Then a hot wondrous thought leaped up in Nathan Monypenny's heart—the devil in the garb of an angel of light.
What if he were simply to hold his hand—the man was as good as dead already.
And what then? There rose up before Nathan Monypenny a vision of the woman whom he had loved more than life, of a pale and weary face upon which he would rejoice to bring out the roses as in the days of old. Happiness would do it, he knew. And, like all true lovers, he believed that he alone could make that one woman happy. Douglas Carnochan? What was he but a drunkard who had blighted two lives? If a hand were stirred to help him now, he would simply go on and finish the fell work of the years. His Dahlia's face would grow yet more weary, her shoulders more bent, and her eyes would less seldom be raised from the ground till on a thrice-welcome day the grave should be opened before her. Nathan knew it all by heart.
And this man—why did he deserve to live? Had not he (Nathan) afforded him every chance? Had he not obtained situation after situation for him? Had he not, in fact, kept Doog Carnochan and his family for years? Surely God did not require from him this great final sacrifice. It was certainly a chance to do lasting good—a happy woman, a happy man, a happy home! Better, too, (so Nathan told himself) for Douglas Carnochan's children. He would be a father to them—that which this their own father had never been. He would train, instruct, place them in the world. But—he would be a murderer!
* * * * *
After an hour's hard work Doog Carnochan sighed. Five minutes more and he opened his eyes. They twinkled blackly up at his preserver with a kind of ironical appreciation of the situation, and he smiled.
"Ah, Nathan," he murmured, "sae it's you that has drawn me oot o' the black flood water! Man, ye had better hae let weel alane!"
On this occasion Doog was not a humourist only. He was also a true prophet. For, from every point of view save that of the Eternal Decrees, it would indeed have been infinitely better if Nathan had let well alone, and not wrested back the unstable and degraded spirit of Douglas Carnochan from the rushing waters of Whinnyliggate Lane, that January night when Loch Girthon burst its bounds.
For, as Nathan had forecast, even so it was. Doog promptly returned to his wallowing in the mire, without even making a pretence of amending his restored life. Duly he brought down his wife's too early grey hairs in sorrow to the grave. His children, left to run wild, divided their time between the "Golden Lion" and the country gaol. Doog drank himself into an unhonoured grave. Only Nathan Monypenny remains, an old man now, yet holding firm-lipped to a conviction that God has explanations of the working of His laws which He refuses to us on this Hither Side, but which will be granted in full to us when we "know as also we are known."
After Doog's death Nathan bought and immediately razed to the ground the cottage at the foot of the street where Dahlia Carnochan's life tragedy had been enacted. He has planted a garden of flowers there, to the scorn and scandal of the whole village, which is cut to its utilitarian heart to see so much good potato land wasted—simply wasted.