“The police—in this house? No, no,” she cried, standing white and trembling, but holding out like a lion. “You will not deceive me with that—in this house.”
“Open the door, or we’ll break it in. Here, you speak to her!”—“Mem,” said a new voice, very tremulous but familiar, “it is me, Peter Young, with the men from Edinburgh. It’s maybe some awfu’ mistake; but you must let us in—you maun open the door.”
“You, Peter Young!” cried Mrs Ogilvy, “you are not the man to disturb my house in the middle of the night. It ill becomes you after all you’ve got from the Hewan. Just tell these idle folk there is nothing to be gotten here, and bid them go away.”
“This is folly,” said a more imperative voice. “Break in the door if she will not open it. We can’t stand all the night parleying here.”
Then Mrs Ogilvy heard, her ears preternaturally sharp in the crisis, a sound as of women’s voices, which gave her a momentary hope. Was it a trick that was being played upon her after all? for if it was for life or death why should there be women’s voices there?
And then another voice arose which was even more reassuring. It was the minister who spoke. The minister dragged hither against his will, but beginning to feel piously that it was the hand of providence, and that he had been directed not by Mrs Ainslie, but by some special messenger from heaven—if indeed she was not one. “Mrs Ogilvy,” the minister said, “it must be, as Peter says, some dreadful mistake—but it certainly is the police from Edinburgh, and you must let them in.”
“Who is that that is speaking? is it the minister that is speaking? are ye all in a plot to disturb the rest of a quiet family? No,” with a sudden exclamation, “ye will not break in my door. I will open it, since ye force me to open it. I am coming, I am coming.”
Andrew rushed forward, to pull back with all expedition the bolts and bars. But his mistress stamped her foot at him once more, and dismissed him behind backs with a look—from which he did not recover for many a long day—and coming forward herself, began to draw back with difficulty and very slowly the innocent bolts and bars. They might have been the fastenings of a fortress from the manner in which she laboured at them, with her unaccustomed hands. “And me ready to do it in a moment,” Andrew said, aggrieved, while she kept asking herself, the words buzzing in her ears, like flies coming and going, “Have I kept them long enough? have I given my lads their time? Oh, if they got out that quiet they should be safe by now.” There was the bolt at the bottom and the top, and there was the chain, and then the key to turn. The door was driven in upon her at last by the sudden entrance of a number of impatient men, a great gust of fresh air, a ray of moonlight straight from the skies: and Mr Logan and his companions, Susie pale and crying, and Mrs Ainslie pale too—but with eyes sparkling and all the keen enjoyment of an exciting catastrophe in her face.
“We have a warrant for the arrest of Lew or Lewis Winterman, alias, &c., &c., accused of murder,” said the leader of the party, “who we have reason to believe has been for some weeks harboured here.”
Mrs Ogilvy disengaged herself from the man whose sudden push inwards had almost carried her away. She came forward into the midst in her white cap and shawl, a wonderful centre to all these dark figures. “There is no such person in my house,” she said.