and dictatorial about it found good soil
on the Lashcairn stock.

So modern Rationalism had a stern fight with Andrew, struggling with the
madness of the Kelt, the dourness of the Puritan. It held him for a year
and no more, for a thing unemotional could not grip a thing so
excitable. In that year Marcella was bidden read all the books her
father read, and believe them. When she evaded them she was forced to
read them aloud, with a dictionary at her side, and discuss them
intelligently with him. If she answered at random, with her heart and
her eyes away at the huts with Wullie, he would throw at her head the
nearest thing that came to his hand--a book, a faggot of wood, a cup of
tea--or order her to bed without any food. Marcella had to follow him
on these excursions into philosophic doubt, sacrificing her pet calf
of legend and poetry every day in the temple of Rimmon, handcuffed to
him as she did it. But Andrew Lashcairn did everything with such
thoroughness that he seemed to use up a certain set of cells in his
brain exhaustively, and thus procure revulsion. A man who can drink half
a gallon of whisky a day for years consistently, and stop without a
moment's notice, can do most things. Andrew took Rationalism as he took
whisky; he forced it upon his household.

In all this time her chief joy was to be found in writing long letters
to her dead mother, whom she imagined to be living somewhere between the
sunshine and the rain, an immanent presence. These letters she burnt
usually, though sometimes she made little boats of them and floated them
out to sea, and sometimes she pushed them into the shifting sands
through fissures on Lashnagar. They comforted her strangely; they were
adoration and love crystallized. Her only friendliness came from
Hunchback Wullie, when she could escape from the book-room and run down
to his hut.

It was a hard winter, this winter of philosophic doubt for souls and
bodies both. The wild gales kept the fishing-boats at home; the wild
weather had played havoc with the harvests, and often Marcella knew that
Wullie was hungry, though he never told her so. Whenever she went to the
hut she would manage to be absent from a meal beforehand, and going to
Jean, would ask for her ration of whatever was going. Down in the hut
she and Wullie would sit round the fire of driftwood, reaching down
dried herrings from the roof and toasting them on spits of wood for
their feast. And they would talk while t