"But I do worry!" she said. "I can imagine what he thought of me as he went away. For you must not forget this, Käthchen: it was a very awkward position he put himself into in order to do me a good turn. Think of his coming to the house, that ought to be his own—asking the servants if he might be admitted—sending up his name as a stranger—then he remains standing in the drawing-room—and he is for going away without shaking hands—as if he were hardly to be considered one's fellow-creature." She was silent for a second or two; then she said, with a sudden touch of asperity: "At the same time there is this to be remembered, that the pride that apes humility is the very worst kind of pride. Often it simply means that the person is inordinately vain."
"Poor young man!" said Käthchen, with a sigh. "He is always in the wrong. But I'm sure I did not object to his manner when he showed us the way out of the Meall-na-Fearn bog."
About a couple of hundred yards on the Lochgarra side of Cruagan they met the mail-car; and when, a minute or two thereafter, they came in sight of the scattered crofts, it was obvious from the prevailing commotion that the sheriff's officer and his assistants had arrived. Indeed, when Mary and Käthchen descended from the waggonette and walked up to James Macdonald's cottage, the business of getting out the few poor sticks of furniture had already begun—the only onlooker being an old white-haired man, Macdonald's father, who was standing there dazed and bewildered, as if he did not understand what was going forward. Just as Mary got up, one of the concurrents brought out a spinning-wheel and put it on the ground.
"Here—what are you doing?" she said, angrily, to the man who appeared to be the chief officer. "Leave that spinning-wheel alone: that is the very thing I want to see in every cottage!"
"I've got the sheriff's warrant, ma'am," said the man, civilly enough. "And we must get everything out and take possession."
"Oh, no, you mustn't!" she said. "This man Macdonald claims compensation—the case must be inquired into——"
"I have nothing to do wi' that, ma'am," said the officer, who seemed a respectable, quiet-spoken, quiet-mannered kind of a person. "I'm bound to carry out the warrant—that's all I've to heed."
"But surely I can say whether I want the man turned out or not?" she protested. "He is my tenant. It is to me he owes the money. Surely, if I am satisfied, you can leave the man alone. But where is he? Where is Macdonald?"
"As for that, ma'am," said the officer, "he is away down the road, and he says he is going to fetch a gun. Very well. If he presents a gun at either me or my concurrents I will declare myself deforced, and he will have to answer for it before the sheriff."
"A gun?" said Mary, rather faintly. "Do you mean to drive the poor man to desperation?"