But the warper turned on him with baleful eyes.  “She likes me,” he said in a grating voice, “and yet I’m as nothing to her; we are all as nothing to her beside you.  If there hadna been you I should hae become the father to her I craved to be; but you had mesmerized her; she had eyes for none but you.  I sent you to the herding, meaning to break your power over her, and all she could think o’ was my cruelty in sindering you.  Syne you ran aff wi’ her to London, stealing her frae me.  I was without her while she was growing frae lassie to woman, the years when maybe she could hae made o’ me what she willed.  Magerful Tam took the mother frae me, and he lived again in you to tak’ the dochter.”

“You really think me masterful—­me!” Tommy said, smiling.

“I suppose you never were!” Aaron replied ironically.

“Yes,” Tommy admitted frankly, “I was masterful as a boy, ah, and even quite lately.  How we change!” he said musingly.

“How we dinna change!” retorted Aaron, bitterly.  He had learned the truer philosophy.

“Man,” he continued, looking Tommy over, “there’s times when I see mair o’ your mother than your father in you.  She was a wonder at making believe.  The letters about her grandeur that she wrote to Thrums when she was starving!  Even you couldna hae wrote them better.  But she never managed to cheat hersel’.  That’s whaur you sail away frae her.”

“I used to make believe, Aaron, as you say,” Tommy replied sadly.  “If you knew how I feel the folly of it now, perhaps even you would wish that I felt it less.

“But we must each of us dree his own weird,” he proceeded, with wonderful sweetness, when Aaron did not answer.  “And so far, at least, as Elspeth is concerned, surely I have done my duty.  I had the bringing up of her from the days when she was learning to speak.”

“She got into the way o’ letting you do everything for her,” the warper responded sourly.  “You thought for her, you acted for her, frae the first; you toomed her, and then filled her up wi’ yoursel’.”

“She always needed some one to lean on.”

“Ay, because you had maimed her.  She grew up in the notion that you were all the earth and the wonder o’ the world.”

“Could I help that?”

“Help it!  Did you try?  It was the one thing you were sure o’ yoursel’; it was the one thing you thought worth anybody’s learning.  You stood before her crowing the whole day.  I said the now I wished you would go and leave her wi’ me:  but I wouldna dare to keep her; she’s helpless without you; if you took your arm awa frae her now, she would tumble to the ground.”

“I fear it is true, Aaron,” Tommy said, with bent head.  “Whether she is so by nature, or whether I have made her so, I cannot tell, but I fear that what you say is true.”

“It’s true,” said Aaron, “and yours is the wite.  There’s no life for her now except what you mak’; she canna see beyond you.  Go on thinking yoursel’ a wonder if you like, but mind this:  if you were to cast her off frae you now, she would die like an amputated hand.”