“I wouldn’t have you drowned,” she returned, shutting the door.
“Droont!” he repeated, “It wad tak a hantle (great deal) to droon me. I stack to the boddom o’ a whumled boat a haill nicht whan I was but fifeteen.”
They stood in a tunnel which passed under the road, affording immediate communication between the park and the shore. The further end of it was dark with trees. The upper half of the door by which they had entered was a wooden grating, for the admission of light, and through it they were now gazing, though they could see little but the straight lines of almost perpendicular rain that scratched out the colours of the landscape. The sea was troubled, although no wind blew; it heaved as with an inward unrest. But suddenly there was a great broken sound somewhere in the air; and the next moment a storm came tearing over the face of the sea, covering it with blackness innumerably rent into spots of white. Presently it struck the shore, and a great rude blast came roaring through the grating, carrying with it a sheet of rain, and, catching Florimel’s hair, sent it streaming wildly out behind her.
“Dinna ye think, my leddy,” said Malcolm, “ye had better mak for the hoose? What wi’ the win’ an’ the weet thegither, ye’ll be gettin’ yer deith o’ cauld. I s’ gang wi’ ye sae far, gien ye’ll alloo me, jist to haud it ohn blawn ye awa’.”
The wind suddenly fell, and his last words echoed loud in the vaulted sky. For a moment it grew darker in the silence, and then a great flash carried the world away with it, and left nothing but blackness behind. A roar of thunder followed, and even while it yet bellowed, a white face flitted athwart the grating, and a voice of agony shrieked aloud:
“I dinna ken whaur it comes frae!”
Florimel grasped Malcolm’s arm: the face had passed close to hers —only the grating between, and the cry cut through the thunder like a knife.
Instinctively, almost unconsciously, he threw his arm around her, to shield her from her own terror.
“Dinna be fleyt, my leddy,” he said. “It’s naething but the mad laird. He’s a quaiet cratur eneuch, only he disna ken whaur he comes frae—he disna ken whaur onything comes frae—an’ he canna bide it. But he wadna hurt leevin’ cratur, the laird.”
“What a dreadful face!” said the girl, shuddering.