She looked at me and went white, as grown people do when news which chills the blood is suddenly brought to them, and struck her little hands together as though in pain. Turning suddenly she left me and trotted off through a cleft in the stone wall of the kitchen garden, to which place I followed her, with remorse in my heart for the rough way in which I had spoken.
I found her lying flat in the grass, her face hidden in her arms, her body trembling, but she made no sound.
"What is it, dear?" I asked.
"I can't go," she said, without looking up, "I can't go, Jock."
"Why?" I inquired.
She arose at this and leaned against me, her head but little above my knee and her eyes looking straight up into mine.
"Oh, don't you see?" she cried. "I can't go!—I can't go and leave my people, Jock!"
I can see now that then was the time I should have been firm with her, and have escaped the tyranny of latter years. Firm with her! Firm! while Nancy stood leaning against me with her baby curls under my hand. Firm! with eyes that held tears in them, tears which I had caused.
"Take them," I cried, "take the free-traders, the old wreck, the Cairn Mills, and the new light-house, for all of me; but never let me see that look in your face again, my little one!" and I had her in my arms, as weak a father as I had been as lover and as husband, with the resulting that I, John Stair, Lord of Stair and Alton in the Mearns, in company with Dame Dickenson, Father Michel, Uncle Ben, the two or three dogs, the kittens, the Nameless One, the "drey hen," and a small child holding a dissipated-looking owl with but one whole feather in its tail, drove up to the gateway of Stair Castle in a gipsy wagon of an abandoned character, on the afternoon of a day in late February, in the year 1773.