him. He
was pursued by a spectre in his own brain, and for that reason there was
no escape. Wherever he went it followed him.

"O man John," wailed his mother, "what are ye feared for your faither's
een for? He wouldna persecute his boy."

"Would he no?" he said slowly. "You ken yoursell that he never liked me!
And naebody could stand his glower. Oh, he was a terrible man, _my_
faither! You could feel the passion in him when he stood still. He could
throw himsell at ye without moving. And he's throwing himsell at _me_
frae beyond the grave."

Mrs. Gourlay beat her desperate hands. Her feeble remonstrance was a
snowflake on a hill to the dull intensity of this conviction. So
colossal was it that it gripped herself, and she glanced dreadfully
across her shoulder. But in spite of her fears she must plead with him
to save.

"Johnnie dear," she wept passionately, "there's no een! It's just the
drink gars you think sae."

"No," he said dully; "the drink's my refuge. It's a kind thing,
drink--it helps a body."

"But, John, nobody believes in these things nowadays. It's just fancy in
you. I wonder at a college-bred man like you giving heed to a wheen
nonsense!"

"Ye ken yoursell it was a byword in the place that he would haunt the
House with the Green Shutters."

"God help me!" cried Mrs. Gourlay; "what am I to do?"

She piled up a great fire in the parlour, and the three poor creatures
gathered round it for the night. (They were afraid to sit in the kitchen
of an evening, for even the silent furniture seemed to talk of the
murder it had witnessed.) John was on a carpet stool by his mother's
feet, his head resting on her knee.

They heard the rattle of Wilson's brake as it swung over the townhead
from Auchterwheeze, and the laughter of its jovial crew. They heard the
town clock chiming the lonesome passage of the hours. A dog was barking
in the street.

Gradually all other sounds died away.

"Mother," said John, "lay your hand alang my shouther, touching my
neck. I want to be sure that you're near me."

"I'll do that, my bairn," said his mother. And soon he was asleep.

Janet was reading a novel. The children had their mother's silly gift--a
gift of the weak-minded, of forgetting their own duties and their own
sorrows in a vacant interest which they found in books. She had wrapped
a piece of coarse red flannel round her head to comfort a swollen jaw,
and her face appeared from within like a tallowy oval.