“No to my house,” cried David;—“not to my ain house. I canna face Matty, and them no found yet.”
“Aweel, then,” said John, “suppose ye gang hame wi’ me, and fling yersel down for a wee; an’ then we’ll be ready to start again at gray daylight.”
“An’ what will Matty think in the meantime?” answered David. “But gang on, gang on, however,” he added, “an’ I’se follow ye.”
John Maxwell, glad that he had got him this length, now led the way, occasionally making a remark to David, which was very briefly answered, so that John, seeing him in that mood, gave up speaking to him, till, coming at length to a bad step, and warning David of it, to which he got no answer, he hastily turned round and found that he was gone. He immediately went back, calling to David as loud as he could, but all to no purpose. It then occurred to him that David had probably changed his mind, and had gone homewards; and, at any rate, if he had taken another direction, that it was in vain for him to attempt following him, the light he carried being now nearly burnt out. He therefore made the best of his way to his own house.
In the meantime, poor David Williams, who could neither endure the thought of going to his own house nor to his brother-in-law’s, and had purposely given him the slip, continued to wander up and down without well knowing where he was, or where he was going to, when he suddenly found himself, on coming out of the wood, close to the cottage inhabited by a widow named Elie Anderson.
“I wad gie the world for a drink o’ water,” said he to himself; “but the puir creature will hae lain down lang syne, an’ I’m sweer to disturb her;” and as he said this, he listened at the door, and tried to see in at the window, but he could neither see nor hear anything, and was turning to go away, when he thought he saw something like the reflection of a light from a hole in the wall, on a tree which was opposite. It was too high for him to get at it without something to stand upon; but after searching about, he got part of an old hen-coop, and placing it to the side of the house, he mounted quietly on it. He now applied his eye to the hole where the light came through, and the first sight which met his horrified gaze was the body of his eldest daughter, lying on a table quite dead,—a large incision down her breast, and another across it!
David Williams could not tell how he forced his way into the house; but he remembered bolts and bars crashing before him,—his seizing Elie Anderson, and dashing her from him with all his might; and that he was standing gazing on his murdered child when two young ones put out their hands from beneath the bed-clothes.
“There’s faither,” said the one.
“Oh, faither, faither,” said the other, “but I’m glad ye’re come, for Nanny’s been crying sair, sair, an’ she’s a’ bluiding.”
David pressed them to his heart in a perfect agony, then catching them up in his arms, he rushed like a maniac from the place, and soon afterwards burst into John Maxwell’s cottage,—his face pale, his eye wild, and gasping for breath.