man stock or human
mothering.

The fire was black out, but on the hearth the shape of the burned
violin lay in a black heap like a dead, dangerous beast. For the head
and neck had twisted themselves back as if in agony, the black pegs
looking as if they could sting. They seemed to watch the door of the
weaving room into which their destroyer had gone. And certainly they
had not been unavenged. For their sake, the madman's knife had bitten
deep and keen. There was little need now for the head to twist itself
as the tightening strings had pulled it, as the fire had left it. All
was wiped out. And, as if in recognition of the fact, its master
stirred the black ashes with his toe before he struck into a wild
saturnalia of sound, to which Elsie danced like a Bacchante, with the
last remnants of her girl's strength.

It was still far from the dawn, which is a laggard in February
throughout Scotland. The red candles began to go out one by one. Fear
surged tumultuous in Elsie's heart--as, indeed, well it might--to find
herself thus shut up with the murderer of her grandfather, whose dead
body she knew lay behind the nearest door, and the red candles going
out one by one.

There remained only the huge centre one, a special purchase of Aphra's.
And still the madman grimaced, crossing and uncrossing his legs on the
high mantel-piece. Still he swung his instrument--still he called on
Elsie to dance. But now the girl was utterly fatigued. Without a sign
of giving way, something seemed to crack somewhere--in her head,
perhaps, or about her heart. She sank unconscious on the floor in a
heap.

Mad Jeremy halted in the middle of a bar; bent forward to look at the
girl to see whether or no she was pretending. Then, leaping down from
the mantel-shelf with the same graceful ease as he had mounted, he
strode to the last great red candle, fit for a cathedral altar, which
Aphra had set in the central candelabra. He took it down, and, after
one keen look at the girl, he stepped over her prostrate body, on his
way to resume his beloved melodeon, which he had left behind him when
he had leaped down.

A smile of infinite cunning wreathed his lips.

"Baith the twa," he muttered, the smile widening to a grin. "She's a
bonnie lassie, ay! and if Jeremy had ony thocht o' marryin' she wad be
the lass for him. But it's safer no! Baith the twa will be best dead.
That will mak' the last of the Stennises gang tegither. She shall