While he spoke, Malcolm had been smoothing Kelpie all over with his palms; the moment the factor ceased talking, he ceased stroking, and with one arm thrown over the mare’s back, looked him full in the face.
“Gien ye imaigine, Maister Crathie,” he said, “’at I coont it ony rise i’ the warl’ ’at brings me un’er the orders o’ a man less honest than he micht be, ye’re mista’en. I dinna think it’s pride this time; I wad ile Blue Peter’s lang butes till him, but I winna lee for ony factor atween this an’ Davy Jones.”
It was too much. Mr Crathie’s feelings overcame him, and he was a wrathful man to see, as he strode up to the youth with clenched fist.
“Haud frae the mere, for God’s sake, Maister Crathie,” cried Malcolm.
But even as he spoke, two reversed Moorish arches of gleaming iron opened on the terror-quickened imagination of the factor a threatened descent from which his most potent instinct, that of self-preservation, shrank in horror. He started back white with dismay, having by a bare inch of space and a bare moment of time, escaped what he called Eternity. Dazed with fear he turned and had staggered half-way across the yard, as if going home, before he recovered himself. Then he turned again, and with what dignity he could scrape together said—
“MacPhail, you go about your business.”
In his foolish heart he believed Malcolm had made the brute strike out.
“I canna weel gang till Stoat comes hame,” answered Malcolm.
“If I see you about the place after sunset, I’ll horsewhip you,” said the factor, and walked away, showing the crown of his hat.
Malcolm again smiled oddly, but made no reply. He undid the mare’s halter, and took her into the stable. There he fed her, standing by her all the time she ate, and not once taking his eyes off her. His father, the late marquis, had bought her at the sale of the stud of a neighbouring laird, whose whole being had been devoted to horses, till the pale one came to fetch himself: the men about the stable had drugged her, and, taken with the splendid lines of the animal, nor seeing cause to doubt her temper as she quietly obeyed the halter, he had bid for her, and, as he thought, had her a great bargain. The accident that finally caused his death followed immediately after, and while he was ill no one cared to vex him by saying what she had turned out. But Malcolm had even then taken her in hand in the hope of taming her a little before his master, who often spoke of his latest purchase, should see her again. In this he had very partially succeeded; but if only for the sake of him whom he now knew for his father, nothing would have made him part with the animal. Besides, he had been compelled to use her with so much severity at times that he had grown attached to her from the reaction of pity as well as from admiration of her physical qualities, and the habitude of ministering to her wants and comforts. The factor, who knew Malcolm only as a servant, had afterwards allowed her to remain in his charge, merely in the hope, through his treatment, of by-and-by selling her, as she had been bought, for a faultless animal, but at a far better price.