"You will be early, Jimmie!" he called heartily as the Weaver stood in the doorway, "come away, man, and be having a bite!"
But Weaver Jimmie shook his head; he stood at the door struggling with feet and whiskers, and apparently more than usually overcome by embarrassment.
"I would like to be speakin' to you, Malcolm," he said. There was a look in his face that brought the three men instantly to the doorway. Scotty, straining his ears to catch their low remarks, could hear only, "Run-away—Lake Simcoe." Granny arose, her face white.
"Malcolm," she whispered, "Malcolm, what is this about our son Callum?"
Big Malcolm turned. There was a look in his eyes that had not been there since the day the Orangemen were defeated; but it suddenly faded at the sight of her white, pained face.
"It will jist be nothing, whatever," he said gently. "They would be saying the girl was off this morning, but Jimmie will not be sure. Come, lads."
The four men went away without another word, passing quickly through the barnyard and up the path that led into the woods. The mother arose and knelt by the bedside in the corner so long that Scotty could bear his burden of guilt no longer. He crept up to her, and when she put her arms about him he sobbed out his dreadful secret; how he and Isabel and Danny had carried a letter to Nancy, and another one back to Callum; and perhaps that was what made Callum run away. And oh, oh, he didn't know it was wicked or he wouldn't have done it; only she must not blame Isabel; it wasn't her fault.
But Granny blamed no one. She listened gravely to his story, and to Scotty's supreme relief seemed a little comforted by it. And she comforted him, too, patting his head lovingly and declaring that he was Granny's own boy with the big heart, indeed, and together they watched and waited through the long dreary day for the men's return.
But Scotty was tired out and gone to bed long before they came. He was half-awakened in the night by the sound of voices; strange voices, too; not angry or clamorous, but hushed and solemn. Once he distinguished Grandaddy's voice, broken as though with weeping, and Granny's, too, speaking as though she were comforting him, but with a sound in it that made the child's tender heart contract with pain. There seemed an awesomeness about the strange, soft movements below that sent a chill over him. None of the boys had come to bed yet; the light from below shone up through the cracks in the floor, and he crept to the hatchway and listened. And then he distinguished Praying Donald's low, deep voice raised in supplication; then Grandaddy had been fighting again and they had come to pray for him. The boy crept miserably back to his bed and, childlike, soon fell asleep.
He awoke in the rosy dawn, when the shadows of the forest still stretched up to the doorstep, and found to his surprise that Hamish was sitting by his bedside. He remembered with a chill the anxiety of the day and the awesomeness of the night before, and asked suddenly, "Where's Callum?"