"But, John, nobody believes in these things nowadays. It's just fancy in you. I wonder at a college-bred man like you giving heed to a wheen nonsense!"
"Ye ken yoursell it was a byword in the place that he would haunt the House with the Green Shutters."
"God help me!" cried Mrs. Gourlay; "what am I to do?"
She piled up a great fire in the parlour, and the three poor creatures gathered round it for the night. (They were afraid to sit in the kitchen of an evening, for even the silent furniture seemed to talk of the murder it had witnessed.) John was on a carpet stool by his mother's feet, his head resting on her knee.
They heard the rattle of Wilson's brake as it swung over the townhead from Auchterwheeze, and the laughter of its jovial crew. They heard the town clock chiming the lonesome passage of the hours. A dog was barking in the street.
Gradually all other sounds died away.
"Mother," said John, "lay your hand alang my shouther, touching my neck. I want to be sure that you're near me."
"I'll do that, my bairn," said his mother. And soon he was asleep.
Janet was reading a novel. The children had their mother's silly gift—a gift of the weak-minded, of forgetting their own duties and their own sorrows in a vacant interest which they found in books. She had wrapped a piece of coarse red flannel round her head to comfort a swollen jaw, and her face appeared from within like a tallowy oval.