“Noo God forgi’e ye, Maister Craithie, for threepin’ sic a thing!” cried Lizzy, rising as if she would leave him; “Ma’colm MacPhail’s as clear o’ ony sin like mine as my wee bairnie itsel’.”
“Do ye daur tell me he’s no the father o’ that same, lass?”
“No, nor never will be the father o’ ony bairn whase mither’s no his wife!” said Lizzy, with burning cheeks and resolute voice.
The factor, who had risen on his elbow to look her in the face, fell back in silence; and neither of them spoke for what seemed to the watcher a long time. When she ventured to look at him, he was asleep.
He lay in one of those troubled slumbers into which weakness and exhaustion will sometimes pass very suddenly; and in that slumber he had a dream which he never forgot. He thought he had risen from his grave with an awful sound in his ears, and knew he was wanted at the judgment seat. But he did not want to go, therefore crept into the porch of the church, and hoped to be forgotten. But suddenly an angel appeared with a flaming sword and drove him out of the churchyard away to Scaurnose where the judge was sitting. And as he fled in terror before the angel, he fell, and the angel came and stood over him, and his sword flashed torture into his bones, but he could not and dared not rise. At last, summoning all his strength, he looked up at him, and cried out, “Sir, ha’e mercy, for God’s sake.” Instantly all the flames drew back into the sword, and the blade dropped, burning like a brand, from the hilt, which the angel threw away.—And lo! it was Malcolm MacPhail, and he was stooping to raise him. With that he awoke, and there was Lizzy looking down on him anxiously.
“What are you looking like that for?” he asked crossly.
She did not like to tell him that she had been alarmed by his dropping asleep: and in her confusion she fell back on the last subject.
“There maun be some mistak, Mr Craithie,” she said. “I wuss ye wad tell me what gars ye hate Ma’colm MacPhail as ye du.”
The factor, although he seemed to himself to know well enough, was yet a little puzzled how to commence his reply; and therewith a process began that presently turned into something with which never in his life before had his inward parts been acquainted—a sort of self-examination to wit. He said to himself, partly in the desire to justify his present dislike—he would not call it hate, as Lizzy did—that he used to get on with the lad well enough, and had never taken offence at his freedoms, making no doubt his manner came of his blood, and he could not help it, being a chip of the old block; but when he ran away with the marquis’s boat, and went to the marchioness and told her lies against him—then what could he do but dislike him?
Arrived at this point, he opened his mouth and gave the substance of what preceded it for answer to Lizzy’s question. But she replied at once.