latch, stepped over the dog, and entered. The
      peat-fire was smouldering low on tho hearth. She sat down and
      closed her eyes. When she opened them, there lay Snootie,
      stretched out before the fire! She rose and shut the door,
      fed and roused the fire, and brought the dog some milk, which
      he lapped up eagerly.
    </p>
    <p>
      Not a sound was in the house. She went all over it. Father
      nor mother was there. It was Sunday, and all the men were
      away. A cow lowed, and in her heart Kirsty blessed her: she
      was a live creature! She would go and milk her!
    </p>
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    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXVI
    </h2>
    <h3>
      HOW DAVID FARED
    </h3>
    <p>
      David Barclay got up the moment Kirsty was out of the room,
      dressed himself in haste, swallowed a glass of whisky,
      saddled the gray mare, gave her a feed of oats, which she ate
      the faster that she felt the saddle, and set out for Tiltowie
      to get the doctor. Threatening as the weather was, he was
      well on the road before the wind became so full of snow as to
      cause him any anxiety, either for those on the hill or for
      himself. But after the first moment of anxiety, a very few
      minutes convinced him that a battle with the elements was at
      hand more dangerous than he had ever had to fight with armed
      men. For some distance the road was safe enough as yet, for
      the storm had not had time to heap up the snow between the
      bordering hills; but by and by he must come out upon a large
      track recovered by slow degrees and great labour from the
      bog, and be exposed to the full force of the now furious
      wind, where in many places it would be far easier to wander
      off than to stay upon a road level with the fields, and not
      even bounded by a ditch the size of a wheel-track. When he
      reached the open, therefore, he was compelled to go at a
      footpace through the thick, blinding, bewildering
      tempest-driven snow; and was not surprised when, in spite of
      all his caution, he found, by the sudden sinking and
      withdrawing of one of his mare's legs with a squelching
      noise, that he had got astray upon the bog, nor knew any more
      in what direction the town or other abode of humanity lay.
      The only thing he did know was the side of the road to which
      he had turned; and that he knew only by the ground into which
      he had got: no step farther must in that direction be
      attempted. His mare seemed to know this as well as himself,
      for when she had pulled her leg out, she drew back a pace,
      and stood; whereupon David cast a knot on the reins, threw
      them on her neck, and told her to go where she pleased. She
      turned half round and started at once, feeling her way at
      first very carefully. Then she walked slowly on, with her
      head hanging low. Again and again she stopped and snuffed,
      diverged a little, and went on.
    </p>
    <p>
      The wind was packed rather than charged with snow. Men said
      there never was a wind of the strength with so much snow in
      it. David began to despair of ever finding the road again,
      and naturally in such strait thought how much worse would
      Kirsty and Steenie be faring on the open hill-side. His wife,
      he knew, could not have started before the storm rose to
      tempest, and would delay her departure. Then came the
      reflection, how little at any time could a father do for the
      wellbeing of his children! The fact of their being children
      implied their need of an all-powerful father: must there not
      then be such a father? Therewith the truth dawned upon him,
      that first of truths, which all his church-going and
      Bible-reading had hitherto failed to disclose, that, for life
      to be a good thing and worth living, a man must be the child
      of a perfect father, and know him. In his terrible
      perturbation about his children, he lifted up his
      heart&#8212;not to the Governor of the world; not to the God
      of Abraham or Moses; not in the least to the God of the Kirk;
      least of all to the God of the Shorter Catechism; but to the
      faithful creator and Father of David Barclay. The aching soul
      which none but a perfect father could have created capable of
      deploring its own fatherly imperfection, cried out to the
      father of fathers on behalf of his children, and as he cried,
      a peace came stealing over him such as he had never before
      felt.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then he knew that his mare had been for some time on hard
      ground, and was going with purpose in her gentle trot. In
      five minutes more, he saw the glimmer of a light through the
      snow. Near as it was, or he could not have seen it, he failed
      repeatedly in finding his way to it. The mare at length fell
      over a stone wall out of sight in the snow, and when they got
      up they found themselves in a little garden at the end of a
      farmhouse. Not, however, until the farmer came to the door,
      wondering who on such a morning could be their visitor, did
      he know to what farm the mare had brought him. Weary, and
      well aware that no doctor in his senses would set out for the
      top of the Horn in such a tempest of black and white, he
      gratefully accepted the shelter and refreshment of which his
      mare and he stood by this time in much need, and waited for a
      lull in the storm.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXVII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      HOW MARION FARED
    </h3>
    <p>
      In the meantime the mother of the family, not herself at the
      moment in danger, began to suffer the most. It dismayed her
      to find, when she came down, that Steenie had, as she
      thought, insisted on accompanying Kirsty, but it was without
      any great anxiety that she set about preparing food with
      which to follow them.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was bending over her fire, busy with her cooking, when
      all at once the wind came rushing straight down the chimney,
      blew sleet into the kitchen, blew soot into the pot, and
      nearly put out the fire. It was but a small whirlwind,
      however, and presently passed.
    </p>
    <p>
      She went to the door, opened it a little way, and peeped out:
      the morning was a chaos of blackness and snow and wind. She
      had been born and brought up in a yet wilder region, but the
      storm threatened to be such as in her experience was
      unparalleled.
    </p>
    <p>
      'God preserve 's!' cried the poor woman, 'can this be the en'
      o' a'thing? Is the earth turnin intil a muckle snaw-wreath,
      'at whan a' are deid, there may be nae miss o' fowk to beery
      them? Eh, sic a sepulchrin! Mortal wuman cudna carry a basket
      in sic a leevin snaw-drift! Losh, she wudna carry hersel far!
      I maun bide a bit gien I wad be ony succour till them! It's
      my basket they'll be wantin', no me; and i' this drift,
      basket may flee but it winna float!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She turned to her cooking as if it were the one thing to save
      the world. Let her be prepared for the best as well as for
      the worst! Kirsty might find Phemy past helping, and bring
      Steenie home! Then there was David, at that moment fighting
      for his life, perhaps!&#8212;if he came home now, or any of
      the three, she must be ready to save their lives! they must
      not perish on her hands. So she prepared for the possible
      future, not by brooding on it, but by doing the work of the
      present. She cooked and cooked, until there was nothing more
      to be done in that way, and then, having thus cleared the way
      for it, sat down and cried. There was a time for tears: the
      Bible said there was! and when Marion's hands fell into her
      lap, their hour&#8212;and not till then, was come. To go out
      after Kirsty would have been the bare foolishness of suicide,
      would have been to abandon her husband and children against
      the hour of their coming need: one of the hardest demands on
      the obedience of faith is&#8212;to do nothing; it is often so
      much easier to do foolishly!
    </p>
    <p>
      But she did not weep long. A moment more and she was up and
      at work again, hanging a great kettle of water on the crook,
      and blowing up the fire, that she might have hot bottles to
      lay in every bed. Then she assailed the peat-stack in spite
      of the wind, making to it journey after journey, until she
      had heaped a great pile of peats in the corner nearest the
      hearth.
    </p>
    <p>
      The morning wore on; the storm continued raging; no news came
      from the white world; mankind had vanished in the whirling
      snow. It was well the men had gone home, she thought: there
      would only have been the more in danger, the more to be
      fearful about, for all would have been abroad in the drift,
      hopelessly looking for one another! But oh Steenie, Steenie!
      and her ain Kirsty!
    </p>
    <p>
      About half-past ten o'clock the wind began to abate its
      violence, and speedily sank to a calm, wherewith the snow
      lost its main terror. She looked out; it was falling in
      straight, silent lines, flickering slowly down, but very
      thick. She could find her way now! Hideous fears assailed
      her, but she banished them imperiously: they should not sap
      the energy whose every jot would be wanted! She caught up the
      bottle of hot milk she had kept ready, wrapped it in flannel,
      tied it, with a loaf of bread, in a shawl about her waist,
      made up the fire, closed the door, and set out for Steenie's
      house on the Horn.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXVIII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      HUSBAND AND WIFE
    </h3>
    <p>
      Two hours or so earlier, David, perceiving some Assuagement
      in the storm, and his host having offered to go at once to
      the doctor and the schoolmaster, had taken his mare, and
      mounted to go home. He met with no impediment now except the
      depth of the snow, which made it so hard for the mare to get
      along that, full of anxiety about his children, he found the
      distance a weary one to traverse.
    </p>
    <p>
      When at length he reached the Knowe, no one was there to
      welcome him. He saw, however, by the fire and the food, that
      Marion was not long gone. He put up the gray, clothed her and
      fed her, drank some milk, caught up a quarter of cakes, and
      started for the hill.
    </p>
    <p>
      The snow was not falling so thickly now, but it had already
      almost obliterated the footprints of his wife. Still he could
      distinguish them in places, and with some difficulty
      succeeded in following their track until it was clear which
      route she had taken. They indicated the easier, though longer
      way&#8212;not that by the earth-house, and the father and
      daughter passed without seeing each other. When Kirsty got to
      the farm, her father was following her mother up the hill.
    </p>
    <p>
      When David reached the Hillfauld, the name he always gave
      Steenie's house, he found the door open, and walked in. His
      wife did not hear him, for his iron-shod shoes were balled
      with snow. She was standing over the body of Phemy, looking
      down on the white sleep with a solemn, motherly, tearless
      face. She turned as he drew near, and the pair, like the
      lovers they were, fell each in the other's arms. Marion was
      the first to speak.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh Dauvid! God be praised I hae yersel!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is the puir thing gane?' asked her husband in an awe-hushed
      tone, looking down on the maid that was not dead but
      sleeping.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I doobt there's no doobt aboot that,' answered Marion.
      'Steenie, I was jist thinkin, wud be sair disapp'intit to
      learn 'at there was. Eh, the faith o' that laddie! H'aven to
      him's sic a rale place, and sic a hantle better nor this
      warl', 'at he wad not only fain be there himsel, but wad hae
      Phemy there&#8212;ay, gie it war ever sae lang afore himsel!
      Ye see he kens naething aboot sin and the saicrifeece, and he
      disna un'erstan 'at Phemy was aye a gey wull kin' o' a
      lassie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Maybe the bonny man, as Steenie ca's him,' returned David,
      'may hae as muckle compassion for the puir thing i' the hert
      o' 'im as Steenie himsel!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ow ay! Whatfor no! But what can the bonny man himsel du, a'
      bein sattlet?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dinna leemit the Almichty, wuman&#8212;and that i' the verra
      moment whan he's been to hiz&#8212;I wunna say mair gracious
      nor ord'nar, for that cudna be&#8212;but whan he's latten us
      see a bit plainer nor common that he is gracious! The Lord o'
      mercy 'ill manage to luik efter the lammie he made, ae w'y or
      ither, there as here. Ye daurna say he didna du his best for
      her here, and wull he no du his best for her there as weel?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Doobtless, Dauvid! But ye fricht me! It souns jist rank
      papistry&#8212; naither mair nor less! What <i>can</i> he du?
      He canna dee again for ane 'at wudna turn til 'im i' this
      life! The thing's no to be thoucht!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hoo ken ye that, wuman? Ye hae jist thoucht it yersel! Gien
      I was you, I wudna daur to say what he cudna du! I' the
      meantime, what he maks me able to houp, I'm no gaein to fling
      frae me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      David was a true man: he could not believe a thing with one
      half of his mind, and care nothing about it with the other.
      He, like his Steenie, believed in the bonny man about in the
      world, not in the mere image of him standing in the precious
      shrine of the New Testament.
    </p>
    <p>
      After a brief silence&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whaur's Kirsty and Steenie?' he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Lord kens; I dinna.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'They'll be safe eneuch.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's no likly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's sartin,' said David.
    </p>
    <p>
      And therewith, by the side of the dead, he imparted to his
      wife the thoughts that drove misery from his heart as he sat
      on his mare in the storm with the reins on her neck, nor knew
      whither she went.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay,' returned his wife after a pause, 'ye're unco richt,
      Dauvid, as aye ye are! And I'm jist conscience-stricken to
      think 'at a' my life lang I hae been ready to murn ower the
      sorrow i' <i>my</i> hert, never thinkin o' the glaidness i'
      God's! What call hed I to greit ower Steenie, whan God maun
      hae been aye sair pleased wi' him! What sense is there in
      lamentation sae lang's God's eident settin richt a'! His
      hert's the safity o' oors. And eh, glaid sure he maun be, wi
      sic a lot o' his bairns at hame aboot him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay,' returned David with a sigh, thinking of his old comrade
      and the son he had left behind him, 'but there's the prodigal
      anes!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank God, we hae nae prodigal!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Aye, thank him!' rejoined David; 'but <i>he</i> has
      prodigals that trouble him sair, and we maun see til't 'at we
      binna thankless auld prodigals oorsels!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Again followed a brief silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, but isna it strange?' said Marion. 'Here's you and me
      stanin murnin ower anither man's bairn, and naewise kennin
      what's come o' oor ain twa!&#8212;Dauvid, what can hae come
      o' Steenie and Kirsty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The wull o' God's what's come o' them; and God hand me i'
      the grace o' wussin naething ither nor that same!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Haud to that, Dauvid, and hand me till't: we kenna what's
      comin!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The wull o' God's comin,' insisted David. 'But eh,' he
      added, 'I'm concernt for puir Maister Craig!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, lat's awa hame and see whether the twa bena there
      afore 's!&#8212;Eh, but the sicht o' the bonny corp maun hae
      gien Steenie a sair hert! I wudna won'er gien he never wan
      ower't i' this life!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But what'll we du aboot it or we gang? It's the storm may
      come on again waur nor ever, and mak it impossible to beery
      her for a month!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We cudna carry her hame atween's, Dauvid&#8212;think ye?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, na; it's no as gien it was hersel! And cauld's a fine
      keeper&#8212; better nor a' the embalmin o' the Egyptians!
      Only I'm fain to hand Steenie ohn seen her again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, lat's hap her i' the bonny white snaw!' said Marion.
      'She'll keep there as lang as the snaw keeps, and naething
      'ill disturb her till the time comes to lay her awa!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's weel thoucht o'!' answered David. 'Eh, wuman, but
      it's a bonny beerial compared wi' sic as I hae aften gien
      comrade and foe alike!'
    </p>
    <p>
      They went out and chose a spot close by the house where the
      snow lay deep. There they made a hollow, and pressed the
      bottom of it down hard. Then they carried out and laid in it
      the death-frozen dove, and heaped upon her a firm, white,
      marble-like tomb of heavenly new-fallen snow.
    </p>
    <p>
      Without re-entering it, they closed the door of Steenie's
      refuge, and leaving the two deserted houses side by side,
      made what slow haste they could, with anxious hearts, to
      their home. The snow was falling softly, for the wind was
      still asleep.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch029"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXIX
    </h2>
    <h3>
      DAVID, MARION, KIRSTY, SNOOTIE, AND WHAT WAS LEFT OF STEENIE
    </h3>
    <p>
      Kirsty saw their shadows darken the wall, and turning from
      her work at the dresser, ran to the door to meet them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'God be thankit!' cried David.
    </p>
    <p>
      Marion gave her daughter one loving look, and entering cast a
      fearful, questioning glance around the kitchen.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whaur's Steenie?' she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He's wi' Phemy, I'm thinkin,' faltered Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lassie, are ye dementit?' her mother almost screamed. 'We're
      this minute come frae there!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He <i>is</i> wi' Phemy, mother. The Lord canna surely hae
      pairtit them, gangin in maist haudin hans!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Kirsty, I haud ye accoontable for my Steenie!' cried Marion,
      sinking on a chair, and covering her face with her hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's the wull o' God 'at's accoontable for him, wuman!'
      answered David, sitting down beside her, and laying hold of
      her arm.
    </p>
    <p>
      She burst into terrible weeping.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He maun be sair at hame wi' the bonny man!' said Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lassie,' said David, 'you and me and yer mither, we hae
      naething left but be better bairns, and gang the fester to
      the bonny man!&#8212;Whaur's what's left o' the laddie,
      Kirsty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lyin i' my hoose, as he ca'd it. Mine was i' the yerd, his
      i' the air, he said. He was awa afore I wan to the kitchen.
      He had jist killt himsel savin at Phemy, rinnin and fechtin
      on, upo' the barest chance o' savin her life; and sae whan he
      set off again to gang til her, no bidin for me, he was that
      forfouchten 'at he hed a bluid-brak in 's breist, and was
      jist able, and nae mair, to creep intil the weem oot o' the
      snaw. He didna like the place, and yet had a kin' o' a notion
      o' the bonny man bein there whiles. I'm thinkin Snootie maun
      hae won til him, and run hame for help, for I faund him maist
      deid upo' the door-step.'
    </p>
    <p>
      David stooped and patted the dog.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, that cudna be,' he said, 'or he wud never hae left him,
      I'm thinkin.&#8212;Ye're a braw dog,' he went on to the
      collie, 'and I'm thankfu' yer no lyin wi yer tongue
      oot!&#8212;But guid comes to guid doggies!' he added,
      fondling the creature, who had risen, and feebly set his paws
      on his knee.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And ye left him lyin there! Hoo hed ye the hert, Kirsty?'
      sobbed the mother reproachfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother, he was better aff nor ony ither ane o' 's! I winna
      say, mother, 'at I lo'ed him sae weel as ye lo'ed him, for
      maybe that wudna be natur&#8212;I dinna ken; and I daurna say
      'at I lo'e him as the bonny man lo'es his brithers and
      sisters a'; but I hae yet to learn hoo to lo'e him better.
      Onygait, the bonny man wantit him, and he has him! And whan I
      left him there, it was jist as gien I hield him oot i' my
      airms and said, "Hae, Lord; tak him: he's yer ain!"'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye're i' the richt, Kirsty, my bonny bairn!' said David.
      'Yer mither and me, we was never but pleased wi' onything 'at
      ever ye did.&#8212;Isna that true, Mar'on, my ain wuman?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'True as his word!' answered the mother, and rose, and went
      to her room.
    </p>
    <p>
      David sought the yard, saw that all was right with the
      beasts, and fed them. Thence he made his way to his workshop
      over the cart-shed, where in five minutes he constructed,
      with two poles run through two sacks, a very good stretcher,
      carrying it to the kitchen, where Kirsty sat motionless,
      looking into the fire.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Kirsty,' he said, 'ye're 'maist as strong's a man, and I
      wudna wullinly ony but oor ain three sels laid finger upo'
      what's left o' Steenie: are ye up to takin the feet o' 'im to
      fess him hame? Here's what'll mak it 'maist easy!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty rose at once.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A drappy o' milk, and I'm ready,' she answered. 'Wull ye no
      tak a moofu' o' whusky yersel' father?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, na; I want naething,' replied David.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had not yet learned what Kirsty went through the night
      before, when he asked her to help him carry the body of her
      brother home through the snow. Kirsty, however, knew no
      reason why she should not be as able as her father.
    </p>
    <p>
      He took the stretcher, and they set out, saying nothing to
      the mother: she was still in her own room, and they hoped she
      might fall asleep.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It min's me o' the women gauin til the sepulchre!' said
      David. 'Eh, but it maun hae been a sair time til
      them!&#8212;a heap sairer nor this hert-brak here!' 'Ye see
      they didna ken 'at he wasna deid,' assented Kirsty, 'and we
      div ken 'at Steenie's no deid! He's maybe walkin aboot wi the
      bonny man&#8212;or maybe jist ristin himsel a wee efter the
      uprisin! Jist think o' his heid bein a' richt, and his een as
      clear as the bonny man's ain! Eh, but Steenie maun be in grit
      glee!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus talking as they went, they reached and entered the
      earth-house. They found no angels on guard, for Steenie had
      not to get up again.
    </p>
    <p>
      David wept the few tears of an old man over the son who had
      been of no use in the world but the best use&#8212;to love
      and be loved. Then, one at the head and the other at the
      feet, they brought the body out, and laid it on the bier.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty went in again, and took Steenie's shoes, tying them in
      her apron.
    </p>
    <p>
      'His feet's no sic a weicht noo!' she said, as together they
      carried their burden home.
    </p>
    <p>
      The mother met them at the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh!' she cried, 'I thoucht the Lord had taen ye baith, and
      left me my lane 'cause I was sae hard-hertit til him! But noo
      'at he 's broucht ye back&#8212;and Steenie, what there is o'
      him, puir bairn!&#8212;I s' never say anither word, but jist
      lat him du as he likes.&#8212;There, Lord, I hae dune! Pardon
      thoo me wha canst.'
    </p>
    <p>
      They carried the forsaken thing up the stair, and laid it on
      Kirsty's bed, looking so like and so unlike Steenie asleep.
      Marion was so exhausted, both mind and body, that her husband
      insisted on her postponing all further ministration till the
      morning; but at night Kirsty unclothed the untenanted, and
      put on it a long white nightgown. When the mother saw it
      lying thus, she smiled, and wept no more; she knew that the
      bonny man had taken home his idiot.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
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    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
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    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch030"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXX
    </h2>
    <h3>
      FROM SNOW TO FIRE
    </h3>
    <p>
      My narrative must now go a little way back in time, and a
      long way from the region of heather and snow, to India in the
      year of the mutiny. The regiment in which Francis Gordon
      served, his father's old regiment, had lain for months
      besieged in a well known city by the native troops, and had
      begun to know what privation meant, its suffering aggravated
      by that of not a few women and children. With the other
      portions of the Company's army there shut up, it had behaved
      admirably. Danger and sickness, wounds and fatigue, hunger
      and death, had brought out the best that was in the worst of
      them: when their country knew how they had fought and
      endured, she was proud of them. Had their enemies, however,
      been naked Zulus, they would have taken the place within a
      week.
    </p>
    <p>
      Francis Gordon had done his part, and well.
    </p>
    <p>
      It would be difficult to analyze the effect of tho punishment
      Kirsty had given him, but its influence was upon him through
      the whole of the terrible time&#8212;none the less beneficent
      that his response to her stinging blows was indignant rage. I
      dare hardly speculate what, had she not defended herself so
      that he could not reach her, he might not have done in the
      first instinctive motions of natural fury. It is possible
      that only Kirsty's skill and courage saved him from what he
      would never have surmounted the shame of&#8212;taking revenge
      on a woman avenging a woman's wrong: from having deserved to
      be struck by a woman, nothing but repentant shame could save
      him.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he came to himself, the first bitterness of the thing
      over, he could not avoid the conviction, that the playmate of
      his childhood, whom once he loved best in the world, and who
      when a girl refused to marry him, had come to despise him,
      and that righteously. The idea took a firm hold on him, and
      became his most frequently recurrent thought. The wale of
      Kirsty's whip served to recall it a good many nights; and
      long after that had ceased either to smart or show, the
      thought would return of itself in the night-watches, and was
      certain to come when he had done anything his conscience
      called wrong, or his judgment foolish.
    </p>
    <p>
      The officers of his mess were mostly men of character with
      ideas better at least than ordinary as to what became a man;
      and their influence on one by no means of a low, though of an
      unstable nature, was elevating. It is true that a change into
      a regiment of jolly, good-mannered, unprincipled men would
      within a month have brought him to do as they did; and in
      another month would have quite silenced, for a time at least,
      his poor little conscience; but he was at present rising.
      Events had been in his favour; after reaching India, he had
      no time to be idle; the mutiny broke out, he must bestir
      himself, and, as I have said, the best in him was called to
      the front.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was specially capable of action with show in it. Let eyes
      be bent upon him, and he would go far. The presence of his
      kind to see and laud was an inspiration to him. Left to act
      for himself, undirected and unseen, his courage would not
      have proved of the highest order. Throughout the siege,
      nevertheless, he was noted for a daring that often left the
      bounds of prudence far behind. More than once he was
      wounded&#8212;once seriously; but even then he was in four
      days again at his post. His genial manners, friendly
      carriage, and gay endurance rendered him a favourite with
      all.
    </p>
    <p>
      The sufferings of the besieged at length grew such, and there
      was so little likelihood of the approaching army being able
      for some time to relieve the place, that orders were issued
      by the commander-in-chief to abandon it: every British person
      must be out of the city before the night of the day
      following. The general in charge thereupon resolved to take
      advantage of the very bad watch kept by the enemy, and steal
      away in silence the same night.
    </p>
    <p>
      The order was given to the companies, to each man
      individually, to prepare for the perilous attempt, but to
      keep it absolutely secret save from those who were to
      accompany them; and so cautious was the little English colony
      as well as the garrison, that not a rumour of the intended
      evacuation reached the besiegers, while, throughout the lines
      and in the cantonments, it was thoroughly understood that, at
      a certain hour of the night, without call of bugle or beat of
      drum, everyone should be ready to march. Ten minutes after
      that hour the garrison was in motion. With difficulty, yet
      with sufficing silence, the gates were passed, and the
      abandonment effected.
    </p>
    <p>
      The first shot of the enemy's morning salutation, earlier
      than usual, went tearing through a bungalow within whose
      shattered walls lay Francis Gordon. In a dining-room, whose
      balcony and window-frame had been smashed the day before, he
      still slumbered wearily, when close past his head rushed the
      eighteen-pounder with its infernal scream. He started up, to
      find the blood flowing from a splinter wound on his temple
      and cheek-bone. A second shot struck the foot of his long
      chair. He sprang from it, and hurried into his coat and
      waistcoat.
    </p>
    <p>
      But how was all so still inside? Not one gun answered! Firing
      at such an hour, he thought, the rebels must have got wind of
      their intended evacuation. It was too late for that, but why
      did not the garrison reply? Between the shots he seemed to
      <i>hear</i> the universal silence. Heavens! were their guns
      already spiked? If so, all was lost!&#8212;But it was
      daylight! He had overslept himself! He ought to have been
      with his men&#8212;how long ago he could not tell, for the
      first shot had taken his watch. A third came and broke his
      sword, carrying the hilt of it through the wall on which it
      hung. Not a sound, not a murmur reached him from the
      fortifications. Could the garrison be gone? Was the hour
      past? Had no one missed him? Certainly no one had called him!
      He rushed into the compound. Not a creature was there! He was
      alone&#8212;one English officer amid a revolted army of
      hating Indians!
    </p>
    <p>
      But they did not yet know that their prey had slid from their
      grasp, for they were going on with their usual gun-reveille,
      instead of rushing on flank and rear of the retreating
      column! He might yet elude them and overtake the garrison!
      Half-dazed, he hurried for the gate by which they were to
      leave the city. Not a live thing save two starved dogs did he
      meet on his way. One of them ran from him; the other would
      have followed him, but a ball struck the ground between them,
      raising a cloud of dust, and he saw no more of the dog.
    </p>
    <p>
      He found the gate open, and not one of the enemy in sight.
      Tokens of the retreat were plentiful, making the track he had
      to follow plain enough.
    </p>
    <p>
      But now an enemy he had never encountered before&#8212;a
      sense of loneliness and desertion and helplessness, rising to
      utter desolation, all at once assailed him. He had never in
      his life congratulated himself on being alone&#8212;not that
      he loved his neighbour, but that he loved his neighbour's
      company, making him less aware of an uneasy self. And now
      first he realized that he had seen his sword-hilt go off with
      a round shot, and had not caught up his revolver&#8212;that
      he was, in fact, absolutely unarmed.
    </p>
    <p>
      He quickened his pace to overtake his comrades. On and on he
      trudged through nothing but rice-fields, the day growing
      hotter and hotter, and his sense of desolation increasing.
      Two or three natives passed him, who looked at him, he
      thought, with sinister eyes. He had eaten no breakfast, and
      was not likely to have any lunch. He grew sick and faint, but
      there was no refuge: he must walk, walk until he fell and
      could walk no more! With the heat and his exertion, his
      hardly healed wound began to assert itself; and by and by he
      felt so ill, that he turned off the road, and lay down. While
      he lay, the eyes of his mind began to open to the fact that
      the courage he had hitherto been so eager to show, could
      hardly have been of the right sort, seeing it was
      gone&#8212;evaporated clean.
    </p>
    <p>
      He rose and resumed his walk, but at every smallest sound
      started in fear of a lurking foe. With vainest regret he
      remembered the long-bladed dagger-knife he had when a boy
      carried always in his pocket. It was exhaustion and illness,
      true, that destroyed his courage, but not the less was he a
      man of fear, not the less he felt himself a coward. Again he
      got into a damp brake and lay down, in a minute or two again
      got up and went on, his fear growing until, mainly through
      consciousness of itself, it ripened into abject terror.
      Loneliness seemed to have taken the shape of a watching
      omnipresent enemy, out of whose diffusion death might at any
      moment break in some hideous form.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was getting toward night when at length he saw dust ahead
      of him, and soon after, he descried the straggling rear of
      the retreating English. Before he reached it a portion had
      halted for a little rest, and he was glad to lie down in a
      rough cart. Long before the morning the cart was on its way
      again, Gordon in it, raving with fever, and unable to tell
      who he was. He was soon in friendly shelter, however, under
      skilful treatment, and tenderly nursed.
    </p>
    <p>
      When at length he seemed to have almost recovered his health,
      it was clear that he had in great measure lost his reason.
    </p>
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      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch031"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXXI
    </h2>
    <h3>
      KIRSTY SHOWS RESENTMENT
    </h3>
    <p>
      Things were going from bad to worse at castle Weelset.
      Whether Mrs. Gordon had disgusted her friends or got tired of
      them, I do not know, but she remained at home, seldom had a
      visitor, and never a guest. Rumour, busy in country as in
      town, said she was more and more manifesting herself a slave
      to strong drink. She was so tired of herself, that, to escape
      her double, she made it increasingly a bore to her. She never
      read a book, never had a newspaper sent her, never inquired
      how things were going on about the place or in any part of
      the world, did nothing for herself or others, only ate,
      drank, slept, and raged at those around her.
    </p>
    <p>
      One morning David Barclay, having occasion to see the factor,
      went to the castle, and finding he was at home ill, thought
      he would make an attempt to see Mrs. Gordon, and offer what
      service he could render: she might not have forgotten that in
      old days he had been a good deal about the estate. She
      received him at once, but behaved in such extraordinary
      fashion that he could not have any doubt she was at least
      half-drunk: there was no sense, David said, either to be got
      out of her, or put into her.
    </p>
    <p>
      At Corbyknowe they heard nothing of the young laird. The
      papers said a good deal about the state of things in India,
      but Francis Gordon was not mentioned.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the autumn of the year 1858, when the days were growing
      short and the nights cold in the high region about the Horn,
      the son of a neighbouring farmer, who had long desired to
      know Kirsty better, called at Corbyknowe with his sister,
      ostensibly on business with David. They were shown into the
      parlour, and all were sitting together in the early gloamin,
      the young woman bent on persuading Kirsty to pay them a visit
      and see the improvements they had made in house and garden,
      and the two farmers lamenting the affairs of the property on
      which they were tenants.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I hear there's new grief like to come to the auld
      lairdship,' said William Lammie, as he sat with an elbow on
      the tea-table whence Kirsty was removing the crumbs.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what may the wisdom o' the country-side be puttin furth
      the noo?' asked David in a tone of good-humoured irony.
      'Weel, as I hear, Mistress Comrie's been to Embro' for a week
      or twa, and's come hame wi' a gey queer story concernin the
      young laird&#8212;awa oot there whaur there's been sic a
      rumpus wi' the h'athen so'diers. There's word come, she says,
      'at he's fa'en intil the verra glaur o' disgrace, funkin at
      something they set him til: na, he wudna! And they hed him
      afore a coort-mairtial as they ca' 't, and broucht it in, she
      says, bare cooardice, and jist broke him. He'll hae ill
      shawin the face o' 'm again i' 's ain calf-country!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a lee,' said Kirsty. 'I s' tak my aith o' that, whaever
      took the tellin o' 't. There never was mark o' cooard upo'
      Francie Gordon. He hed his fauts, but no ane o' them luikit
      that gait. He was a kin' o' saft-like whiles, and unco easy
      come ower, but, haein little fear mysel, I ken a cooard whan
      I see him. Something may hae set up his pride&#8212;he has
      eneuch o' that for twa deevils&#8212;but Francie was never
      nae cooard!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dinna lay the lee at my door, I beg o' ye, Miss Barclay. I
      was but tellin ye what fowk was saying.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fowk's aye sayin, and seldom sayin true. The warst o' 't is
      'at honest fowk's aye ready to believe leears! They dinna lee
      themsel's, and sae it's no easy to them to think anither wad.
      Thereby the fause word has free coorse and is glorifeed!
      They're no a' leears 'at spreads the lee; but for them 'at
      maks the lee, the Lord silence them!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hoots, Kirsty,' said her mother, 'it disna become ye to
      curse naebody! It's no richt o' ye.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a guid Bible-curse, mother! It's but a w'y o' sayin
      "His wull be dune!"'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye needna be sae fell aboot the laird, Miss Barclay! He was
      nae partic'lar frien o' yours gien a' tales be true!'
      remarked her admirer.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm tellin ye tales is maistly lees. I hae kenned the laird
      sin' he was a wee laddie&#8212;and afore that; and I'm no
      gaein to hear him leed upo' and haud my tongue! A lee's a lee
      whether the leear be a leear or no!&#8212;I hae dune.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She did not speak another word to him save to bid him
      good-night.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the beginning of the year, a rumour went about the country
      that the laird had been seen at the castle, but it died away.
    </p>
    <p>
      David pondered, but asked no questions, and Mrs. Bremner
      volunteered no information.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty of course heard the rumour, but she never took much
      interest in the goings on at the castle. Mrs. Gordon's doings
      were not such as the angels desire to look into; and Kirsty,
      not distantly related to them, and inheriting a good many of
      their peculiarities, minded her own business.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
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      &nbsp;
    </p>
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      &nbsp;
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      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch032"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXXII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      IN THE WORKSHOP
    </h3>
    <p>
      One night in the month of January, when the snow was falling
      thick, but the air, because of the cloud-blankets overhead,
      was not piercing, Kirsty went out to the workshop to tell her
      father that supper was ready. David was a
      Jack-of-all-trades&#8212;therein resembling a sailor rather
      than a soldier, and by the light of a single dip was busy
      with some bit of carpenter's work.
    </p>
    <p>
      He did not raise his head when she entered, and heard her as
      if he did not hear. She wondered a little and waited. After a
      few moments of silence, he said quietly, without looking
      up&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are ye awaur o' onything by ord'nar, Kirsty?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, naething, father,' answered Kirsty, wondering still.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's been beirin 'tsel in upo' me at my bench here, 'at
      Steenie's aboot the place the nicht. I canna help imaiginin
      he's been upo' this verra flure ower and ower again sin' I
      cam oot, as gien he wad fain say something, but cudna, and
      gaed awa again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Think ye he's here at this moment, father?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, he's no.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He used to think whiles the bonny man was aboot!' said
      Kirsty reflectively.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My mother was a hielan wuman, and hed the second sicht;
      there was no mainner o' doobt aboot it!' remarked David, also
      thoughtfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what wad ye draw frae that, father?' asked Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ow, naething verra important, maybe, but just 'at possibly
      it micht be i' the faimily!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wud like to ken yer verra thoucht, father!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, it's jist this: I'm thinkin 'at some may be nearer the
      deid nor ithers.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And, maybe,' supplemented Kirsty, 'some o' the deid may win
      nearer the livin nor ithers!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, that's it! that's the haill o' 't!' answered David.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty turned her face toward the farthest corner. The place
      was rather large, and everywhere dark except within the
      narrow circle of the candle-light. In a quiet voice, with a
      little quaver in it, she said aloud:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gien ye be here, Steenie, and hae the pooer, lat's ken gien
      there be onything lyin til oor han' 'at ye wuss dune. I'm
      sure, gien there be, it's for oor sakes and no for yer ain,
      glaid as we wud a' be to du onything for ye: the bonny man
      lats ye want for naething; we're sure o' that!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay are we, Steenie,' assented his father.
    </p>
    <p>
      No voice came from the darkness. They stood silent for a
      while. Then David said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gang in, lassie; yer mother 'll be won'erin what's come o'
      ye. I'll be in in a meenit. I hae jist the last stroke to gie
      this bit jobby.'
    </p>
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    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXXIII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      A RACE WITH DEATH
    </h3>
    <p>
      Without a word, but with disappointment in her heart that
      Steenie had not answered them, Kirsty obeyed. But she went
      round through the rickyard that she might have a moment's
      thought with herself. Not a hand was laid upon her out of the
      darkness, no faintest sound came to her ears through the
      silently falling snow. But as she took her way between two
      ricks, where was just room for her to pass, she
      felt&#8212;felt, however, without the slightest sense of
      <i>material</i> opposition, that she could not go through.
      Endeavouring afterward to describe what rather she was aware
      of than felt, she said the nearest she could come to it, but
      it was not right, was to say that she seemed to encounter the
      ghost of solidity. Certainly nothing seemed to touch her. She
      made no attempt to overcome the resistance, and the moment
      she turned, knew herself free to move in any other direction.
      But as the house was still her goal, she tried another space
      between two of the ricks. There again she found she could not
      pass. Making a third essay in yet another interval, she was
      once more stopped in like fashion. With that came the
      conviction that she was wanted elsewhere, and with it the
      thought of the Horn. She turned her face from the house and
      made straight for the hill, only that she took, as she had
      generally done with Steenie, the easier and rather longer
      way.
    </p>
    <p>
      The notion of the presence of Steenie, which had been with
      her all the time, naturally suggested his house as the spot
      where she was wanted, and thither she sped. But the moment
      she reached, almost before she entered it, she felt as if it
      were utterly empty&#8212;as if it had not in it even air
      enough to give her breath.
    </p>
    <p>
      When a place seems to repel us, when we feel as if we could
      not live there, what if the cause be that there are no souls
      in it making it comfortable to the spiritual sense? That the
      <i>knowledge</i> of such presence would make most people
      uneasy, is no argument against the fancy: truth itself, its
      intrinsic, essential, necessary trueness unrecognised, must
      be repellent.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty did not remain a moment in Steenie's house, but set
      her face to go home by the shorter and rougher path leading
      over the earth-house and across the little burn.
    </p>
    <p>
      The night continued dark, with an occasional thinning of the
      obscurity when some high current blew the clouds aside from a
      little nest of stars. Just as Kirsty reached the descent to
      the burn, the snow ceased, the clouds parted, and a faint
      worn moon appeared. She looked just like a little old lady
      too thin and too tired to go on living more than a night
      longer. But her waning life was yet potent over Kirsty, and
      her strange, wasted beauty, dying to rise again, made her
      glad as she went down the hill through the snow-crowned
      heather. The oppression which came on her in Steenie's house
      was gone entirely, and in the face of the pale ancient moon
      her heart grew so light that she broke into a silly song
      which, while they were yet children, she made for Steenie,
      who was never tired of listening to it:
    </p>
    <pre>
  Willy, wally, woo!
  Hame comes the coo&#8212;
  Hummle, bummle, moo!&#8212;
  Widin ower the Bogie,
  Hame to fill the cogie!
  Bonny hummle coo,
  Wi' her baggy fu'
  O' butter and o' milk,
  And cream as saft as silk,
  A' gethered frae the gerse
  Intil her tassly purse,
  To be oors, no hers,
  Gudewillie, hummle coo!
  Willy, wally, woo!
  Moo, Hummlie, moo!
</pre>
    <p>
      Singing this childish rime, dear to the slow-waking soul of
      Steenie, she had come almost to the bottom of the hill, was
      just stepping over the top of tho weem, when something like a
      groan startled her. She stopped and sent a keen-searching
      glance around. It came again, muffled and dull. It must be
      from the earth-house! Somebody was there! It could not be
      Steenie, for why should Steenie groan? But he might be
      calling her, and the weem changing the character of the
      sound! Anyhow she must be wanted! She dived in.
    </p>
    <p>
      She could scarcely light the candle, for the trembling of her
      hand and the beating of her heart. Slowly the flame grew, and
      the glimmer began to spread. She stood speechless, and
      stared. Out of the darkness at her feet grew the form, as it
      seemed, of Steenie, lying on his face, just as when she found
      him there year before. She dropped on her knees beside him.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was alive at least, for he moved! 'Of course,' thought
      Kirsty, 'he's alive: he never was anything else!' His face
      was turned from her, and his arm was under it. The arm next
      her lay out on the stones, and she took the ice-cold hand in
      hers: it was not Steenie's! She took the candle, and leaned
      across to see the face. God in heaven! there was the mark of
      her whip: it was Francie Gordon! She tried to rouse him. She
      could not; he was cold as ice, and seemed all but dead. But
      for the groan she had heard she would have been sure he was
      dead. She blew out the light, and, swift as her hands could
      move, took garment after garment off, and laid it, warm from
      her live heart, over and under him&#8212;all save one which
      she thought too thin to do him any good. Last of all, she
      drew her stockings over his hands and arms, and, leaving her
      shoes where Steenie's had lain, darted out of the cave. At
      the mouth of it she rose erect like one escaped from the
      tomb, and sped in dim-gleaming whiteness over the snow,
      scarce to have been seen against it. The moon was but a
      shred&#8212;a withered autumn leaf low fallen toward the dim
      plain of the west. As she ran she would have seemed to one of
      Steenie's angels, out that night on the hill, a newly
      disembodied ghost fleeing home. Swift and shadowless as the
      thought of her own brave heart, she ran. Her sense of power
      and speed was glorious. She felt&#8212;not
      thought&#8212;herself a human goddess, the daughter of the
      Eternal. Up height and down hollow she flew, running her race
      with death, not an open eye, save the eyes of her father and
      mother, within miles of her in a world of sleep and snow and
      night. Nor did she slacken her pace as she drew near the
      house, she only ran more softly. At last she threw the door
      to the wall, and shot up the steep stair to her room, calling
      her mother as she went.
    </p>
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    </p><a name="ch034"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXXIV
    </h2>
    <h3>
      BACK FROM THE GRAVE
    </h3>
    <p>
      When David came in to supper, he said nothing, expecting
      Kirsty every moment to appear. Marion was the first to ask
      what had become of her. David answered she had left him in
      the workshop.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bless the bairn! what can she be aboot this time o' nicht?'
      said her mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I kenna,' returned David.
    </p>
    <p>
      When they had sat eating their supper for ten minutes, vainly
      expecting her, David went out to look for her. Returning
      unsuccessful, he found that Marion had sought her all over
      the house with like result. Then they became uneasy.
    </p>
    <p>
      Before going to look for her, however, David had begun to
      suspect her absence in one way or another connected with the
      subject of their conversation in the workshop, to which he
      had not for the moment meant to allude. When now he told his
      wife what had passed, he was a little surprised to find that
      immediately she grew calm.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ow, than, she'll be wi' Steenie!' she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nor did her patience fail, but revived that of her husband.
      They could not, however, go to bed, but sat by the fire,
      saying a word or two now and then. The slow minutes passed,
      and neither of them moved save David once to put on peats.
    </p>
    <p>
      The house-door flew open suddenly, and they heard Kirsty cry,
      'Mother, mother!' but when they hastened to the door, no one
      was there. They heard the door of her room close, however,
      and Marion went up the stair. By the time she reached it,
      Kirsty was in a thick petticoat and buttoned-up cloth-jacket,
      had a pair of shoes on her bare feet, and was glowing a
      'celestial rosy-red.' David stood where he was, and in half a
      minute Kirsty came in three leaps down the stair to him, to
      say that Francie was lying in the weem. In less than a minute
      the old soldier was out with the stable-lantern, harnessing
      one of the horses, the oldest in the stable, good at
      standing, and not a bad walker. He called for no help, yet
      was round at the door so speedily as to astonish even Kirsty,
      who stood with her mother in the entrance by a pile of
      bedding. They put a mattress in the bottom of the cart, and
      plenty of blankets. Kirsty got in, lay down and covered
      herself up, to make the rough ambulance warm, and David drove
      off. They soon reached the <i>weem</i> and entered it.
    </p>
    <p>
      The moment Kirsty had lighted the candle,
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lassie,' cried David, 'there's been a wuman here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It luiks like it,' answered Kirsty: 'I was here mysel,
      father!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay! of coorse, but here's claes&#8212;woman's claes!
      Whaur cam they frae? Wha's claes can they be?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wha's but mine?' returned Kirsty, as she stooped to remove
      from his face the garment that covered his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Lord preserve 's!&#8212;to the verra stockins upo' the
      han's o' 'm!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I had no dreid, father, o' the Lord seem me as he made me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lassie,' cried David, with heartfelt admiration, 'ye sud hae
      been dother til a field-mershall.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wudna be dother til a king!' returned Kirsty. 'Gien I bed
      to be born again, I wudna be born 'cep it was to Dauvid
      Barclay.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My ain lassie!' murmured her father. 'But, eh,' he added,
      interrupting his own thoughts, 'we maun hand oor tongues till
      we've dune the thing we're sent to du!'
    </p>
    <p>
      They bent at once to their task.
    </p>
    <p>
      David was a strong man still, and Kirsty was as good at a
      lift as most men. They had no difficulty in raising Gordon
      between them, David taking his head and Kirsty his feet, but
      it was not without difficulty they got him through the
      passage. In the cart they covered him so that, had he been a
      new-born baby, he could have taken no harm except it were by
      suffocation, and then, Kirsty sitting with his head in her
      lap, they drove home as fast as the old horse could step out.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the meantime Marion had got her best room ready, and warm.
      When they reached it, Francie was certainly still alive, and
      they made haste to lay him in the hot feather-bed. In about
      an hour they thought he swallowed a little milk. Neither
      Kirsty nor her parents went to bed that night, and by one or
      other of them the patient was constantly attended.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty took the first watch, and was satisfied that his
      breathing grew more regular, and by and by stronger. After a
      while it became like that of one in a troubled sleep. He
      moved his head a little, and murmured like one dreaming
      painfully. She called her father, and told him he was saying
      words she could not understand. He took her place and sat
      near him, when presently his soldier-ears, still sharp, heard
      indications of a hot siege. Once he started up on his elbow,
      and put his hand to the side of his head. For a moment he
      looked wildly awake, then sank back and went to sleep again.
    </p>
    <p>
      As Marion was by him in the morning, all at once he spoke
      again, and more plainly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Go away, mother!' he said. 'I am not mad. I am only troubled
      in my mind. I will tell my father you killed me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Marion tried to rouse him, telling him his mother should not
      come near him. He did not seem to understand, but apparently
      her words soothed him, for he went to sleep once more.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was gaunt and ghastly to look at. The scar on his face,
      which Kirsty had taken for the mark of her whip, but which
      was left by the splinter that woke him, remained red and
      disfiguring. But the worst of his look was in his eyes, whose
      glances wandered about uneasy and searching. It was clear all
      was not right with his brain. I doubt if any other of his
      tenants would have recognized him.
    </p>
    <p>
      For a good many days he was like one awake yet dreaming,
      always dreading something, invariably starting when the door
      opened, and when quietest would lie gazing at the one by his
      bedside as if puzzled. He took in general what food they
      brought him, but at times refused it quite. They never left
      him alone for more than a moment.
    </p>
    <p>
      So far were they from giving him up to his mother, that the
      mere idea of letting her know he was with them never entered
      the mind of one of them. To the doctor, whom at once they had
      called in, there was no need to explain the right by which
      they constituted themselves his guardians: anyone would have
      judged it better for him to be with them than with her. David
      said to himself that when Francie wanted to leave them he
      should go; but he had sought refuge with them, and he should
      have it: nothing should make him give him up except legal
      compulsion.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXXV
    </h2>
    <h3>
      FRANCIS COMES TO HIMSELF
    </h3>
    <p>
      One morning, Kirsty sitting beside him, Francis started to
      his elbow as if to get up, then seeing her, lay down again
      with his eyes fixed upon her. She glanced at him now and
      then, but would not seem to notice him much. He gazed for two
      or three minutes, and then said, in a low, doubtful, almost
      timid, voice,
    </p>
    <p>
      'Kirsty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay; what is't, Francie?' returned Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is't yersel, Kirsty?' he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, wha ither, Francie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are ye angry at me, Kirsty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No a grain. What gars ye speir sic a queston?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, but ye gae me sic a are wi' yer whup&#8212;jist here
      upo' the haffit! Luik.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He turned the side of his head toward her, and stroked the
      place, like a small, self-pitying child. Kirsty went to him,
      and kissed it like a mother. She had plainly perceived that
      such a scar could not be from her blow, but it added
      grievously to her pain at the remembrance of it that the poor
      head which she had struck, had in the very same place been
      torn by a splinter&#8212;for so the doctor said. If her whip
      left any mark, the splinter had obliterated it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And syne,' he resumed, 'ye ca'd me a cooard!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did I du that, ill wuman 'at I was!' she returned, with
      tenderest maternal soothing.
    </p>
    <p>
      He laid his arms round her neck, drew her feebly toward him,
      hid his head on her bosom, and wept.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty put her arm round him, held him closer, and stroked
      his head with her other hand, murmuring words of much meaning
      though little sense. He drew back his head, looked at her
      beseechingly, and said,
    </p>
    <p>
      '<i>Div</i> ye think me a cooard, Kirsty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No wi' men,' answered the truthful girl, who would not lie
      even in ministration to a mind diseased.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Maybe ye think I oucht to hae strucken ye back whan ye
      strack me? I <i>wull</i> be a cooard than, lat ye say what ye
      like. I never did, and I never will hit a lassie, lat her
      kill me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It wasna that, Francie. Gien I ca'd ye a cooard, it was 'at
      ye behaved sae ill to Phemy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, the bonny little Phemy! I had 'maist forgotten her! Hoo
      is she, Kirsty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She's weel&#8212;and verra weel,' answered Kirsty; 'she's
      deid.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Deid!' echoed Gordon, with a cry, again raising himself on
      his elbow. 'Surely it wasna&#8212;it wasna 'at the puir wee
      thing cudna forget me! The thing's no possible! I wasna worth
      it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, na; it wasna ae grain that! Her deein had naething to du
      wi that&#8212; nor wi you in ony w'y. I dinna believe she was
      a hair waur for ony nonsense ye said til her&#8212;shame o'
      ye as it was! She dee'd upo' the Horn, ae awfu' tempest o' a
      nicht. She cudna hae suffert lang, puir thing! She hadna the
      stren'th to suffer muckle. Sae awa she gaed!&#8212;and
      Steenie efter her!' added Kirsty in a lower tone, but Francis
      did not seem to hear, and said no more for awhile.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I maun tell ye the trowth, Kirsty,' he resumed: 'forby
      yersel, there's them 'at says I'm a cooard!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I h'ard ae man say't, only ane, and him only ance.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And ye said til 'im, "Ay, I hae lang kenned that!"
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tellt him whaever said it was a leear!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But ye believt it yersel, Kirsty!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wad ye hae me leear and hypocrite forby, to ca' fowk ill
      names for sayin what I believt mysel!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I <i>am</i> a cooard, Kirsty!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye are <i>not</i>, Francie. I wunna believe't though yersel
      say 't! It's naething but a dist o' styte and nonsense 'at's
      won in throu the cracks ye got i' yer heid, fechtin. Ye was
      aye a daft kin' o' a cratur, Francie! Gien onybody ever said
      it, mak ye speed and get yer health again, and syne ye can
      shaw him plain 'at he's a leear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I tell ye, Kirsty, I ran awa!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I fancy ye wud hae been naething but a muckle idiot gien ye
      hadna!&#8212;Ye didna ley onybody in trouble!&#8212;did ye
      noo?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No a sowl 'at I ken o'. Na, I didna do that. The fac
      was&#8212;but nae blame to them&#8212;they a' gaed awa and
      left me my lane, sleepin. I maun hae been terrible tired.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I telled ye sae!' cried Kirsty. 'Jist gang ower the story to
      me, Francie, and I s' tell ye whether ye're a cooard or no. I
      dinna believe a stime o' 't! Ye never was, and never was
      likly to be a cooard. I s' be at the boddom o' 't wi' whaever
      daur threpe me sic a lee!'
    </p>
    <p>
      But Francis showed such signs of excitement as well as
      exhaustion, that Kirsty saw she must not let him talk longer.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Or I'll tell ye what!' she added: '&#8212;ye'll tell father
      and mother and me the haill tale, this verra nicht, or maybe
      the morn's mornin. Ye maun hae an egg noo, and a drappy o'
      milk&#8212;creamy milk, Francie! Ye aye likit that!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She went and prepared the little meal, and after taking it he
      went to sleep.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the evening, with the help of their questioning, he told
      them everything he could recall from the moment he woke to
      find the place abandoned, not omitting his terrors on the
      way, until he overtook the rear of the garrison.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dinna won'er ye was fleyt, Francie,' said Kirsty. 'I wud
      hae been fleyt mysel, wantin my swoord, and kennin nae God to
      trust til! Ye maun learn to ken <i>him</i>, Francie, and syne
      ye'll be feart at naething!'
    </p>
    <p>
      After that, his memory was only of utterly confused shapes,
      many of which must have been fancies. The only things he
      could report were the conviction pervading them all that he
      had disgraced himself, and the consciousness that everyone
      treated him as a deserter, and gave him the cold shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      His next recollection was of coming home to, or rather
      finding himself with his mother, who, the moment she saw him,
      flew into a rage, struck him in the face, and called him
      coward. She must have taken him, he thought, to some place
      where there were people about him who would not let him
      alone, but he could remember nothing more until he found
      himself creeping into a hole which he seemed to know,
      thinking he was a fox with the hounds after him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's my claes like, Kirsty?' he asked at this point.
    </p>
    <p>
      'They war no that gran',' answered Kirsty, her eyes smarting
      with the coming tears; 'but ye'll ne'er see a stick
      (<i>stitch</i>) o' them again: I pat them awa.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What w'y 'ill I win up, wantin' them?' he rejoined, with a
      tremor of anxiety in his voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We'll see aboot that, time eneuch,' answered Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But my mither may be efter me! I wud fain be up! There's no
      sayin what she michtna be up til! She canna bide me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dreid ye naething, Francie. Ye're no a match for my leddy,
      but I s' be atween ye and her. She's no sae fearsome as she
      thinks! Onygait, she disna fleg <i>me</i>.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I left some guid eneuch claes there whan I gaed awa, and I
      daursay they're i' my room yet&#8212;gien only I kenned hoo
      to win at them!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I s' gang and get them til ye&#8212;the verra day ye're fit
      to rise. But ye maunna speyk a word mair the nicht.'
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch036"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXXVI
    </h2>
    <h3>
      KIRSTY BESTIRS HERSELF
    </h3>
    <p>
      They held a long consultation that night as to what they must
      do. Plainly the first and most important thing was to rid
      Francis of the delusion that he had disgraced himself in the
      eyes of his fellow-officers. This would at once wake him as
      from a bad dream to the reality of his condition: convinced
      of the unreality of the idea that possessed him, he would at
      once, they believed, resume his place in the march of his
      generation through life. To find means, then, for the
      attainment of this end, they set their wits to work; and it
      was almost at once clear to David that the readiest way would
      be to enter into communication with any they could reach of
      the officers under whom he had served. His regiment having by
      this time, however, with the rest of the Company's soldiers,
      passed into the service of the Queen, a change doubtless
      involving many other changes concerning which Francis, even
      were he fit to be questioned, could give no information,
      David resolved to apply to sir Haco Macintosh, who had
      succeeded Archibald Gordon in the command, for assistance in
      finding those who could bear the testimony he desired to
      possess.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Divna ye think, father,' said Kirsty, 'it wud be the surest
      and speediest w'y for me to gang mysel to sir Haco?'
    </p>
    <p>
      ''Deed it wud be that, Kirsty!' answered David. 'There's
      naething like the bodily presence o' the leevin sowl to gar
      things gang!'
    </p>
    <p>
      To this Marion, although at first not a little appalled at
      the thought of Kirsty alone in such a huge city as Edinburgh,
      could not help assenting, and the next morning Kirsty
      started, bearing a letter from her father to his old officer,
      in which he begged for her the favour of a few minutes'
      conference on business concerning her father and the son of
      the late colonel Gordon.
    </p>
    <p>
      Sir Haco had retired from the service some years before the
      mutiny, and was living in one of the serenely gloomy squares
      of the Scots capital. Kirsty left her letter at the door, and
      calling the next day, was shown to the library, where lady
      Macintosh as well as sir Haco awaited, with curious and
      kindly interest, the daughter of the man they had known so
      well, and respected so much.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Kirsty entered the room, dressed very simply in a gown
      of dark cloth and a plain straw bonnet, the impression she at
      once made was more than favourable, and they received her
      with a kindness and courtesy that made her feel herself
      welcome. They were indeed of her own kind.
    </p>
    <p>
      Sir Haco was one of the few men who, regarding constantly the
      reality, not the show of things, keep throughout their life,
      however long, great part of their youth, and all their
      childhood. Deeper far in his heart than any of the honours he
      had received, all unsought but none undeserved, lay the
      memory of a happy and reverential boyhood. Sprung from a
      peasant stock, his father was a man of 'high erected thought
      seated in a heart of courtesy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was well matched with his wife, who, though born to a far
      higher social position in which simplicity is rarer, was,
      like him, true and humble and strong. They had one daughter,
      who grew up only to die: the moment they saw Kirsty, their
      hearts went out to her.
    </p>
    <p>
      For there was in Kirsty that unassumed, unconscious dignity,
      that simple propriety, that naturalness of a carriage neither
      trammeled nor warped by thought of self, which at once awakes
      confidence and regard; while her sweet, unaffected 'book
      English,' in which appeared no attempt at speaking like a
      fine lady, no disastrous endeavour to avoid her country's
      utterance, revealed at once her genuine cultivation. Sir Haco
      said afterward that when she spoke Scotch it was good and
      thorough, and when she spoke English it was Wordsworthian.
    </p>
    <p>
      Listening to her first words, and reminded of the solemn
      sententious way in which sergeant Barclay used to express
      himself, his face rose clear in his mind's eye, he saw it as
      it were reflected in his daughter's, and broke out
      with&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh, lassie, but ye're like yer father!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye min' upon him, sir?' rejoined Kirsty, with her perfect
      smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Min' upon him! Naebody worth <i>his</i> min'in upo' could
      ever forget him! Sit ye doon, and tell's a' aboot him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty did as she was told. She began at the beginning, and
      explained first, what doubtless sir Haco knew at least
      something of before, the relation between her father and
      colonel Gordon, whence his family as well as himself had
      always felt it their business to look after the young laird.
      Then she told how, after a long interval, during which they
      could do nothing, a sad opportunity had at length been given
      them of at least attempting to serve him; and it was for aid
      in this attempt that she now sought sir Haco, who could
      direct her toward the procuring of certain information.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what sort of information do you think I can give or get
      for you, Miss Barclay?' asked sir Haco.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll explain the thing to ye, sir, in as feow words as I
      can,' answered Kirsty, dropping her English. 'The young laird
      has taen 't intil his heid that he didna carry himsel like a
      man i' the siege, and it's grown to be in him what they ca' a
      fixt idea. He was left, ye see, sir, a' himlane i' the
      beleaguert toon, and I fancy the suddent waukin and the
      discovery that he was there his lee lane, jist pat him beside
      himsel.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Here she told the whole story, as they had gathered it from
      Francis, mingling it with some elucidatory suggestions of her
      own, and having ended her narration, went on thus:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye see, sir, and my leddy, he was little better nor a
      laddie, and fowk 'at sair needs company, like Francie, misses
      company ower sair. Men's no able&#8212;<i>some</i> men, my
      leddy&#8212;to tak coonsel wi' their ain herts, as women
      whiles learns to du. And sae, whan he cam oot o' the fricht,
      he was ower sair upon himsel for bein i' the fricht. For it
      seems to me there's no shame in bein frichtit, sae lang as ye
      dinna serve and obey the fricht, but trust in him 'at sees,
      and du what ye hae to du. Naebody 'at kenned Francie as I
      did, cud ever believe he faun' mair fear in 's hert nor was
      lawfu' and rizzonable&#8212;sae lang, that is, as he was in
      his richt min': ayont that nane but his maker can jeedge him.
      I dinna mean Francie was a pettern, but, sir, he was no
      cooard&#8212;and that I ken, for I 'm no cooard mysel, please
      God to keep me as he 's made me. But the laddie&#8212;the
      man, I suld say&#8212;he's no to be persuaudit oot o' the
      fancy o' his ain cooardice; and I dinna believe he'll ever
      win oot o' 't wantin the testimony o' his fellow-officers,
      wha o' them may be left to grant the same. And I canna but
      think, gien ye'll excuse me, sir, that, for his father's
      sake, it wud be a gracious ac' to tak him intil the queen's
      service, and lat him baud on fechtin for 's country,
      whaurever it may please her mejesty to want him.&#8212;Oot
      whaur he was afore micht be best for him&#8212;I dinna ken.
      It wad be to put his country's seal upo' their word.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Surely, Miss Barclay, you wouldn't set the poor lad in the
      forefront of danger again!' said lady Macintosh.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wud that, my lady! I canna but think the airmy, savin for
      this misadventur&#8212;gien there be ony sic thing as
      misadventur&#8212;hed a fair chance o' makin a man o'
      Francie; and whiles I canna help doobtin gien onything less
      'ill ever restore him til himsel but restorin him til 's
      former position. It wud ony gait gie him the best chance o'
      shawin til himsel 'at there wasna a hair o' the cooard upon
      him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But,' said sir Haco, 'would her majesty be justified in
      taking the risk involved? Would it not be to peril many for a
      doubtful good to one?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty was silent for a moment, with downcast eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm answert, sir&#8212;as to that p'int,' she said, looking
      up.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For my part,' said lady Macintosh, 'I can't help thinking
      that the love of a good woman like yourself must do more for
      the poor fellow than the approval of all the soldiers in the
      world.&#8212;Pardon me, Haco.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed, my lady, you're perfectly right!' returned her
      husband with a smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      But lady Macintosh hardly heard him, so startled, almost so
      frightened was she at the indignation instantly on Kirsty's
      countenance.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Putna things intil ony held, my leddy, 'at the hert wud
      never put there. It wad be an ill fulfillin o' my father's
      duty til his auld colonel, no to say his auld frien, to
      coontenance sic a notion!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon, Miss Barclay; I was wrong to venture the
      remark. But may I say in excuse, that it is not unnatural to
      imagine a young woman, doing so much for a young man, just a
      little bit in love with him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wud fain hae yer leddyship un'erstaun,' returned Kirsty,
      'that my father, my mother, and mysel, we're jist are and nae
      mair. No are o' 's hes a wuss that disna belang to a' three.
      The langest I can min', it's been my ae ambition to help my
      father and mother to du what they wantit. I never desirit
      merriage, my leddy, and gien I did, it wudna be wi' sic as
      Francie Gordon, weel as I lo'e him, for we war bairnies, and
      laddie and lassie thegither: I wudna hae a man it was for me
      to fin' faut wi'! 'Deed, mem, what fowk ca's love, hes
      neither airt nor pairt i' this metter!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Not to believe the honest glow in Kirsty's face, and the
      clear confident assertion of her eyes, would have shown a
      poor creature in whom the faculty of belief was undeveloped.
    </p>
    <p>
      Sir Haco and lady Macintosh insisted on Kirsty's taking up
      her abode with them while she was in Edinburgh; and Kirsty,
      partly in the hope of expediting the object of her mission
      thereby, and partly because her heart was drawn to her new
      friends, gladly consented. Before a week was over, like
      understanding like, her hostess felt as if she were a
      daughter until now long waiting for her somewhere in the
      infinite.
    </p>
    <p>
      The self-same morning, sir Haco sat down to his study-table,
      and began writing to every officer alive who had served with
      Francis Gordon, requesting to know his feeling, and that of
      the regiment about him. Within three days he received the
      first of the answers, which kept dropping in for the next six
      months. They all described Gordon as rather a scatterbrain,
      as not the less a favourite with officers and men, and as
      always showing the courage of a man, or rather of a boy,
      seeing he not unfrequently acted with a reprehensible
      recklessness that smacked a little of display.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's Francie himsel!' cried Kirsty, with the tears in her
      eyes, when her host read, to this effect, the first result of
      his inquiry.
    </p>
    <p>
      Within a fortnight he received also, from one high in office,
      the assurance that, if Mr. Gordon, on his recovery, wished to
      enter her majesty's service, he should have his commission.
    </p>
    <p>
      While her husband was thus kindly occupied, lady Macintosh
      was showing Kirsty every loving attention she could think of,
      and, in taking her about Edinburgh and its neighbourhood,
      found that the country girl knew far more of the history of
      Scotland than she did herself.
    </p>
    <p>
      She would gladly have made her acquainted with some of her
      friends, but Kirsty shrank from the proposal: she could not
      forget how her hostess had herself misinterpreted the
      interest she took in Francie Gordon. As soon as she felt that
      she could do so without seeming ungrateful, she bade her new
      friends farewell, and hastened home, carrying with her copies
      of the answers which sir Haco had up to that time received.
    </p>
    <p>
      When she arrived it was with such a glad heart that, at sight
      of Francis in her father's Sunday clothes, she laughed so
      merrily that her mother said 'The lassie maun be fey!'
      Haggard as he looked, the old twinkle awoke in his eye
      responsive to her joyous amusement; and David, coming in the
      next moment from putting up the gray mare with which he had
      met the coach to bring Kirsty home, saw them all three
      laughing in such an abandonment of mirth as, though unaware
      of the immediate motive, he could not help joining.
    </p>
    <p>
      The same evening Kirsty went to the castle, and Mrs. Bremner
      needed no persuasion to find the suit which the young laird
      had left in his room, and give it to her to carry to its
      owner; so that, when he woke the next morning, Francis saw
      the gray garments lying by his bed-side in place of David's
      black, and felt the better for the sight.
    </p>
    <p>
      The letters Kirsty had brought, working along, with returning
      health, and the surrounding love and sympathy most potent of
      all, speedily dispelled his yet lingering delusion. It had
      occasionally returned in force while Kirsty was away, but now
      it left him altogether.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch037"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXXVII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      A GREAT GULF
    </h3>
    <p>
      It was now midsummer, and Francis Gordon was well, though
      thin and looking rather delicate. Kirsty and he had walked
      together to the top of the Horn, and there sat, in the heart
      of old memories. The sun was clouded above; the boggy basin
      lay dark below, with its rim of heathery hills not yet in
      bloom, and its bottom of peaty marsh, green and black, with
      here and there a shining spot; the growing crops of the
      far-off farms on the other side but little affected the
      general impression the view gave of a waste world; yet the
      wide expanse of heaven and earth lifted the heart of Kirsty
      with an indescribable sense of presence, purpose, promise.
      For was it not the country on which, fresh from God, she
      first opened the eyes of this life, the visible region in
      which all her efforts had gone forth, in which all the food
      of her growth had been gathered, in which all her joys had
      come to her, in which all her loves had had their scope, the
      place whence by and by she would go away to find her brother
      with the bonny man!
    </p>
    <p>
      Francis saw without heeding. His heart was not uplifted. His
      earthly future, a future of his own imagining, drew him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This winna du ony langer, Kirsty!' he said at length. 'The
      accusin angel 'll be upo' me again or I ken! I maunna be idle
      'cause I'm happy ance mair&#8212;thanks to you, Kirsty!
      Little did I think ever to raise my heid again! But noo I
      maun be at my wark! I'm fit eneuch!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm richt glaid to hear't!' answered Kirsty. 'I was jist
      thinkin lang for a word o' the sort frae ye, Francie. I didna
      want to be the first to speyk o' 't.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I was just thinkin lang to hear ye speyk o' 't!'
      returned Francis. 'I wantit to du't as the thing ye wad hae
      o' me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Even than, Francie, ye wudna, it seems, hae been doin 't to
      please me, and that pleases me weel! I wud be nane pleast to
      think ye duin 't for me! It wud gie me a sair hert, Francie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What for that, Kirsty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      ''Cause it wud shaw ye no a man yet! A man's a man 'at dis
      what's richt, what's pleasin to the verra hert o' richt.
      Ye'll please me best by no wantin to please me; and ye'll
      please God best by duin what he's putten intil yer hert as
      the richt thing, and the bonny thing, and the true thing,
      though ye suld dee i' the duin o' 't.&#8212;Tell me what
      ye're thinkin o' duin.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What but gaeing efter this new commission they hae promised
      me? There's aye a guid chance o' fechtin upo' the
      borders&#8212;the frontiers, as they ca' them!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty sat silent. She had been thinking much of what Francis
      ought to do, and had changed her mind on the point since the
      time when she talked about him with sir Haco.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Isna that what ye wud hae me du, Kirsty?' he said, when he
      found she continued silent. 'A body's no a fule for wantin
      guid advice!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, that's true eneuch! What for wad ye want to gang
      fechtin?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To shaw the warl' I'm nane o' what my mither ca'd me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And shawn that, hoo muckle the better man wud ye be for 't?
      Min' ye it's ae thing to be, and anither to shaw. Be ye maun;
      shaw ye needna.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dinna ken; I micht be growin better a' the time!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And ye micht be growin waur.&#8212;What the better wud ony
      neebour be for ye gane fechtin? Wudna it be a' for yersel? Is
      there naething gien intil yer ban' to du&#8212;naething
      nearer hame nor that? Surely o' twa things, are near and are
      far, the near comes first!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dinna ken. I thoucht ye wantit me to gang!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, raither nor bide at hame duin naething; but michtna
      there be something better to du?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dinna ken. I thoucht to please ye, Kirsty, but it seems
      naething wull!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay; that's whaur the mischief lies. Ye thoucht to please
      me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I did think to please you, Kirsty! I thoucht, ance dune weel
      afore the warl as my father did, I micht hae the face to come
      hame to you, and say&#8212;"Kirsty, wull ye hae me?"'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Aye the same auld Francie!' said Kirsty, with a deep sigh.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tell ye, Francie, i' the name o' God, I'll never hae ye on
      nae sic terms!&#8212;Suppose I was to merry some-body whan ye
      was awa pruvin to yersel, and a' the lave 'at never
      misdoobted ye, 'at ye was a brave man&#8212;what wud ye du
      whan ye cam hame?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Naething o' mortal guid! Tak to the drink, maybe.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye tell me that! and ye think, wi' my een open to ken 'at ye
      say true, I wud merry ye?&#8212;a man like you! Eh, Francie,
      Francie! ye're no worth my takin' and ye're no like to be
      worth the takin o' ony honest wuman!&#8212;Can ye possibly
      imegine a wuman merryin a man 'at she kenned wud drive her to
      coontless petitions to be hauden ohn despisit him? Ye mak my
      hert unco sair, Francie! I hae dune my best wi' ye, and the
      en' o' 't is, 'at ye're no worth naething!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'For the life o' me, Kirsty, I dinna ken what ye're drivin
      at, or what ye wud hae o' me! I canna but think ye're usin me
      as ye wudna like to be used yersel!'
    </p>
    <p>
      ''Deed I wud not like it gien I was o' your breed, Francie!
      Man, did ye never ance i' yer life think what ye hed to
      du&#8212;what was gien ye to du&#8212;what it was yer duty to
      du?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No sae aften, doobtless, as I oucht. But I'm ready to hear
      ye tell me my duty; I'm no past reasonin wi'!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did ye never hear 'at ye're to lo'e yer neebour as yersel?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm duin that wi' a' my hert, Kirsty&#8212;and that ye ken
      as weel as I du mysel!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye mean me, Francie! And ye ca' that lo'in me, to wull me
      merry a man 'at 's no a man ava! But it's nae me 'at 's yer
      neebour, Francie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wha is my neebour, Kirsty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The queston's been speirt afore&#8212;and answert.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what's the answer til't?'
    </p>
    <p>
      ''At yer neebour's jist whaever lies neist ye i' need o' yer
      help. Gien ye read the tale o' the guid Sameritan wi' ony
      sort o' gumption, that's what ye'll read intil 't and noucht
      else. The man or wuman ye can help, ye hae to be neebour
      til.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want to help you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye canna help me. I'm in no need o' yer help. And the
      queston's no whar's the man I <i>micht</i> help, but whaur's
      the man I <i>maun</i> help. I wantit to be <i>your</i>
      neebour, but I cudna win at ye for the thieves; ye <i>wad</i>
      stick to them, and they wudna lat me du naething.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What thieves, i' the name o' common sense, Kirsty?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Love o' yer ain gait, and love o' makin a show, and want o'
      care for what's richt. Aih, Francie, I doobt something a heap
      waur 'll hae to come upo' ye! A' my labour's lost, and I
      dearly grudge it&#8212;no the labour, but the loss o' 't! I
      grudge that sair.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Kirsty, i' the name o' God, wha <i>is</i> my neebour?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yer ain mither.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My ain mither!&#8212;<i>her</i> oot o' a' the warl'?&#8212;I
      never cam upo' spark o' rizzon intil her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Michtna she be that are, oot o' a' the warl', ye never
      shawed spark o' rizzon til?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's nae place in her for reason to gang til!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye never tried her wi' 't! Ye wud arguy wi' her mair nor
      plenty, but did ye ever shaw her rizzon i' yer behaviour?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel ye <i>are</i> turnin agen me&#8212;you 'at 's saved my
      life frae her! Diana I tell you hoo, whan I wan hame at last
      and gaed til her, for she was aye guid to me when I wasna
      weel, she fell oot upo' me like a verra deevil, ragin and
      ca'in me ill names, 'at I jist ran frae the hoose&#8212; and
      ye ken whaur ye faun' me! Gien it hadna been for you, I wud
      have been deid: I was waur nor deid a'ready! What w'y
      <i>can</i> I be neebour to <i>her</i>! It wud be naething but
      cat and dog atween's frae mornin to nicht!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ae body canna be cat and dog baith! And the dog's as ill's
      the cat&#8212; whiles waur!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ony dog wud yowl gien ye threw a kettle o' bilin watter ower
      him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did she that til ye?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She mintit at it. I ran frae her. She bed the toddy-kettle
      in her ban', and she splasht it in her ain face tryin to
      fling't at me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Maybe she didna ken ye!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She kenned me weel eneuch. She ca'd me by my ain as weel 's
      ither names.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye're jist croonin my arguyment, Francie! Yer mither's jist
      perishin o' drink! She drinks and drinks, and, by what I
      hear, cares for noucht else. A' 's upo' the ro'd to ruin in
      her and aboot her. She hasna the brains noo, gien ever she
      bed them, to guide hersel. Is Satan to grip her 'cause ye
      winna be neebour til her and hand him aff o' her? I ken ye're
      a guid son sae far as lat her du as she likes and tak 'maist
      a' the siller, but that's what greases the exle o' the cairt
      the deevil's gotten her intil! I ken weel she hesna been
      muckle o' a mither til ye, but ye're her son whan a' 's said.
      And there can be naething ye're callt upon to du, sae lang as
      she's i' the grup o' the enemy, but rugg her oot o' 't. Gien
      ye dinna that, ye'll never be oot o' 's grup yersel. Ye come
      oot thegither, or ye bide thegither.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Gordon sat speechless.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's <i>im</i>possible!' he said at length.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Francie,' rejoined Kirsty, very quietly and solemnly, 'ye're
      yer mother's keeper; ye're her neist neebour: are ye gauin to
      du yer duty by her, or are ye not?' 'I canna; I daurna; I'm a
      cooard afore her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gien ye lat her gang on to disgrace yer father, no to say
      yersel&#8212;and that by means o' what's yours and no hers,
      I'll say mysel 'at ye're a cooard.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come hame wi' me and tak my pairt, and I'll promise ye to du
      my best.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye maun tak yer ain pairt; and ye maun tak her pairt tu
      against hersel.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's no to be thoucht o', Kirsty!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye winna?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I canna my lane. I winna try 't. It wud be waur nor
      useless.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty rose, turning her face homeward. Gordon sprang to his
      feet. She was already three yards from him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Kirsty! Kirsty!' he cried, going after her.
    </p>
    <p>
      She went straight for home, never showing by turn of head, by
      hesitation of step, or by change of carriage, that she heard
      his voice or his feet behind her.
    </p>
    <p>
      When they had thus gone two or three hundred yards, he
      quickened his pace, and laid his hand on her arm.
    </p>
    <p>
      She stopped and faced him. He dropped his hand, grew yet
      whiter, and said not a word. She walked on again. Like one in
      a dream he followed, his head hanging, his eyes on the
      heather. She went on faster. He was falling behind her, but
      did not know it. Down and down the hill he followed, and only
      at the earth-house lifted his head: she was nearly over the
      opposite brae! He had let her go! He might yet have overtaken
      her, but he knew that he had lost her.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had no home, no refuge! Then first, not when alone in the
      beleaguered city, he knew desolation. He had never knocked at
      the door of heaven, and earth had closed hers! An angel who
      needed no flaming sword to make her awful, held the gate of
      his lost paradise against him. None but she could open to
      him, and he knew that, like God himself, Kirsty was
      inexorable. Left alone with that last terrible look from the
      eyes of the one being he loved, he threw himself in despair
      on the ground. True love is an awful thing, not to the untrue
      only, but sometimes to the growing-true, for to everything
      that can be burned it is a consuming fire. Never more, it
      seemed, would those eyes look in at his soul's window without
      that sad, indignant repudiation in them! He rose, and crept
      into the earth-house.
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty lost herself in prayer as she went. 'Lord, I hae dune
      a' I can!' she said. 'Until thou hast dune something by
      thysel, I can do naething mair. He's i' thy han's still, I
      praise thee, though he's oot o' mine! Lord, gien I hae dune
      him ony ill, forgie me; a puir human body canna ken aye the
      best! Dinna lat him suffer for my ignorance, whether I be to
      blame for 't or no. I will try to do whatever thou makest
      plain to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      By the time she reached home she was calm. Her mother saw and
      respected her solemn mood, gave her a mother's look, and said
      nothing: she knew that Kirsty, lost in her own thoughts, was
      in good company.
    </p>
    <p>
      What was passing in the soul of Francis Gordon, I can only
      indicate, I cannot show. The most mysterious of all vital
      movements, a generation, a transition, was there&#8212;how
      initiated, God only knows. Francis knew neither whence it
      came nor whither it went. He was being re-born from above.
      The change was in himself; the birth was that of his will. It
      was his own highest action, therefore all God's. He was
      passing from death into life, and knew it no more than the
      babe knows that he is being born. The change was into a new
      state of being, of the very existence of which most men are
      incredulous, for it is beyond preconception, capable only of
      being experienced. Thorough as is the change, the man knows
      himself the same man, and yet would rather cease to be, than
      return to what he was. The unknown germ in him, the root of
      his being, yea, his very being itself, the holy thing which
      is his intrinsic substance, hitherto unknown to his
      consciousness, has begun to declare itself, and the worm is
      passing into the butterfly, the creeping thing into the
      Psyche. It is a change in which God is the potent presence,
      but which the man must <i>will</i>, or remain the gaoler who
      prisons in loathsomeness his own God-born self, and chokes
      the fountain of his own liberty.
    </p>
    <p>
      Francis knew nothing of all this; he only felt he must knock
      at the door behind which Kirsty lived. Kirsty could not open
      the door to him, but there was one who could, and Francis
      could knock! 'God help me!' he cried, as he lay on his face
      to live, where once he had lain on his face to die. For the
      rising again is the sepulchre. The world itself is one vast
      sepulchre for the heavenly resurrection. We are all busy
      within the walls of our tomb burying our dead, that the
      corruptible may perish, and the incorruptible go free.
      Francis Gordon came out of that earth-house a risen man: his
      will was born. He climbed again to the spot where Kirsty and
      he had sat together, and there, with the vast clear heaven
      over his head, threw himself once more on his face, and
      lifted up his heart to the heart whence he came.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch038"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXXVIII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      THE NEIGHBOURS
    </h3>
    <p>
      He had eaten nothing since the morning, and felt like one in
      a calm ethereal dream as he walked home to Weelset in the
      soft dusk of an evening that would never be night, but die
      into the day. No one saw him enter the house, no one met him
      on the ancient spiral stair, as, with apprehensive
      anticipation, he sought the drawing-room.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had just set his foot on the little landing by its door
      when a wild scream came from the room. He flung the door open
      and darted in. His mother rushed into his arms, enveloped
      from foot to head in a cone of fire. She was making, in wild
      flight, for the stair, to reach which would have been death
      to her. Francis held her fast, but she struggled so wildly
      that he had actually to throw her on the floor ere he could
      do anything to deliver her. Then he flung on her the rug, the
      table-cover, his coat, and one of the window-curtains,
      tearing it fiercely from the rings. Having got all these
      close around her, he rang the bell with an alarum-peal, but
      had to ring three times, for service in that house was
      deadened by frequent fury of summons. Two of the
      maids&#8212;there was no manservant in the house
      now&#8212;laid their mistress on a mattress, and carried her
      to her room. Gordon's hands and arms were so severely burned
      that he could do nothing beyond directing: he thought he had
      never felt pain before.
    </p>
    <p>
      The doctor was sent for, and came speedily. Having examined
      them, he said Mrs. Gordon's injuries would have caused him no
      anxiety but for her habits: their consequences might be very
      serious, and every possible care must be taken of her.
    </p>
    <p>
      Disabled as he was, Francis sat by her till the morning; and
      the night's nursing did far more for himself than for his
      mother. For, as he saw how she suffered, and interpreted her
      moans by what he had felt and was still feeling in his own
      hands and arms, a great pity awoke in him. What a lost life
      his mother's had been! Was this to be the end of it? The old
      kindness she had shown him in his childhood and youth,
      especially when he was in any bodily trouble, came back upon
      him, and a new love, gathering up in it all the intermittent
      love of days long gone by, sprang to life in his heart, and
      he saw that the one thing given him to do was to deliver his
      mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      The task seemed, if not easy, yet far from irksome, so long
      as she continued incapable of resisting, annoying, or
      deceiving him; but the time speedily came when he perceived
      that the continuous battle rather than war of duty and
      inclination must be fought and in some measure won in himself
      ere he could hope to stir up any smallest skirmish of sacred
      warfare in the soul of his mother. What added to the
      acerbities of this preliminary war was, that the very nature
      of the contest required actions which showed not only
      unbecoming in a son, but mean and disgraceful in themselves.
      There was no pride, pomp, or circumstance of glorious war in
      this poor, domestic strife, this seemingly sordid and
      unheroic, miserably unheroic, yet high, eternal contest! But
      now that Francis was awake to his duty, the best of his
      nature awoke to meet its calls, and he drew upon a growing
      store of love for strength to thwart the desires of her he
      loved. 'Entire affection hateth nicer hands,' and Francis
      learned not to mind looking penurious and tyrannical,
      selfish, heartless, and unsympathetic, in the endeavour to be
      truly loving and lovingly true. He had not Kirsty to support
      him, but he could now go higher than to Kirsty for the help
      he needed; he went to the same fountain from which Kirsty
      herself drew her strength. At the same time frequent thought
      of her filled him with glad assurance of her sympathy, which
      was in itself a wondrous aid. He neither saw nor sought to
      see her: he would not go near her before at least she already
      knew from other sources what would give her the hope that he
      was trying to do right.
    </p>
    <p>
      The gradually approaching strife between mother and son burst
      out the same moment in which the devilish thirst awoke to its
      cruel tyranny. It was a mercy to both of them that it
      re-asserted itself while yet the mother was helpless toward
      any indulgence of her passion. Francis was no longer afraid
      of her, but it was the easier because of her condition,
      although not the less painful for him to frustrate her
      desire. Neither did it make it the less painful that already
      her countenance, which the outward fire had not half so much
      disfigured as that which she herself had applied inwardly,
      had begun to remind him of the face he had long ago loved a
      little, but this only made him, if possible, yet more
      determined that not one shilling of his father's money should
      go to the degradation of his mother. That she lusted and
      desired to have, was the worst of reasons why she should
      obtain! A compelled temperance was of course in itself
      worthless, but that alone could give opportunity for the
      waking of what soul was left her. Puny as it was, that might
      then begin to grow; it might become aware of the bondage to
      which it had been subjected, and begin to long for liberty.
    </p>
    <p>
      In carrying out his resolution, Francis found it specially
      hard to fight, along with the bad in his mother, the good in
      himself: the lower forms of love rose against the higher, and
      had to be put down. To see the scintillation of his mother's
      eyes at the sound of any liquid, and know how easily he could
      give her an hour of false happiness, tore his heart, while
      her fierce abuse hardly passed the portals of his brain. Her
      condition was so pitiful that her words could not make him
      angry. She would declare it was he who set her clothes on
      fire, and as soon as she was up again she would publish to
      the world what a coward and sneak he showed himself from
      morning to night. Had Francis been what he once was, his
      mother and he must soon have come as near absolute hatred as
      is possible to the human; but he was now so different that
      the worst answer he ever gave her was,
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother, you <i>know</i> you don't mean it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I mean it with all my heart and soul, Francis,' she replied,
      glaring at him.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Crying!' she said. 'You always were a coward, Francis!'
    </p>
    <p>
      But the word had no more any sting for him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm all right, mother. My nose got in the way!' he answered,
      restoring his handkerchief to his pocket.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      To this petition, David had at once and gladly consented.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;read Scott and
      Dickens and Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was furious at his daring to speak so to <i>her</i>, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch039"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XXXIX
    </h2>
    <h3>
      KIRSTY GIVES ADVICE
    </h3>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will ye no sit, Kirsty?' said Francis at length.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hae had a some sair time o' 't sin' I shawed ye plain hoo
      little I was worth yer notice, Kirsty!' he began.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay,' returned Kirsty, 'but ilka hoor o' 't hes shawn what
      the rael Francie was!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I kenna, Kirsty. A' I can say is&#8212;'at I dinna think
      nearhan sae muckle o' mysel as I did than.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I think a heap mair o' ye,' answered Kirsty. 'I canna
      but think ye upo' the richt ro'd noo, Francie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I houp I am, but I'm aye fin'in' oot something 'at 'ill
      never du.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And ye'll keep fin'in' oot that sae lang 's there 's
      onything left but what 's like himsel.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll du that, Francie&#8212;no for auld kin'ness, but for
      kin'ness never auld. What's wrang wi' ye?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Kirsty, wuman, she's brocken oot again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dinna won'er. I hae h'ard o' sic things.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's jist taen the pith oot o' me! What <i>am</i> I to du?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye canna du better nor weel; jist begin again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?&#8212;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 <i>frae</i> 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&#8212;fou
      as e'er ye saw man in market!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He broke down, and wept like a child.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what did ye du?' asked Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Noo, Kirsty, what am I to du neist?' he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hae ye naething i' yer ain min'?' she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Naething.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, we'll awa hame!' she returned, rising. 'Maybe, as we
      gang, we'll get licht!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;that of riding a
      horse as he ought to be ridden. Thereupon came to her mind a
      conclusion she had lately read somewhere&#8212; namely, that
      a man ought to regard his neighbour as specially
      characterized by the possession of this or that virtue or
      capacity, whatever it might be, that distinguished him; for
      that was as the door-plate indicating the proper entrance to
      his inner house. A moment more and Kirsty thought she saw a
      way in which Francis might gain a firmer hold on his mother,
      as well as provide her with a pleasure that might work toward
      her redemption.
    </p>
    <p>
      Francie,' she said, 'I hae thoucht o' something. My father
      has aye said, and ye ken he kens, 'at yer mother was a by
      ordinar guid rider in her young days, and this is what I wud
      hae ye du: gang straucht awa, whaurever ye think best, and
      buy for her the best luikin, best tempered, handiest, and
      easiest gaein leddy's-horse ye can lay yer ban's upo'. Ye hae
      a gey fair beast o' yer ain, my father says, and ye maun jist
      ride wi' her whaurever she gangs.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll du 't, Kirsty. I canna gang straucht awa, I doobt,
      though; I fear she has whusky left, and there's no sayin what
      she micht du afore I wan back. I maun gang hame first.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm no clear upo' that. Ye canna weel gang and rype
      (<i>search</i>) a' the kists and aumries i' the hoose she
      ca's her ain! That wud anger her terrible. Nor can ye weel
      lay ban's upon her, and tak frae her by force. A wuman micht
      du that, but a man, and special a wuman's ain ae son, canna
      weel du 't&#8212;that is, gien there's ony ither coorse 'at
      can be followt. It seems to me ye maun tak the risk o' her
      bottle. And it may be no ill thing 'at she sud disgrace
      hersel oot and oot. Onygait wi' bein awa, and comin back wi'
      the horse i' yer ban' ye'll come afore her like bringin wi'
      ye a fresh beginnin, a new order o' things like, and that w'y
      av'ide words wi' her, and words maun aye be av'idit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Francis remained in thoughtful silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hae little fear,' pursued Kirsty, 'but we'll get her frae
      the drink a'thegither, and the houp is we may get something
      better putten intil her. Bein fou whiles, isna the main
      difficulty. But I beg yer pardon, Francie! I maunna forget
      'at she's your mother!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gien ye wud but tak her and me thegither, Kirsty, it wud be
      a gran' thing for baith o' 's! Wi' you to tak the half o' 't,
      I micht stan' up un'er the weicht o' my responsibility!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm takin my share o' that, onygait, daurin to advise ye,
      Francie!&#8212;Noo gang, laddie; gang straucht awa and buy
      the horse.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I maun rin hame first, to put siller i' my pooch! I s' hand
      oot o' her gait.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gang til my faither for't. I haena a penny, but he has aye
      plenty!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I maun hae my horse; there's nae co'ch till the morn's
      mornin.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gangna near the place. My father 'ill gie ye the gray
      mear&#8212;no an ill are ava! She'll tak ye there in four or
      five hoors, as <i>ye</i> ride. Only, min' and gie her a
      pickle corn ance, and meal and watter twise upo' the ro'd.
      Gien ye seena the animal yere sure 'ill please her, gang
      further, and comena hame wantin 't.'
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch040"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XL
    </h2>
    <h3>
      MRS. GORDON
    </h3>
    <p>
      When Mrs. Gordon came to herself, she thought to behave as if
      nothing had happened, and rang the bell to order her
      carriage. The maid informed her that the coachman had driven
      away with it before lunch, and had not said where he was
      going.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Driven away with it!' cried her mistress, starting to her
      feet; 'I gave him no orders!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I saw the laird giein him directions, mem,' rejoined the
      maid.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Gordon sat down again. She began to remember what her
      son had said when first he gave her the carriage.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where did he send him?' she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dinna ken, mem.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Go and ask the laird to step this way.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Please, mem, he's no i' the hoose. I ken, for I saw him
      gang&#8212;hoors ago.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did he go in the carriage?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, mem; he gaed upo' 's ain fit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps he's come home by this time!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm sure he's no that, mem.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Gordon went to her room, all but finished the bottle of
      whisky, and threw herself on her bed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Toward morning she woke with aching head and miserable mind.
      Now dozing, now tossing about in wretchedness, she lay till
      the afternoon. No one came near her, and she wanted no one.
    </p>
    <p>
      At length, dizzy and despairing, her head in torture, and her
      heart sick, she managed to get out of bed, and, unable to
      walk, literally crawled to the cupboard in which she had put
      away the precious bottle:&#8212;joy! there was yet a glass in
      it! With the mouth of it to her lips, she was tilting it up
      to drain the last drop, when the voice of her son came
      cheerily from the drive, on which her window looked down:
    </p>
    <p>
      'See what I've brought you, mother!' he called.
    </p>
    <p>
      Fear came upon her; she took the bottle from her mouth, put
      it again in the cupboard, and crept back to her bed, her
      brain like a hive buzzing with devils.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Francis entered the house, he was not surprised to learn
      that she had not left her room. He did not try to see her.
    </p>
    <p>
      The next morning she felt a little better, and had some tea.
      Still she did not care to get up. She shrank from meeting her
      son, and the abler she grew to think, the more unwilling she
      was to see him. He came to her room, but she heard him
      coming, turned her head the other way, and pretended to be
      asleep. Again and again, almost involuntarily, she half rose,
      remembering the last of the whisky, but as often lay down
      again, loathing the cause of her headache.
    </p>
    <p>
      Stronger and stronger grew her unwillingness to face her son:
      she had so thoroughly proved herself unfit to be trusted! She
      began to feel towards him as she had sometimes felt toward
      her mother when she had been naughty. She began to see that
      she could make her peace, with him or with herself, only by
      acknowledging her weakness. Aided by her misery, she had
      begun to perceive that she could not trust herself, and ought
      to submit to be treated as the poor creature she was. She had
      resented the idea that she could not keep herself from drink
      if she pleased, for she knew she could; but she had not
      pleased! How could she ever ask him to trust her again!
    </p>
    <p>
      What further passed in her, I cannot tell. It is an unfailing
      surprise when anyone, more especially anyone who has hitherto
      seemed without strength of character, turns round and
      changes. The only thing Mrs. Gordon then knew as helping her,
      was the strong hand of her son upon her, and the
      consciousness that, had her husband lived, she could never
      have given way as she had. But there was another help which
      is never wanting where it can find an entrance; and now first
      she began to pray, 'Lead me not into temptation.'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was one excuse which David alone knew to make for
      her&#8212;that her father was a hard drinker, and his father
      before him.
    </p>
    <p>
      Doubtless, during all the period of her excesses, the soul of
      the woman in her better moments had been ashamed to know her
      the thing she was. It could not, when she was at her worst,
      comport with her idea of a lady, poor as that idea was, to
      drink whisky till she did not know what she did next. And
      when the sleeping woman God made, wakes up to see in what a
      house she lives, she will soon grasp at besom and bucket, nor
      cease her cleansing while spot is left on wall or ceiling or
      floor.
    </p>
    <p>
      How the waking comes, who can tell! God knows what he wants
      us to do, and what we can do, and how to help us. What I have
      to tell is that, the next morning, Mrs. Gordon came down to
      breakfast, and finding her son already seated at the table,
      came up behind him, without a word set the bottle with the
      last glass of whisky in it before him, went to her place at
      the table, gave him one sorrowful look, and sat down.
    </p>
    <p>
      His heart understood, and answered with a throb of joy so
      great that he knew it first as pain.
    </p>
    <p>
      Neither spoke until breakfast was almost over. Then Francis
      said,
    </p>
    <p>
      'You've grown so much younger, mother, it is quite time you
      took to riding again! I've been buying a horse for you.
      Remembering the sort of pony you bought for me, I thought I
      should like to try whether I could not please you with a
      horse of my buying.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Silly boy!' she returned, with a rather pitiful laugh, 'do
      you suppose at my age I'm going to make a fool of myself on
      horseback? You forget I'm an old woman!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not a bit of it, mother! If ever you rode as David Barclay
      says you did, I don't see why you shouldn't ride still. He's
      a splendid creature! David told me you liked a big fellow.
      Just put on your habit, mammy, and we'll take a gallop
      across, and astonish the old man a bit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear boy, I have no nerve! I'm not the woman I was! It's
      my own fault, I know, and I'm both sorry and ashamed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We are both going to try to be good, mother dear!' faltered
      Francis.
    </p>
    <p>
      The poor woman pressed her handkerchief with both hands to
      her face, and wept for a few moments in silence, then rose
      and left the room. In an hour she was ready, and out looking
      for Francis. Her habit was a little too tight for her, but
      wearable enough. The horses were sent for, and they mounted.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch041"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XLI
    </h2>
    <h3>
      TWO HORSEWOMEN
    </h3>
    <p>
      There was at Corbyknowe a young, well-bred horse which David
      had himself reared: Kirsty had been teaching him to carry a
      lady. For her hostess in Edinburgh, discovering that she was
      fond of riding and that she had no saddle, had made her a
      present of her own: she had not used it for many years, but
      it was in very good condition, and none the worse for being a
      little old-fashioned. That same morning Kirsty had put on a
      blue riding-habit, which also lady Macintosh had given her,
      and was out on the highest slope of the farm, hoping to catch
      a sight of the two on horseback together, and so learn that
      her scheme was a success. She had been on the outlook for
      about an hour, when she saw them coming along between the
      castle and Corbyknowe, and went straight for a certain point
      in the road so as to reach it simultaneously with them. For
      she had just spied a chance of giving Gordon the opportunity
      which her father had told her he was longing for, of saying
      something about her to his mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who can that be?' said Mrs. Gordon as they trotted gently
      along, when she spied the lady on horseback. 'She rides well!
      But she seems to be alone! Is there really nobody with her?'
    </p>
    <p>
      As she spoke, the young horse came over a
      <i>dry-stane-dyke</i> in fine style.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, she's an accomplished horsewoman!' exclaimed Mrs.
      Gordon. 'She must be a stranger! There's not a lady within
      thirty miles of Weelset can ride like that!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No such stranger as you think, mother!' rejoined Francis.
      'That's Kirsty Barclay of Corbyknowe.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never, Francis! The girl rides like a lady!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Francis smiled, perhaps a little triumphantly. Something like
      what lay in the smile the mother read in it, for it roused at
      once both her jealousy and her pride. <i>Her</i> son to fall
      in love with a girl that was not even a lady! A Gordon of
      Weelset to marry a tenant's daughter! Impossible!
    </p>
    <p>
      Kirsty was now in the road before them, riding slowly in the
      same direction. It was the progress, however, not the horse
      that was slow: his frolics, especially when the other horses
      drew near, kept his rider sufficiently occupied.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Gordon quickened her pace, and passed without turning
      her head or looking at her, but so close, and with so sudden
      a rush that Kirsty's horse half wheeled, and bounded over the
      dyke by the roadside. Her rudeness annoyed her son, and he
      jumped his horse into the field and joined Kirsty, letting
      his mother ride on, and contenting himself with keeping her
      in sight. After a few moments' talk, however, he proposed
      that they should overtake her, and cutting off a great loop
      of the road, they passed her at speed, and turned and met
      her. She had by this time got a little over her temper, and
      was prepared to behave with propriety, which meant&#8212;the
      dignity becoming her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What a lovely horse you have, Miss Barclay!' she said,
      without other greeting. 'How much do you want for him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is but half-broken,' answered Kirsty, 'or I would offer
      to change with you. I almost wonder you look at him from the
      back of your own!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is a beauty&#8212;is he not? This is my first trial of
      him. The laird gave me him only this morning. He is as quiet
      as a lamb.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There, Donal,' said Kirsty to her horse, 'tak example by yer
      betters! Jist luik hoo he stan's!&#8212;The laird has a true
      eye for a horse, ma'am,' she went on, 'but he always says you
      gave it him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Always! hm!' said Mrs. Gordon to herself, but she looked
      kindly at her son.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How did you learn to ride so well, Kirsty?' she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I suppose I got it from my father, ma'am! I began with the
      cows.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah, how is old David?' returned Mrs. Gordon. 'I have seen
      him once or twice about the castle of late, but have not
      spoken to him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is very well, thank you.&#8212;Will you not come up to
      the Knowe and rest a moment? My mother will be very glad to
      see you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not to-day, Kirsty. I haven't been on horseback for years,
      and am already tired. We shall turn here. Good-morning!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-morning, ma'am! Good-bye, Mr. Gordon!' said Kirsty
      cheerfully, as she wheeled her horse to set him straight at a
      steep grassy brae.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch042"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XLII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      THE LAIRD AND HIS MOTHER
    </h3>
    <p>
      The laird and his mother sat and looked at Kirsty as her
      horse tore up the brae.
    </p>
    <p>
      'She can ride&#8212;can't she, mother?' said Francis.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well enough for a hoiden,' answered Mrs. Gordon.
    </p>
    <p>
      'She rides to please her horse now, but she'll have him as
      quiet as yours before long,' rejoined her son, both a little
      angry and a little amused at her being called a hoiden who
      was to him like an angel grown young with aeonian life.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' resumed his mother, as if she <i>would</i> be fair,
      'she does ride well! If only she were a lady, that I might
      ask her to ride with me! After all it's none of my business
      what she is&#8212;so long as <i>you</i> don't want to marry
      her!' She concluded, with an attempt at a laugh.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I do want to marry her, mother!' rejoined Francis.
    </p>
    <p>
      A short year before, his mother would have said what was in
      her heart, and it would not have been pleasant to hear; but
      now she was afraid of her son, and was silent. But it added
      to her torture that she must be silent. To be dethroned in
      castle Weelset by the daughter of one of her own tenants, for
      as such she thought of them, was indeed galling. 'The
      impudent quean!' she said to herself, 'she's ridden on her
      horse into the heart of the laird!' But for the wholesome
      consciousness of her own shame, which she felt that her son
      was always sparing, she would have raged like a fury.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You that might have had any lady in the land!' she said at
      length.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I might, mother, it would be just as vain to look for her
      equal.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You might at least have shown your mother the respect of
      choosing a lady to sit in her place! You drive me from the
      house!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother,' said Francis, 'I have twice asked Kirsty Barclay to
      be my wife, and she has twice refused me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You may try her again: she had her reasons! She never meant
      to let you slip! If you got disgusted with her afterwards,
      she would always have her refusal of you to throw in your
      teeth.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Francis laid his hand on his mother's, and stopped her horse.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother, you compel me!' he said. 'When I came home ill, and,
      as I thought, dying, you called me bad names, and drove me
      from the house. Kirsty found me in a hole in the earth,
      actually dying then, and saved my life.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good heavens, Francis! Are you mad still? How dare you tell
      such horrible falsehoods of your own mother? You never came
      near me! You went straight to Corbyknowe!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ask Mrs. Bremner if I speak the truth. She ran out after me,
      but could not get up with me. You drove me out; and if you do
      not know it now, you do not need to be told how it is that
      you have forgotten it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She knew what he meant, and was silent.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then Kirsty went to Edinburgh, to sir Haco Macintosh, and
      with his assistance brought me to my right mind. If it were
      not for Kirsty, I should be in my grave, or wandering the
      earth a maniac. Even alive and well as I am, I should not be
      with you now had she not shown me my duty'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought as much! All this tyranny of yours, all your late
      insolence to your mother, comes from the power of that
      low-born woman over you! I declare to you, Francis Gordon, if
      you marry her, I will leave the house.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He made her no answer, and they rode the rest of the way in
      silence. But in that silence things grew clearer to him. Why
      should he take pains to persuade his mother to a consent
      which she had no right to withhold? His desire was altogether
      reasonable: why should its fulfilment depend on the unreason
      of one who had not strength to order her own behaviour? He
      had to save her, not to please her, gladly as he would have
      done both!
    </p>
    <p>
      When he had helped her from the saddle, he would have
      remounted and ridden at once to Corbyknowe, but feared
      leaving her. She shut herself in her room till she could bear
      her own company no longer, and then went to the drawing-room,
      where Francis read to her, and played several games of
      backgammon with her. Soon after dinner she retired, saying
      her ride had wearied her; and the moment Francis knew she was
      in bed, he got his horse, and galloped to the Knowe.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch043"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XLIII
    </h2>
    <h3>
      THE CORONATION
    </h3>
    <p>
      When he arrived, there was no light in the house: all had
      gone to rest. Unwilling to disturb the father and mother, he
      rode quietly to the back of the house, where Kirsty's room
      looked on the garden. He called her softly. In a moment she
      peeped out, then opened her window.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cud ye come doon a minute, Kirsty?' said Francis.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll be wi' ye in less time,' she replied; and he had hardly
      more than dismounted, when she was by his side.
    </p>
    <p>
      He told her what had passed between him and his mother since
      she left them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a rael bonny nicht!' said Kirsty, 'and we'll jist tak
      oor time to turn the thing ower&#8212;that is, gien ye bena
      tired, Francie. Come, we'll put the beastie up first.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She led the horse into the dark stable, took his bridle off,
      put a halter on him, slackened his girths, and gave him a
      feed of corn&#8212;all in the dark; which things done, she
      and her lover set out for the Horn.
    </p>
    <p>
      The whole night seemed thinking of the day that was gone. All
      doing seemed at an end, yea God himself to be resting and
      thinking. The peace of it sank into their bosoms, and filled
      them so, that they walked a long way without speaking. There
      was no wind, and no light but the starlight. The air was like
      the clear dark inside some diamonds. The only sound that
      broke the stillness as they went was the voice of Kirsty,
      sweet and low&#8212;and it was as if the dim starry vault
      thought, rather than she uttered, the words she
      quoted:&#8212;
    </p>
    <pre>
           'Summer Night, come from God,
           On your beauty, I see,
           A still wave has flowed
           Of Eternity!'
</pre>
    <p>
      At a certain spot on the ridge of the Horn, Francis stopped.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is whaur ye left me this time last year, Kirsty,' he
      said;'&#8212;left me wi' my Maker to mak a man o' me. It was
      'maist makin me ower again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a low stone just visible among the heather; Kirsty
      seated herself upon it. Francis threw himself among the
      heather, and lay looking up in her face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That mother o' yours is 'maist ower muckle for ye, Francie!'
      said Kirsty.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's no aften, Kirsty, ye tell me what I ken as weel 's
      yersel!' returned Francis.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, Francie, ye maun tell <i>me</i> something the
      night!&#8212;Gien it wudna mismuve ye, I wad fain ken hoo ye
      wan throu that day we pairtit here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Without a moment's hesitation, Francis began the
      tale&#8212;giving her to know, however, that in what took
      place there was much he did not understand so as to tell it
      again.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he made an end, Kirsty rose and said,
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wad ye please to sit upo' that stane, Francie!'
    </p>
    <p>
      In pure obedience he rose from the heather, and sat upon the
      stone.
    </p>
    <p>
      She went behind him, and clasped his head, round the temples,
      with her shapely, strong, faithful hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I ken ye noo for a man, Francis. Ye hae set yersel to du
      <i>his</i> wull, and no yer ain: ye're a king; and for want
      o' a better croon, I croon ye wi my twa ban's.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Little thought Kirsty how near she came, in word and deed, to
      the crowning of Dante by Virgil, as recorded toward the close
      of the Purgatorio.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then she came round in front of him, he sitting bewildered
      and taking no part in the solemn ceremony save that of
      submission, and knelt slowly down before him, laying her head
      on his knees, and saying,&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'And here's yer kingdom, Francis&#8212;my heid and my hert!
      Du wi' me what ye wull.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come hame wi' me, and help save my mother,' he answered, in
      a voice choked with emotion.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wull,' she said, and would have risen; but he laid his
      hands on her head, and thus they remained for a time in
      silence. Then they rose, and went.
    </p>
    <p>
      They had gone about half-way to the farm before either spoke.
      Then Kirsty said,&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Francie, there's ae thing I maun beg o' ye, and but
      ane&#8212;'at ye winna desire me to tak the heid o' yer
      table. I canna but think it an ungracious thing 'at a young
      wuman like me, the son's wife, suld put the man's ain mother,
      his father's wife, oot o' the place whaur his father set her.
      I'm layin doon no prenciple; I'm sayin only hoo it affecs me.
      I want to come hame as her dochter, no as mistress o' the
      hoose in her stead. And ye see, Francie, that'll gie ye
      anither haud o' her, agen disgracin o' hersel! Promise me,
      Francie, and I'll sune tak the maist pairt o' the trouble o'
      her aff o' yer han's.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye're aye richt, Kirsty!' answered Francis. 'As ye wull.'
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch044"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XLIV
    </h2>
    <h3>
      KIRSTY'S TOCHER
    </h3>
    <p>
      The next morning, Kirsty told her parents that she was going
      to marry Francie.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye du richt, my bairn,' said her father. 'He's come in sicht
      o' 's high callin, and it's no possible for ye langer to
      refuse him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But, eh! what am I to du wantin ye, Kirsty?' moaned her
      mother. 'Ye min', mother,' answered Kirsty, 'hoo I wad be oot
      the lang day wi' Steenie, and ye never thoucht ye hadna me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Na, never. I aye kenned I had the twa o' ye.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weel, it's no a God's-innocent but a deil's-gowk I'll hae to
      luik efter noo, and I maun come hame ilka possible chance to
      get hertenin frae you and my father, or I winna be able to
      bide it. Eh, mother, efter Steenie, it'll be awfu' to spen'
      the day wi' <i>her</i>! It's no 'at ever she'll be fou: I s'
      see to that!&#8212;it's 'at she'll aye be toom!&#8212; aye
      ringin wi' toomness!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Here Kirsty turned to her father, and said,&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wull ye gie me a tocher, father?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay wull I, lassie,&#8212;what ye like, sae far as I hae 't
      to gie.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want Donal&#8212;that's a'. Ye see I maun ride a heap wi'
      the puir thing, and I wud fain hae something aneth me 'at ye
      gae me! The cratur'll aye hing to the Knowe, and whan I gie
      his wull he'll fess me hame o' himsel.&#8212;I wud hae likit
      things to bide as they are, but she wud hae worn puir Francie
      to the verra deid!'
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="ch045"><!--Marker--></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XLV
    </h2>
    <h3>
      KIRSTY'S SONG
    </h3>
    <p>
      Mrs. Gordon manages the house and her reward is to sit at the
      head of the table. But she pays Kirsty infinitely more for
      the privilege than any but Kirsty can know, in the form of
      leisure for things she likes far better than
      housekeeping&#8212;among the rest, for the discovery of such
      songs as this, the last of hers I have seen:&#8212;
    </p>
    <pre>
  LOVE IS HOME.

  Love is the part, and love is the whole;
    Love is the robe, and love is the pall;
  Ruler of heart and brain and soul,
    Love is the lord and the slave of all!
  I thank thee, Love, that thou lovest me;
  I thank thee more that I love thee.

  Love is the rain, and love is the air;
    Love is the earth that holdeth fast;
  Love is the root that is buried there,
    Love is the open flower at last!
  I thank thee, Love all round about,
  That the eyes of my love are looking out.

  Love is the sun, and love is the sea;
    Love is the tide that comes and goes;
  Flowing and flowing it comes to me;
    Ebbing and ebbing to thee it flows!
  Oh my sun, and my wind, and tide!
  My sea, and my shore, and all beside!

  Light, oh light that art by showing;
    Wind, oh wind that liv'st by motion;
  Thought, oh thought that art by knowing;
    Will, that art born in self-devotion!
  Love is you, though not all of you know it;
  Ye are not love, yet ye always show it!

  Faithful creator, heart-longed-for father,
    Home of our heart-infolded brother,
  Home to thee all thy glories gather&#8212;
    All are thy love, and there is no other!
  O Love-at-rest; we loves that roam&#8212;
  Home unto thee, we are coming home!
</pre>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>







<pre>





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