"Good-morning, Mary!" The girls smiled and looked proud, but they
said afterwards that the young master's voice sounded as if he were
saying good-bye to them.
Unconsciously he was going about like one who was taking a last look
round before setting out on a long journey. He went into the stable,
and Molly, his young chestnut mare, turned her head and neighed at
him. He went into the empty cow-house, and four young calves in
boxes licked, with their long moist tongues, the hand he held down to
them.
On the way back to the house he met Robbie Creer, who was full of
another story of Mrs. Collister of Baldromma. She had taken the
ground with the ebb tide, poor woman. They had put her into the
asylum. The doctors said her case was incurable. She was always
saying the old Dempster had come from the dead to take her Bessie out
of prison.
"But what a blessed end," said Stowell. "She'll think her daughter
is in heaven, so she'll always be happy."
"It's like she will, Sir," said Robbie, looking puzzled, and going
indoors for his morning bowl of porridge he said to his wife,
"A mortal quare thing to say, though, and the woman in the madhouse."
Stowell ate with an appetite (Janet plying him with coffee and eggs
and toasted muffins), and then young Robbie brought round the
dog-cart. Janet helped him on with his light loose overcoat and went
to the door with him.
He paused there, pulling on his driving-gloves and thinking what
cruel pain the dear soul would suffer when she heard that night what
he had done during the day. At last he threw his arms about her and
kissed her, saying with a gulp,
"Good-bye, mother! God bless you!"
And then he sprang up into the cart, snatched at the reins, pulled
them taut, and (after the young mare had leapt on her forelegs)
darted away.
As he approached the turn of the drive where the house was hidden by
the trees he turned and looked back at it--what a home to lose!
Janet, who was still at the porch, smoothing her silvery hair,
thought he had looked back at her, and she waved her hand to him.
Nobody had said a word to her, yet she knew he had been suffering as
a result of some terrible wrong-doing. She thought she knew what it
was, too, and she had wept bitter tears over it. But he had not a
fault in her eyes now.
Her boy! Hers all the way up since he was a child and used to run
about the lawn in pinafores. Heaven bless him! He was the best
thing God had ever made.