“You forget, Mrs Catanach, that you are speaking to a lady!”
“Ye maun hae been unco like ane ae nicht, ony gait, mem. But I’m dune wi’ my jokin’.”
“As soon, I say, as I get my poor boy into proper hands, I shall be ready to take the next step.”
“What for sud ye pit it aff till than? He canna du muckle ae w’y or ither.”
“I will tell you. His uncle, Sir Joseph, prides himself on being an honest man, and if some busy-body were to tell him that poor Stephen, as I am told people are saying, was no worse than harsh treatment had made him—for you know his father could not bear the sight of him till the day of his death—he would be the more determined to assert his guardianship, and keep things out of my hands. But if I once had the poor fellow in an asylum, or in my own keeping—you see—”
“Weel, mem, gien I be potty, ye’re panny!” exclaimed the midwife with her gelatinous laugh. “Losh, mem!” she burst out after a moment’s pause, “gien you an’ me was to fa’ oot, there wad be a stramash! He! he! he!”
They rose and left the cave together, talking as they went; and Phemy, trembling all over, rejoined the laird.
She could understand little of what she had heard, and yet, enabled by her affection, retained in her mind a good deal of it. After-events brought more of it to her recollection, and what I have here given is an attempted restoration of the broken mosaic. She rightly judged it better to repeat nothing of what she had overheard to the laird, to whom it would only redouble terror; and when he questioned her in his own way concerning it, she had little difficulty, so entirely did he trust her, in satisfying him with a very small amount of information. When they reached her home, she told all she could to her father; whose opinion it was, that the best, indeed the only thing they could do, was to keep, if possible, a yet more vigilant guard over the laird and his liberty.
Soon after they were gone, Malcolm returned, and little thinking that there was no one left to guard, chose a sheltered spot in the cave, carried thither a quantity of dry sand, and lay down to sleep, covered with his tarpaulin coat. He found it something chilly, however, and did not rest so well but that he woke with the first break of day.
The morning, as it drew slowly on, was a strange contrast, in its gray and saffron, to the gorgeous sunset of the night before.