'No—never!' answered Alison, with the tremendous finality of youth.
The horn sounded, the whip cracked, and the lumbering vehicle lurched on its way. And so Alison went back to The Mains.
CHAPTER XLI.
It might have been about eight o'clock the next morning when Lizzie, the old housekeeper in George Street, thrust her head in at her master's door.
'Maircy me!' she exclaimed, and there was some cause for her wonder in the sight, at that hour, of candles burning in the broad day, and Herries at his desk, where, indeed, he had been all night.
Sleep had left him and thought had become intolerable. With an effort almost superhuman he had determined to lose himself in the technicalities of his work, and he had done it. But he now looked, with bloodshot eyes, his tumbled linen and disordered hair, the living image of dissipation rather than business. Lizzie eyed him most suspiciously. He never drank, but the censorious old woman believed he had been drinking.
'The Lord be gude to us!' she ejaculated, 'what's wrang? Wastin' waxen candles this gait!' And she blew them out, and snuffed them with her fingers. 'You're wanted,' she went on. 'There's a lad frae Creighton's wi' a message express. Ye maun gang there at aince anent the dog.'
'What about the dog?' said Herries.
'Weel,' said Lizzie, 'as far as I can get it frae the lad, the tyke is turned upon them all, and aye he sits girning by the corp, and they canna get it coffined. They're for you to gang and fleech him awa', or somethin' that gait.'
'I will come,' said Herries.