He broke down, and wept like a child.
‘And what did ye du?’ asked Kirsty.
‘I said naething. I jist gaed to the coachman and gart him put his horses tu, and tak his denner wi’ him, and m’unt the box, and drive straucht awa til Aberdeen, and lea’ the carriage whaur I boucht it, and du siclike wi’ the horses, and come hame by the co’ch.’
As he ended the sad tale, he glanced up at Kirsty, and saw her regarding him with a look such as he had never seen, imagined, or dreamed of before. It lasted but a moment; her eyes dropt, and she went on with the knitting which, as in the old days, she had brought with her.
‘Noo, Kirsty, what am I to du neist?’ he said.
‘Hae ye naething i’ yer ain min’?’ she asked.
‘Naething.’
‘Weel, we’ll awa hame!’ she returned, rising. ‘Maybe, as we gang, we’ll get licht!’
They walked in silence. Now and then Francis would look up in Kirsty’s face, to see if anything was coming, but saw only that she was sunk in thought: he would not hurry her, and said not a word. He knew she would speak the moment she had what she thought worth saying.
Kirsty, recalling what her father had repeatedly said of Mrs. Gordon’s management of a horse in her young days, had fallen a wondering how one who so well understood the equine nature, could be so incapable of understanding the human; for certainly she had little known either Archibald Gordon or David Barclay, and quite as little her own son. Having come to the conclusion that the incapacity was caused by overpowering affection for the one human creature she ought not to love, Kirsty found her thoughts return to the sole faculty her father yielded Mrs. Gordon—that of riding a horse as he ought to be ridden. Thereupon came to her mind a conclusion she had lately read somewhere—namely, that a man ought to regard his neighbour as specially characterized by the possession of this or that virtue or capacity, whatever it might be, that distinguished him; for that was as the door-plate indicating the proper entrance to his inner house. A moment more and Kirsty thought she saw a way in which Francis might gain a firmer hold on his mother, as well as provide her with a pleasure that might work toward her redemption.