“I am quite well since yesterday, my lord,” returned the factor, his face shining with pleasure. “Your lordship’s accession has made a young man of me again. Here I am to render account of my stewardship.”
“I want none, Mr Crathie—nothing, that is, beyond a summary statement of how things stand with me.”
“I should like to satisfy your lordship that I have dealt honestly”— here the factor paused for a moment, then with an effort added —“by you, my lord.”
“One word,” said Malcolm “—the last of the sort, I believe, that will ever pass between us. Thank God! we had made it up before yesterday.—If you have ever been hard upon any of my tenants, not to say unfair, you have wronged me infinitely more than if you had taken from me. God be with me as I prefer ruin to wrong. Remember, besides, that my tenants are my charge and care. For you, my representative, therefore, to do one of them an injury is to do me a double injury—to wrong my tenant, and to wrong him in my name.”
“Ah, my lord! you don’t know how they would take advantage of you, if there were nobody to look after your interests.”
“Then do look after them, sir. It would be bad for them to succeed, as well as crippling to me. Only be sure, with the thought of the righteous God to elevate your sense of justice, that you are in the right. If doubtful, then give in.—And now, if any man thinks he has cause of complaint, I leave it to you, with the help of the new light that has been given you, to reconsider the matter, and, where needful, to make reparation. You must be the friend of my tenant as much as of his landlord. I have no interests inimical to those of my tenants. If any man comes to me with complaint, I will send him to restate his case to you, with the understanding that, if you will not listen to him, he is to come to me again, when I shall hear both sides and judge between. If after six months you should desire me to go over the books with you, I will do so. As to your loyalty to my family and its affairs, of that I never had a shadow of suspicion.”
As he ended, Malcolm held out his hand. The factor’s trembled in his strong grasp.
“Mistress Crathie is sorely vexed, my lord,” he said, rising to take his leave, “at things both said and done in the dark.”
Malcolm laughed.
“Give Mrs Crathie my compliments,” he said, “and tell her a man is more than a marquis. If she will after this treat every honest fisherman as if he might possibly turn out a lord, she and I shall be more than quits.”