“Hev ye coom to steal oor bairn, the bonny lad we’ve reared i’ infancy an’ childhood? Leave this house! John—husband—will ye let ’em drive me mad?”
John took her in his arms.
“Martha,” he said, with a break in his voice that shook his hearers and stilled his wife’s cries; “dinnat mak’ oor burthen harder te bear. A man’s heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps!”
Servants, men and women, came running at their mistress’s scream of terror. They stood, abashed, in the kitchen passage. None paid heed to them.
Colonel Grant rose and approached the trembling woman cowering at her husband’s side. Her old eyes were streaming now; she gazed at him with the pitiful anguish of a stricken animal. He took her wrinkled hand and bent low before her.
“Madam,” he said, “God forbid that my son should lose his mother a second time!”
He could say no other word. Even in her agony, Martha felt hot tears falling on her bare arm, and they were not her own.
“Eh, but it’s a sad errand ye’re on,” she sobbed.
“Wife, wife!” cried John huskily, “if thou faint in the day of adversity thy strength is small. Colonel Grant is a true man. It’s in his feäce. He weän’t rive Martin frae yer arms, an’ no man can tak’ him frae yer heart.”
Colonel Grant drew himself up. He caught Bolland’s shoulder.