"Ye hae been fechtin' again, ye blakes," thundered their father. "Mind ye, if this happens again I will break every bane in your bodies. I will have you know that I am a man of peace! How did you get that black eye, Yabel?"
"I trippit ower the shaft o' a cairt!" said Abel, lying glibly in fear of consequences.
"And you, Alexander—where gat ye that lip?"
"I ran against something!" said the defender of innocence, succinctly. And stuck to it stubbornly, refusing all amplification.
"Well," said their father, grimly, "take considerably more heed to your going, both of ye, or you may run against something more serious still!"
Then he whistled on his dogs, and went up the dyke-side towards the hill.
* * * * *
After this, Alexander always carried in the peats for Mary McArthur, and, in spite of the taunts and gibes of his brothers, did such part of her work as lay outside the house. On winter nights and mornings he lighted the stable lantern for her before she went to milk the kye, and then when she was come to the byre he took his mother's stool and pail and milked beside her cow for cow.
All these things he did without speaking a word of love, or, indeed, saying a word of anything beyond the commonplaces of a country life. He never told her whether or no he had heard about the sailor lad who had gone over seas.
Indeed, he never referred to the subject throughout a long lifetime. All the same, I think he must have suspected, and with natural gentleness and courtesy set himself to ease the girl's heart-sore burden.