“Phemy! Phemy!” said her mother.
“For shame!”
“There’s nae shame intill ’t,”
protested the child indignantly.
“But there is shame intill ’t,”
said Malcolm quietly, “for ye wrang an honest
man.”
“Weel, ye canna deny,” persisted Phemy,
in mood to brave the evil one himself, “‘at
ye was ower at Kirkbyres on ane o’ the markis’s
mears, an’ heild a lang confab wi’ the
laird’s mither!”
“I gaed upo’ my maister’s eeran’,”
answered Malcolm.
“Ow, ay! I daursay!—But wha
kens—wi’ sic a mither!”
She burst out crying, and ran into the street.
Malcolm understood it now.
“She’s like a’ the lave (rest)!”
he said sadly, turning to her mother.
“I’m jist affrontit wi’ the bairn!”
she replied, with manifest annoyance in her flushed
face.
“She’s true to him,” said Malcolm,
“gien she binna fair to me. Sayna a word
to the lassie. She ‘ll ken me better or
lang. An’ noo for my story.”
Mrs Mair said nothing while he told how he had come
upon Lizzy, the state she was in, and what had passed
between them; but he had scarcely finished, when she
rose, leaving a cup of tea untasted, and took her
bonnet and shawl from a nail in the back of the door.
Her husband rose also.
“I ’ll jist gang as far ‘s the Boar’s
Craig wi’ ye mysel’, Annie,” he
said.
“I’m thinkin’ ye’ll fin’
the puir lassie whaur I left her,” remarked
Malcolm. “I doobt she daured na gang hame.”
That night it was all over the town, that Lizzy Findlay
was in a woman’s worst trouble, and that Malcolm
was the cause of it.
Annie Mair had a brother, a carpenter, who, following
her to Scaurnose, had there rented a small building
next door to her cottage, and made of it a workshop.
It had a rude loft, one end of which was loosely floored,
while the remaining part showed the couples through
the bare joists, except where some planks of oak and
mahogany, with an old door, a boat’s rudder,
and other things that might come in handy, were laid
across them in store. There also, during the
winter, hung the cumulus clouds of Blue Peter’s
herring nets; for his cottage, having a garret above,
did not afford the customary place for them in the
roof.
When the cave proved to be no longer a secret from
the laird’s enemies, Phemy, knowing that her
father’s garret could never afford him a sufficing
sense of security, turned the matter over in her active
little brain until pondering produced plans, and she
betook herself to her uncle, with whom she was a great
favourite. Him she found no difficulty in persuading
to grant the hunted man a refuge in the loft.
In a few days he had put up a partition between the
part which was floored and that which was open, and
so made for him a little room, accessible from the
shop by a ladder and a trapdoor. He had just
taken down an old window frame to glaze for it, when
the laird coming in and seeing what he was about, scrambled
up the ladder, and, a moment after, all but tumbled
down again in his eagerness to put a stop to it:
the window was in the gable, looking to the south,
and he would not have it glazed.
