‘Eh!’ he murmured to himself as he tossed and tumbled in vain effort to discover a way out of the labyrinth of difficulties the business presented, ‘it’s a troublous affair. I’d like to do justice, if I could see my way clear to the doing o’t. I’d like fine to bowl out that smugfaced hypocrite Conseltine, and that lump o’ malignity his son. ’Twould be the grandest day’s work I ever did. But I promised, like an old fool, and I must keep my promise, and just await the decrees o’ Providence.’
He rose long before his usual hour, early as that was, and went out into the fresh breeze of early morning. Dawn was faintly glimmering on the mountain-tops, and the dew was heavy on the grasses of the lawn. He looked up at the light which shone faintly in his master’s window.
‘’Twill be but a poor night’s rest he’s had, I’m thinkin’, poor old heathen, found out by his sin at last. Eh, but the lad’s curses will lie heavy on his heart! Mine’s wae for him, and for the callant I’ve seen grow up from a bairn, and for the lonely woman out yonder.’
A sudden idea struck him; he drew out his watch and consulted it eagerly.
‘Near hand to four o’clock,’ he murmured. ‘The mill’s but four miles awa’. I can do it in an hour, and anither hour to come back. I’ll gang and see Moya, and persuade her to hear reason.’
He took his hat and stick, and set out at the briskest pace he could attain towards Moya’s lodging place. It was a rough and stony track, and by the time he came in sight of the mill the old man was fain to sit upon a chance boulder and pant his breath back. Caution was necessary; he wished to do nothing that could by any chance give gossip or conjecture a handle, and he walked cautiously round the mill, glad of the babble of the stream which covered the sound of his footsteps on turf and gravel. Nobody was stirring; the place and all the countryside lay still and gray under the morning mist, now faintly touched here and there with threads of opalescent colour by the yet invisible sun. He threw a small pebble cautiously at the window shutter of Moya’s sleeping place, and a minute later it opened and revealed her pale, lined face. He made a gesture, cautioning her to silence, and then by another invited her to join him. She nodded to show comprehension of his pantomime, and a minute later stood beside him.
They walked on side by side in silence till they reached a little glen between two hills which hid them from all chance of observation, and then Peebles spoke.
‘Moya, woman,’ he said, ‘tell me why, after all these years, you come here now?’
‘I came to see my son,’ she answered.
‘Ay,’ he said, ‘that’s natural eneuch, na doubt. But is that all you came for?’