“It fairly took the breath from me,” said Sabrina Roy, “when I was told the like of that. I cannot think there is a word of truth in such a report.”
Mistress Roy was sitting at Janet’s fireside, and so had the privilege of a guest; but, apart from this, it gave Janet a profound satisfaction to answer: “Ay, well, Sabrina, the clash is true for once in a lifetime. Andrew has gone to America, and the Lord knows where else beside.”
“Preserve us all! I wouldn’t believe it, only from your own lips, Janet. Whatever would be the matter that sent him stravaging round the world, with no ship of his own beneath his feet or above his head?”
“A matter of right and wrong, Sabrina. My Andrew has a strict conscience and a sense of right that would be ornamental in a very saint. Not to make a long story of it, he and Jamie Logan had a quarrel. It was the night Andrew took his inflammation, and it is very sure his brain was on fire and off its judgment at the time. But we were none of us thinking of the like of that; and so the bad words came, and stirred up the bad blood, and if I hadn’t been there myself, there might have been spilled blood to end all with, for they were both black angry.”
“Guide us, woman! What was it all about?”
“Well, Sabrina, it was about siller; that is all I am free to say. Andrew was sure he was right, and Jamie was sure he was wrong; and they were going fairly to one another’s throats, when I stepped in and flung them apart.”
“And poor Christina had the buff and the buffet to take and to bear for their tempers?”
“Not just that. Jamie begged her to go away with him, and the lassie would have gone if I hadn’t got between her and the door. I had a hard few minutes, I can tell you, Sabrina; for when men are beside themselves with passion, they are in the devil’s employ, and it’s no easy work to take a job out of his hands. But I sent Jamie flying down the cliff, and I locked the door and put the key in my pocket, and ordered Andrew and Christina off to their beds, and thought I would leave the rest of the business till the next day; but before midnight Andrew was raving, and the affair was out of my hands altogether.”
“It is a wonder Christina did not go after her lad.”
“What are you talking about, Sabrina? It would have been a world’s wonder and a black, burning shame if my girl had gone after her lad in such a calamitous time. No, no, Christina Binnie isn’t the kind of girl that shrinks in the wetting. When her time of trial came, she did the whole of her duty, showing herself day by day a witness and a testimony to her decent, kirk-going forefathers.”