“Fear?” she echoed.
Again he paced up and down, and again came to her side. “I’ve a lifetime’s knowledge of Garsykes, and I tell you we’re in the thick of danger. Whenever their silence comes——”
“It means another firing of the house?”
“Or worse, now that you’re here at Logie. Will you not understand?”
“If they took me from you? If you fought till you could do no more, and they took me?”
“I should run mad.”
He was fierce, possessive, as he drew her to him, and she was content. The lean years of her trudging days—weather, and blistered feet, and scorn of men for the peddling-sort—were forgotten. Deeper than his love of Logie—deeper than his love of life for its own good, stalwart sake—lay fear for her.
“You’ll go up to Brant’s?” he said by and by, half between entreaty and command.
“How can I—now that you care? My place is with you.”
Then she cried happily against his sleeve, and he could make no further headway with persuasion. The next day it was the same. Whenever, out of his stifling dread for her, he tried to get her out of Logie and up into the trackless hills, she glanced away.