Mrs. Catherine entered the room suddenly, with a newspaper in her hand, and a triumphant expression in her face. “Here is news, Anne, news worth hearkening to. Did I not know the cattle would not be suffered to do their evil pleasure long in the house of a good man? Now in a brief hour, we will be clear of the whole race of them—unclean beasts and vermin as they are. Look at this.”
Anne started when she did so; it was a long advertisement setting forth, in auctioneer eloquence, the beauties and eligibilities of the desirable freehold property of Strathoran, which was to be offered for sale, on a specified day in spring, within a specified place in Edinburgh.
“What think you of that?” said Mrs. Catherine. “We have smitten the Philistines and driven them out of the land—a land that it is my hope will be polluted with the footsteps of the like of them never more in my day, though truly I am in doubt how we can get the dwelling purified, to make it fit for civilized folk.”
“And what do you mean to do?” said Anne, eagerly. “It may be bought by some other stranger: it may be—”
“Hold your peace, Anne,” said Mrs. Catherine; “are you also joining yourself to the witless bairns that would give counsel to gray hairs. It may be! I say it shall be! The siller will aye be to the fore, whether I am or no, and think you I will ever stand by again, and let a strange man call himself master of Strathoran—the house that Isabel Balfour went into a bride, and went out of again, only to her rest? It has been a thorn in my very side, this one unclean and strange tenant of it. Think you I will ever suffer another?”
“And what then?” said Anne, with anxious interest.
“We must get it bought, without doubt,” said Mrs. Catherine. “You are slower of the uptake, Anne, than is common with you. Whether I myself have, or have not, sufficient siller is another matter. There are folk in Scotland, who know the word of Catherine Douglas, and can put faith in it. Before three months are over our heads, an it be not otherwise ordained, Archie Sutherland shall be master of his land again.”
“Oh! Anne, are you not glad?” exclaimed little Alice: “we shall have Mr. Sutherland back again.”
Anne did not feel herself particularly called upon to express gladness, but she looked up inquiringly into Mrs. Catherine’s face.
“I said nothing of the lad coming home,” said Mrs. Catherine firmly. “Alison Aytoun, you are but a bairn, and will never be tried, so far as I can see the lot before you, by thoughts or purposes of a stern and troublous kind. It is other with you, Anne, as I know. This Archie Sutherland, has wasted with his riotous living the substance given in charge to him from his father, and from his father’s God. It is not meet he should come back unscathed to this leisure and honor; it is right he should clear himself by labor and toil, not of the sin before God, which is atoned for in a holier way, but of the sin in the sight of man. I say, I also would be sinning against a justice, which neither fails nor alters, and discouraging strong hearts that held upon their warfare manfully, when he fell under the hand of the adversary, were I bringing back Archie Sutherland at this time to the full honor and possessions of his father’s house. I will let him stay in his trial and probation, child, till he can show labor of his own hands, bravely done and like a man. The gallant is nearer to my own heart than ever man was, but Sholto my one brother; but it is meet he should render due justice after he has done evil.”