“She came just in time,” David corrected him. “The walls beyond here are weaker even than these, and high enough to bury you completely if they should fall. I was awake and heard the gate swinging, and I was trying to think how it came to be open, but it was Betsey that was quick enough to understand in time. When she ran down the stairs I got up to follow her, yet I really did not guess what was happening until I heard you fall. You must thank her that you are still alive.”
“But if the bad luck still holds,” protested Michael pitifully, “then it will be all to do over again!”
He was silent as though gathering strength for further speech and then began once more.
“And I must tell you that what has been going amiss is, the whole of it, through fault of mine. There was a day, it was before you ever came to the cottage, when Mr. Donald was last here that—that—” His voice faltered, perhaps through weakness, perhaps through reluctance to go on, but he drew a breath and continued bravely. “That very morning, when I was getting my breakfast I spilled the salt dish and I thought to myself, ‘Michael Martin, you will be losing your temper with some one this day.’ But who was there for me to quarrel with except Miss Miranda and her father and the good Saints know I could never be vexed with them. So I went about my work and thought no more about it.
“But that afternoon I went over to the old house, it was late winter still and I was wishing to gather some pine cones for Miss Miranda’s hearth, and, for all the cold, I sat down on a stone to smoke a pipe and think about the old times and how happy we all were before the fire came. And there was Mr. Donald, walking about the broken walls, peering here and peering there, but not stepping within for he is of the sort that are always careful of the safety of their precious skins.”
He stopped again to rest his trembling voice.
“Don’t try to tell us, Michael, if it is so hard,” Elizabeth said.
“I must tell you, Miss Betsey,” he replied, “I have hid it in my heart too long. He says to me, ‘I am just looking to see where the fire really started, it seems that it must have been at this end where the workshop stood.’ I says ‘Yes, sir,’ not being wishful to have any talk with him. And after a little he says again, ‘It was a beautiful old place. I can see plainly why Miranda longs for it and cannot be happy where she is.’ And this time I says nothing but puffs away at my pipe. It roused my anger, some way, to see him peering about, though I am a slow-witted fellow and had no guess at what he was looking for. At last he speaks once more. ‘Why don’t they build it up again, Michael?’ he says. ‘They could if they weren’t such a careless impractical pair. They should be living here again, I have no patience with them.’ Then my wrath boils up in me and I tells him what I thinks. ‘You have no patience, have you,’ says I, ‘with them that took you in and cared for you and bore with those ways you have that no one likes. You’re prosperous yourself through their help, if you want them to rebuild their house why don’t you give them aid in doing it? Miss Miranda toils and saves and has her garden and her ducks and anything she can think of to make things go forward, so that her father will have what he needs for his work.’ All of that I says to him and I wish the Saints had struck me dumb before I spoke.
“‘She works so that her father may have what he needs?’ he repeats. ‘So that is how things stand, just as I had been suspecting. Thank you, Michael, that is all I wanted to know,’ he says and goes, leaving me gaping after him as he walks away over the snow. I did not know even then what use he was to make of what I had told him, but I saw well enough that I had done harm. And so I have been doing all I could to make amends,” he ended sadly; “I have watched over the house that he should never come near with Miss Miranda not there, though I guessed but little what it was he would do. And when it seemed of no use and I felt helpless and afraid, thinking of the mischief I had done, I have turned to trying to drive away the ill luck in the old fashion, with spells and charms, just—just because there might be something in them after all.”
He ceased speaking and closed his eyes, worn out by the effort of confession.