"'Deed, lass, there's feow oucht to think less o' 't," returned the first.
Although they took little pains to lower their voices, Malcolm was far too much preoccupied to hear what they said. Perceiving plainly enough that the girl's trouble was much greater than a passing quarrel with her mother would account for, and knowing that any intercession on his part would only rouse to loftier flames the coal pits of maternal wrath, he resolved at length to take counsel with Blue Peter and his wife, and therefore, passing the sea gate, continued his walk along the shore, and up the red path to the village of Scaurnose.
He found them sitting at their afternoon meal of tea and oatcake. A peat fire smouldered hot upon the hearth; a large kettle hung from a chain over it—fountain of plenty, whence the great china teapot, splendid in red flowers and green leaves, had just been filled; the mantelpiece was crowded with the gayest of crockery, including the never absent half shaved poodles, and the rarer Gothic castle, from the topmost story of whose keep bloomed a few late autumn flowers. Phemy too was at the table: she rose as if to leave the room, but apparently changed her mind, for she sat down again instantly.
"Man ye're unco braw the day—i' yer kilt an' tartan hose!" remarked Mair as he welcomed him.
"I pat them on to please my daddy an' the markis," said Malcolm, with a half shamed faced laugh.
"Are na ye some cauld aboot the k-nees?" asked the guidwife.
"Nae that cauld! I ken 'at they're there; but I'll sune be used till 't."
"Weel, sit ye doon an' tak a cup o' tay wi' 's"
"I haena muckle time to spare," said Malcolm; "but I'll tak a cup o' tay wi' ye. Gien 't warna for wee bit luggies (small ears) I wad fain spier yer advice aboot ane 'at wants a wuman freen', thinkin'."
Phemy, who had been regarding him with compressed lips and suspended operations, deposited her bread and butter on the table, and slipped from her chair.
"Whaur are ye gaein', Phemy?" said her mother.
"Takin' awa' my lugs," returned Phemy.
"Ye cratur!" exclaimed Malcolm, "ye're ower wise. Wha wad hae thoucht ye sae gleg at the uptak!"
"Whan fowk winna lippen to me—" said Phemy and ceased.
"What can ye expec," returned Malcolm, while father and mother listened with amused faces, "whan ye winna lippen to fowk? Phemy, whaur's the mad laird?"
A light flush rose to her cheeks, but whether from embarrassment or anger could not be told from her reply.
"I ken nane o' that name," she said.
"Whaur's the laird o' Kirkbyres, than?"
"Whar ye s' never lay han' upo' 'im!" returned the child, her cheeks now rosy red, and her eyes flashing.
"Me lay han' upo' 'im!" cried Malcolm, surprised at her behaviour.
"Gien 't hadna been for you, naebody wad hae fun' oot the w'y intil the cave," she rejoined, her gray eyes, blue with the fire of anger, looking straight into his.
"Phemy! Phemy!" said her mother. "For shame!"
"There's nae shame intill 't," protested the child indignantly.
"But there is shame intill 't," said Malcolm quietly, "for ye wrang an honest man."
"Weel, ye canna deny," persisted Phemy, in mood to brave the evil one himself, "'at ye was ower at Kirkbyres on ane o' the markis's mears, an' heild a lang confab wi' the laird's mither!"
"I gaed upo' my maister's eeran'," answered Malcolm.
"Ow, ay! I daursay!—But wha kens—wi' sic a mither!"
She burst out crying, and ran into the street.
Malcolm understood it now.
"She's like a' the lave (rest)!" he said sadly, turning to her mother.
" jist affrontit wi' the bairn!" she replied, with manifest annoyance in her flushed face.
"She's true to him," said Malcolm, "gien she binna fair to me. Sayna a word to the lassie. she'll ken me better or lang. An' noo for my story."
Mrs Mair said nothing while he told how he had come upon Lizzy, the state she was in, and what had passed between them; but he had scarcely finished, when she rose, leaving a cup of tea untasted, and took her bonnet and shawl from a nail in the back of the door. Her husband rose also.
"I 'll jist gang as far 's the Boar's Craig wi' ye mysel', Annie," he said.
" thinkin' ye'll fin' the puir lassie whaur I left her," remarked Malcolm. "I doobt she daured na gang hame."
That night it was all over the town, that Lizzy Findlay was in a woman's worst trouble, and that Malcolm was the cause of it.
CHAPTER LI: THE LAIRD'S BURROW
Annie Mair had a brother, a carpenter, who, following her to Scaurnose, had there rented a small building next door to her cottage, and made of it a workshop. It had a rude loft, one end of which was loosely floored, while the remaining part showed the couples through the bare joists, except where some planks of oak and mahogany, with an old door, a boat's rudder, and other things that might come in handy, were laid across them in store. There also, during the winter, hung the cumulus clouds of Blue Peter's herring nets; for his cottage, having a garret above, did not afford the customary place for them in the roof.
When the cave proved to be no longer a secret from the laird's enemies, Phemy, knowing that her father's garret could never afford him a sufficing sense of security, turned the matter over in her active little brain until pondering produced plans, and she betook herself to her uncle, with whom she was a great favourite. Him she found no difficulty in persuading to grant the hunted man a refuge in the loft. In a few days he had put up a partition between the part which was floored and that which was open, and so made for him a little room, accessible from the shop by a ladder and a trapdoor. He had just taken down an old window frame to glaze for it, when the laird coming in and seeing what he was about, scrambled up the ladder, and, a moment after, all but tumbled down again in his eagerness to put a stop to it: the window was in the gable, looking to the south, and he would not have it glazed.
In blessed compensation for much of the misery of his lot, the laird was gifted with an inborn delicate delight in nature and her ministrations such as few poets even possess; and this faculty was supplemented with a physical hardiness which, in association with his weakness and liability to certain appalling attacks, was truly astonishing. Though a rough hand might cause him exquisite pain, he could sleep soundly on the hardest floor; a hot room would induce a fit, but he would lie under an open window in the sharpest night without injury; a rude word would make him droop like a flower in frost, but he might go all day wet to the skin without taking cold. To all kinds of what are called hardships, he had readily become inured, without which it would have been impossible for his love of nature to receive such a full development. For hence he grew capable of communion with her in all her moods, undisabled either by the deadening effects of present, or the aversion consequent on past suffering. All the range of earth's shows, from the grandeurs of sunrise or thunderstorm down to the soft unfolding of a daisy or the babbling birth of a spring, was to him an open book. It is true, the delight of these things was constantly mingled with, not unfrequently broken, indeed, by the troublous question of his origin; but it was only on occasions of jarring contact with his fellows, that it was accompanied by such agonies as my story has represented. Sometimes he would sit on a rock, murmuring the words over and over, and dabbling his bare feet, small and delicately formed, in the translucent green of a tide abandoned pool. But oftener in a soft dusky wind, he might have been heard uttering them gently and coaxingly, as if he would wile from the evening zephyr the secret of his birth—which surely mother Nature must know. The confinement of such a man would have been in the highest degree cruel, and must speedily have ended in death. Even Malcolm did not know how absolute was the laird's need, not simply of air and freedom, but of all things accompanying the enjoyment of them.