And then, running for the little paper packet with the cheese and bread, and setting it down,
"But he'll see the sun to-morrow, and will sleep in his own bed to-morrow night too; that he shall. Now eat, mother, for you will be hungry; and see you this!" as she took from her pocket a very tiny bottle, which would hold somewhere about a glass.
"Take that," filling out a little whisky.
"Oh dear, dear bairn, where learnt ye a' that witchery?" said the mother, looking at her.
But the sly look, sometimes without a trace of laughter in her face, was the only answer.
And now they are stretched in bed in each other's arms; but it was a restless night for both. And how different the manifestations of the restlessness! The groans of the elder for the fate of her only boy, now suspended on the scales of justice—one branch of the balance to be lopt off by Nemesis, and the other left with a noose in the string whereon to hang that erring, yet still beloved son; hysterical laughs from Jeannie in her dreams, as she saw herself undo the kench, and Charlie let out, clapping his hands, and praying too, and kissing Jeannie, and other fantastic tricks of fancy in her own domain, unburdened with heavy clay which soils and presses upon her wings and binds her to earth, and to these monstrous likenesses of things, which she says are all a lying nature under the bonds of a blind fate, from where she cannot get free, even though she screams of murder and oppression and cruelty, and all the ills that earth-born flesh inherits from the first man.
Yet, for all these deductions from the sleep they needed, Jeannie was up in the morning early, infusing tea for herself and mother, muttering, as she whisked about,
"No breakfast for him made by me, who love him so dearly; but in this very house, ay, this night, he will have supper; and such a supper!"
In the midst of these scenes in the little room, a knock came to the door. It was a policeman, to say that she and her mother must be up to the office by ten.
"And shall we not?" said Jeannie, laughing; "wouldn't I have been there at any rate?"