“Meet me by the waterside bridge at ten o’clock,” she wrote.  No word more.  Then arose the question of messengers.  She went out to find Saunders Mowdiewort; she got him standing at the byre door, looking wistfully about for Meg.  “Saunders,” she said, “you are to take back this answer instantly to the young Master Peden.”

“Na, na, Jess, what’s the hurry?  I dinna gang a fit till I hae seen Meg,” said Saunders doggedly.  “Your affairs are dootless verra important, but sae are mine.  Your lad maun een wait wi’ patience till I gang hame, the same as I hae had mony a day to wait.  It’s for his guid.”

Jess stamped her foot.  It was too irritating that her combinations should fail because of a Cuif whom she had thought to rule with a word, and upon whom she had counted without a thought.

She could not say that it was on Winsome’s business, though she knew that in that case he would have gone at once on the chance of indirectly pleasuring Meg.  She had made him believe that she herself was the object of Ralph Peden’s affections.  But Jess was not to be beaten, for in less than a quarter of an hour she had overcome the scruples of Andra, and despatched Jock Gordon on another message in another direction.  Jess believed that where there is a will there are several ways:  the will was her own, but she generally made the way some one else’s.  Then Jess went into the byre, lifting up her house gown and covering it with the dust-coloured milking overall, in which she attended to Speckly and Crummy.  She had done her best—­her best, that is, for Jess Kissock—­and it was with a conscience void of offence that she set herself to do well her next duty, which happened to be the milking of the cows.  She did not mean to milk cows any longer than she could help, but in the meantime she meant to be the best milker in the parish.  Moreover, it was quite in accordance with her character that, in her byre flirtations with Ebie Farrish, she should take pleasure in his rough compliments, smacking of the field and the stable.  Jess had an appetite for compliments perfectly eclectic and cosmopolitan.  Though well aware that she was playing this night with the sharpest of edged tools, till her messengers should return and her combinations should close, Jess was perfectly able and willing to give herself up to the game of conversational give-and-take with Ebie Farrish.  She was a girl of few genteel accomplishments, but with her gipsy charm and her frankly pagan nature she was fitted to go far.

CHAPTER XXIX.

The DAKK of the moon at the GKANNOCH bridge.

Over the manse of Dullarg, still and grey, with only the two men in it; over the low-walled rectangular farm steading of Craig Ronald, fell alike the midsummer night.  Ten o’clock on an early July evening is in Galloway but a modified twilight.  But as the sun went down behind the pines he sent an angry gleam athwart the green braes.  The level cloud-band into which he plunged drew itself upward to the zenith, and, like the eyelid of a gigantic eye, shut down as though God in his heaven were going to sleep, and the world was to be left alone.