“Awva! his word’s guid for naething.”
“For a penny, or a thoosan’ poun’.”
“My wife ’ll be oot o’ her wuts,” pleaded Angus.
“Wad ye like a drink o’ milk?” asked Janet, rising.
“I wad that,” he answered.
She filled her little teapot with milk, and he drank it from the spout, hoping she was on the point of giving way.
“Noo,” she said, when he had finished his draught, “ye maun jist mak the best o’ it, Angus. Ony gait, it’s a guid lesson in patience to ye, an’ that ye haena had ower aften, I’m thinkin’—Robert’ll be here er lang.”
With these words she set down the teapot, and went out: it was time to milk her cow.
In a little while Gibbie rose, tried to walk, but failed, and getting down on his hands and knees, crawled out after her. Angus caught a glimpse of his face as he crept past him, and then first recognized the boy he had lashed. Not compunction, but an occasional pang of dread lest he should have been the cause of his death, and might come upon his body in one of his walks, had served so to fix his face in his memory, that, now he had a near view of him, pale with suffering and loss of blood and therefore more like his former self, he knew him beyond a doubt. With a great shoot of terror he concluded that the idiot had been lying there silently gloating over his revenge, waiting only till Janet should be out of sight, and was now gone after some instrument wherewith to take it. He pulled and tugged at his bonds, but only to find escape absolutely hopeless. In gathering horror, he lay moveless at last, but strained his hearing towards every sound.
Not only did Janet often pray with Gibbie, but sometimes as she read, her heart would grow so full, her soul be so pervaded with the conviction, perhaps the consciousness, of the presence of the man who had said he would be always with his friends, that, sitting there on her stool, she would begin talking to him out of the very depth of her life, just as if she saw him in Robert’s chair in the ingle-neuk, at home in her cottage as in the house where Mary sat at his feet and heard his word. Then would Gibbie listen indeed, awed by very gladness. He never doubted that Jesus was there, or that Janet saw him all the time although he could not.