at job I could of it, and then we put Bryde in a peat
creel, with straw and blankets, and took him to his mother.

"It was just a daft prank," said he to Belle, who leant over him like
some wild fierce creature. "It was just a mad ploy, mother."

CHAPTER XXII.

THE SHAMELESS LASS.

I left Bryde sleeping at last and restless, with Belle wide-eyed by his
bedside, and traked down to the big house very bitter at heart against
Hugh, for the quarrel had been of his seeking; and when I came under
the rowan-trees and past the moss-covered stone horse-trough, the grey
day was coming in. And at the little window of Margaret's room I saw a
white face peering, and there in a bare stone-flagged lobby she came to
me, a stricken white thing, and dumb. She had no words at all, but
stood gazing at my face, her hands twisting and twisting, and a strange
moving in her white throat.

"Come, my lass," said I, and took her up and carried her to my room,
where there was still a glow of red in the wide fireplace, and I kicked
the charred wood together, and threw dry spills on that and made a
blaze, and set her in my chair in the glow of it, for she was stiff
with cold, being but half clothed or maybe less. Then I brought from
an aumery some French spirit, and she took a little, shivering and
making faces, but it lifted the cold from her heart. Yet in her eyes
was a dreadful look, as of one who had gazed all night over bottomless
chasms of nameless fear.

"And now, Mistress Margaret McBride," said I in as blithe a voice as I
could be mustering, "why am I to be finding you in cold lobbies, and
carrying you to my chamber like the ogre?"

At that came the saddest little smile over her face, and all her body
seemed to relax.

"Tell me," said she, "there would not be laughing in your voice and
him--away," and even then I was thinking she would be afraid to say
that grim word.

"Bryde will have a sned from a hanger," said I, making light of it.
"You will have seen deeper in a turnip, and I left him sleeping."

"The dear," said she--"the dear," and then looking at me, "Oh, Hamish,
Hamish, be good to me; I will not can help it."

"Where is Hugh?" said I.

"He came into us," said the lass, "like a wraith."

"'I have provoked my cousin,' he said, 'and wounded and maybe killed
him, and I am owing him my life forbye,' and I ran to be waiting for
you, and locked my door on all of them, even my mother."

She had a droll coaxing w