There was Causleen. She was aloof and chill whenever they met about the house. He could make nothing of her whims. Was it his fault that he had been asked to save her life, and was powerless to rescue her from the whip of Nita’s tongue, except by marriage? And marriage she disdained. He tried to reason it all out, not understanding that reason was the last thing concerned with what had happened to Causleen and himself.
Always the worst of his fretting returned to her. If those louts from Garsykes came and he had only one knee to serve him, what would chance? His mind ran out to the unthinkable—for Causleen.
“Now, it’s not a bit of good,” said Rebecca on one of these afternoons, as she was bandaging his knee afresh, “not a bit of good to go about like a man that thinks the roof will fall because he’s got a pain in his knee. Men are all alike, Lord help ’em—’specially when they’re mending nicely, and ought to be giving a thanks-be, instead of glowering like a thunderstorm. It nags a bit, what I’m rubbing into the raw o’ your wound? Well, there’s healing goes with nags sometimes.”
“You don’t know,” grumbled the Master. “I fall lame just when Logie needs me. There’s you and Donald——”
“Aye, and there’s Donald’s lass. That’s where your shoe pinches. Times were different when I was young.”
She tied the bandage, sewed its edges up and bit the thread off with her strong, ancient teeth.
“Different?” asked Hardcastle, impatient of her ministry and all things.
“Aye. We never doubted Logie’s roof was safe. My lad doesn’t doubt it to this day. You’re young, Master, and I’m of the elder days, and I tell you what I know.”
Rebecca had no more to do with bandages and healing. She was wrapt into another world—grey and gaunt, a prophetess.
“War comes to Logie-side. The youngsters fight, and the old see far. D’ye think I go every night and morning to tryst my lad at the gate and get nothing for it? He died for Logie once—and it was forty years ago.”