A ROPE-END AND A TREE
I
Hardcastle fretted during the next days, because the hurt to his knee
yielded slowly even to Rebecca’s skill with peat and simples and the
right way of handling bandages. The fear was on him constantly that
Garsykes would hear of his infirmity and rush to the attack before his
strength returned to face it.
There was the pedlar, trusting to the shelter he had promised him—and
Rebecca, old in service—and Causleen.
There was Causleen. She was aloof and chill whenever they met about the
house. He could make nothing of her whims. Was it his fault that he had
been asked to save her life, and was powerless to rescue her from the
whip of Nita’s tongue, except by marriage? And marriage she disdained.
He tried to reason it all out, not understanding that reason was the
last thing concerned with what had happened to Causleen and himself.
Always the worst of his fretting returned to her. If those louts from
Garsykes came and he had only one knee to serve him, what would chance?
His mind ran out to the unthinkable—for Causleen.
“Now, it’s not a bit of good,” said Rebecca on one of these afternoons,
as she was bandaging his knee afresh, “not a bit of good to go about
like a man that thinks the roof will fall because he’s got a pain in his
knee. Men are all alike, Lord help ’em—’specially when they’re mending
nicely, and ought to be giving a thanks-be, instead of glowering like a
thunderstorm. It nags a bit, what I’m rubbing into the raw o’ your
wound? Well, there’s healing goes with nags sometimes.”
“You don’t know,” grumbled the Master. “I fall lame just when Logie
needs me. There’s you and Donald——”
“Aye, and there’s Donald’s lass. That’s where your shoe pinches. Times
were different when I was young.”
She tied the bandage, sewed its edges up and bit the thread off with her
strong, ancient teeth.
“Different?” asked Hardcastle, impatient of her ministry and all things.
“Aye. We never doubted Logie’s roof was safe. My lad doesn’t doubt it to
this day. You’re young, Master, and I’m of the elder days, and I tell
you what I know.”
Rebecca had no more to do with bandages and healing. She was wrapt into
another world—grey and gaunt, a prophetess.
“War comes to Logie-side. The youngsters fight, and the old see far.
D’ye think I go every night and morning to tryst my lad at the gate and
get nothing for it? He died for Logie once—and it was forty years ago.”
Jonah the brindled cat, crept into the room and leaped to Rebecca’s
shoulder. He was no hearthside lover now, but wild and bridling.
“Even Jonah seems to know there’s trouble coming,” went on Rebecca.
“Well, let it come, and we’ll outface it as we’ve always done.”
“There were fewer men in Garyskes then,” said the Master gloomily—“and
more who were staunch for Logie.”
Rebecca glanced at him, and even her free speech was checked. She read
his heart, as he could not. The odds against him had not brought this
black mood, but fear for Causleen had. Awhile since she had been jealous
of the girl, resentful of the gaining fear that her own reign at Logie
might be ended soon. Now she feared lest Causleen’s playing with the
Master should ruin all. It was no time “for furbelows and cantrips,” and
how could a man fight his best with half of him wondering if his lass
cared?
“You’ve been fretting to give that knee o’ yours a taste of the fresh
air,” she said grudgingly. “Have your way, then, for it’s mending fast.
And, of course, you’ll go a mile if I tell you the half is enough and to
spare.”
Hardcastle went more than the mile. He was unused to the prison of four
walls for days on end, and the wine of the crisp November afternoon got
into his blood with every step he took. In all the years behind he had
seldom seen Logie-land in its full breadth and splendour as he saw it
now. The striding acres, wind-blown and lonely—the last sunset glow on
old Pengables—the sombre forest getting to its sleep—all were like
ancient friends who brought a new, swift welcome. They might be in the
losing, but they were his as yet, and wonderfully dear.
One moorland track lured him on to another, till he reached the
beech-wood that stepped down to Scawgill Water. Life had done this and
that for him, but had not killed the boy’s romance that would linger
always in this silent place of mystery, with its grave, round-boled
trees, its red-russet drift of leaves that crinkled to the tread.
Squirrels had their tree-top nests here, and badgers lived in the
“earths” beside the stream. A great dreamer, in spite of his hardness,
the Master still peopled the glen with all that country legend had to
tell of water-nixies, trolls and goblins. It was so hushed a place, so
instinct with underfret of the primeval life, that no man could linger
here and fail to know its witchcraft.
A stifled cry sounded near at hand, and then a groaning, low and
long-drawn-out. Hardcastle, startled out of his dreams, glanced sharply
round. Long since a wandering tinker had come to a foul end here, and
his ghost, they said, was restless time and time.
The pigeons ceased their crooning in the tree-tops. A cold and slender
wind, prying to the bone, chilled Hardcastle. Far down Logie Dale a
farm-dog yapped and barked, and a roaming fox took up the challenge.
Hardcastle glanced about him, and up a clearing of the wood saw a body
swinging from a tree. All the boy in him took fright; but the man bade
him go and see what this ghost of a suicide dead fifty years ago was
made of.
The gloaming filtered through leafless branches and showed him a gaunt,
six-foot body turning and twisting on a rope. The body still groaned,
but with lessening vigour; and there was something pitiful in the feet
that trod helplessly on air, seeking firm ground.
Hardcastle got out a knife and ripped the cord across. The body tottered
and swayed for an instant, and afterwards it needed all his strength to
check it in its fall and lower it into the withered brackens, Then he
loosed the frowsy shirt and watched the dull purple steal from the man’s
face, giving way to a pallor as of death.
The slow return of life was terrible to be alone with, and Hardcastle
welcomed the plea for water that came by and by. The stream lay below
them, and he had no vessel of any kind; so he shouldered the
half-lifeless body, carried it to the bank and ladled water in his palms
as best he could.
“That’s better,” gurgled the man, when at last his choking throat
contrived to swallow a few drops.
The farm-dog and the yapping fox had roused every house about the fells
by now. From Pengables to Crake Beacon, dogs gave tongue, loud across
the still night-air. And close at hand, in answer, came a scampering of
wild things through the undergrowth. Field voles twittered, and overhead
the flitter-mice cried thinly as they vanned to and fro.
In the midst of this stealthy terror of the woodland folk, the man
propped against the stream’s bank began to drink greedily and to good
purpose, till Hardcastle denied him more. Then they two looked at each
other, in the light of a moon that shone wanly through the naked
tree-tops.
“It’s you, Hardcastle o’ Logie?”
“Yes, Long Murgatroyd—and the devil of a time you’ve given me.”
“That’s good news.” The man’s slow-witted hatred, nursed in health,
leaped out in this hour of weakness and release from death; “but it’s
naught to what’s waiting for you up at Logie.”
A madness came on Hardcastle. The sweat of trouble he had given this
lout, dangling between earth and sky awhile since, asked for a word or
two in another key. His hands were itching for the throat that he had
saved.
“You were minded to spare the hangman trouble later on,” he said at
last, “and so am I. But I’ll leave you to it.”
Murgatroyd began to laugh, and could not check himself for awhile. Then
he put a hand to his throat, and laughed again, as a dotard might.
“I came near to hanging myself in Nita’s garter, as that terrible
pranksome fellow, Will o’ Wisp, would say. And so did you, Hardcastle.
What could I do but laugh? We might have been swinging together—me on
one tree, and Logie’s high-almighty on its neighbour. We’d have made a
bonnie picture—with Nita coming to look on.”
The farm-dogs yelped and barked across the wastes. Fear gained on the
little people of the wood. The breeze sobbed and whimpered, and would
not be still. And Hardcastle feared greatly, too—lest he could keep his
hands no longer from Long Murgatroyd.
“Are you fit to be left, if I take your rope home with me?” he snapped.
Murgatroyd was recovering fast. “You needn’t take it. She maddened me so
with her come-and-kiss, and her stand you off, and all the sick
damnation of it, that I fancied a rope’s end more than Nita. That’s
gone.”
“Gone, has it?” asked Hardcastle, with a sick kind of wonder.
“Aye. I’ll get my arms about her, soon or late. I promised her no less.
So you run home to Logie, if there’s any Logie standing.”
“It’s stood against the Garsykes swine for years out of mind. I’m not
for hurrying, Murgatroyd.”
Deep, sullen hatred showed in the man’s face, mottled with returning
life. To Hardcastle it was as if he looked down into the pit of hell,
seeing a lost man who would not be saved at any cost of trouble from
helping hands above.
“Nita wanted me to go with them to-night,” said Murgatroyd; “but I told
her I’d rather hang myself in a wood than do her bidding.”
The man fell into cackling laughter again, then shivered as memory of
the rope returned.
“We’d have been a bonnie couple, swinging side by side; but ’twas not to
be, it seems.”
II
Hardcastle left him there, and swung up the fields to Logie. His pace
quickened with every stride, for Murgatroyd’s tale of peril to the house
had found its mark. If it were true that an attack was planned, he might
already be too late; and he thought ceaselessly of his home—and of
Causleen.
When he topped the rise that looked down on Logie, he glanced eagerly
up-dale. Prepared to see flames leaping high into the dusk, he saw only
a steady lamplight glow that shone from the window over the
porch—Causleen’s window—and instead of men’s frenzied shouts he heard
only a farm-lad’s song as he went about the business of the mistals.
The relief was so quick, so urgent, that a sudden “God be thanked”
escaped him. Murgatroyd had lied. He should have known as much, and
saved himself the sick suspense of his journey up the fell.
“For why should God specially be thanked?” asked a quiet voice at his
elbow.
Brant the shepherd, a silent man in all his ways, had come noiselessly
to the Master’s side, and was tugging at his wispy beard.
“Confound you, Stephen, you startled me. They said the Garsykes Men had
come to Logie.”
“Well, they haven’t, to all appearance; but they come to my sheepfold as
if there was no law in the land. I stepped down to talk about it with
you, Master.”
“The ewes must take their chance, as we all do these days.”
“Aye, they mean little to you, and always did. Time was when you
sheltered Storm, though he was a red-jawed outlaw dog. Well, I got Storm
at last.”
Hardcastle found the grim humour that gave salt and savour to these
harsh days. “You got Storm, poor beast,” he said, thinking of the
cupboard under the stair at Logie—thinking, too, of Causleen and her
way with the backslider.
“He’ll trouble me no more—but durned if these Garsykes Men aren’t worse
than a kennel-full of such as Storm. They grow outrageous—fair
outrageous.”
The Master was glad of the chance given him to speak his mind. “There
are six of us leal to the old house, Stephen. The rest are paying
tribute.”
“Damn ’em, yes.”
“Get away before Logie goes. I brought you into this, thinking we’d win
through. There’s no need for you to stay.”
“No,” said Brant—“except that we’re twin and marrow in our love o’
Logie. Where you bide, I bide.”
Hardcastle glanced over to the light that shone from Causleen’s window.
All was in the losing, and his wits were keen to save her from the last,
foul uproar.
“Could we get the pedlar and his girl to your hut on the moor? It’s cold
up yonder at this time o’ year, but there are worse things than cold.”
“We could. The bracken-sledge would bump old Donald a bit by the way,
but we’d pad him well with hay-trusses.”
“I’ll have the sledge out to-morrow, with the old grey horse to draw it.
He’s only eating his head off in the stable.”
“Not so fast, Master,” put in Brant dryly. “That hut o’ mine is well
enough for a rough shepherd, but I’ll fettle it up before a maid can
pretend to be suited with it.”
“It’s no time to ask whether the maid’s pleased or not,” snapped the
other. “You know what may happen any moment if she stays.”
Brant was silent as they crossed the last pasture-field. He knew many
things—not least of them the reason that made Hardcastle gloomy and
prone to caution nowadays. It would be better for them all if Causleen
were out of Garsykes’ reach, and the Master’s mind relieved of the
sapping dread lest hurt should come to her.
“I’ll be ready,” he said, opening the back-gate of Logie for Hardcastle
to pass through. “Then, after we’re free of what you might call
encumbrances, we’ll set about putting the fear of hell into the Lost
Folk.”
Hardcastle regained his old self at a bound, for no reason that he
guessed. “What’s in that feud-sick mind of yours, Brant?”
“To gather my stolen ewes from Garsykes. Six of us are staunch, and six
have dogs to round ’em up and back to Logie. We’ve fowling-pieces, too.”
“But cannot use them, Brant. You should know that I’m a magistrate.”
Humour answered veiled humour. “To be sure we can’t—save for killing
vermin. That’s allowed by law.”
A great burden had slipped from the Master’s shoulders. He was free
somehow, to carry a careless heart and fight Logie to the last edge of
what might come.
“To-morrow, after we’ve got the pedlar safe up-moor?”
“The sooner the better. Who told you they were coming against Logie
to-night?”
“Long Murgatroyd.”
“He’d be a liar if he stood on the brink o’ Kingdom Come.”
“That’s where he did stand—dangled, I should say—when I found him.”
“Oh, aye?” asked Brant, with slow curiosity.
“There are things men don’t think of twice, if they can help it. Come
indoors, and tell Rebecca that winds are dry and thirsty on the
heights.”
“They are,” said the shepherd, with conviction, “and from this to Hawes
Water there’s no ale as ripe as Logie’s.”
They parted in the stable-yard, and Hardcastle, coming to the grey,
moonlit front of the house, glanced at the room over the porch. The
light still shone from it, and Causleen, kneeling on the window-seat,
looked down at him. The lamp-glow behind her ran out to meet the
silver-gold, soft moonlight. And both were tender with her beauty.
“Oh, I’ve waited for you,” she said, her voice soft as one of her own
Highland burns in summer.
A great joy blazed up in Hardcastle, as if boyhood found its spring
again. “You’ve waited?” he asked sharply.
“Yes. Rebecca is beyond herself with grief. She sees you lying dead
somewhere on the fells, and sits and croons, saying she ought never to
have let you out of her sight—with your wounded knee, and all the mad
wolves hunting you.”
“Let them hunt,” said Hardcastle, his dreams shattered suddenly by her
chill laugh of contempt.
“I will comfort Rebecca, while you go to father. He has been asking for
you.”
“Is that mockery, too?”
“None of it is mockery. And Rebecca need not have feared. There’s a mad
wolf glaring up at me—bigger than any of the Garsykes breed.”
Hardcastle conquered his gusty rage. She was a woman, and his guest. If
the new dreams had to go—well, the old ones had gone, and soon Logie
would be ended, too. Nothing mattered.
“Donald asks for me?” he questioned.
“I said it—and we of the Highlands do not lie, as you of Logie do.”
The Master limped into his own house, forgetting the fret of the knee
that had broken Rebecca’s bandages by now. A yelp of welcome sounded the
moment he set foot indoors, and Storm left his hiding-place and pressed
close against him, clamoring for attention.
Hardcastle held up a warning hand. “Kennel, lad. There’s Brant in the
house.”
Storm’s tail fell limp. His whole body seemed to shrink and lessen as he
crept back to the cupboard. He had learned that Brant was a word of evil
meaning.
“Poor devil,” muttered Hardcastle, “there’s not much left for him in
life, though he saved three of us. Brant or another will get him soon.”
He went into the room where Donald lay on the settle, his body tethered
by weakness, but his eyes bright and eager.
“I wanted you,” said the pedlar. “Sit ye down in the chair here, and
I’ll let some of my long thoughts out. They burden me.”
His glance roved from Hardcastle to the pike that hung above the mantel,
and back again.
“I’ll not grudge you that any longer,” he went on. “They tell me of your
stand against the Lost Folk, and I care for a man who can make music out
of odds. I would that, here in Yorkshire, you had the pipes to hearten
you.”
His mind wandered to the glens of home, to unforgotten pibrochs and his
long fight with poverty—wandered to the gorsy braes that he had roamed
with Causleen’s mother. Then he spoke again, smiling gently.
“When one is chained as I am, there is nothing to be done, except grow
wise. If a man can fight one sort of honest battle, he can fight all. I
wanted you to know that—that your guests have not turned vagabonds for
choice, or for lack of struggle.”
Hardcastle, wrenched out of old ruts by war and heartache, found a fine
simplicity. He understood all that Donald left unsaid, the grace and
manliness of it.
“My guests are very welcome,” he said, diffident and gruff. “They should
know as much by this time.”
“We have fought, Causleen and I. There were no pipes with us, no press
of foemen waiting for attack. There was only poverty—a dumb enemy, cold
and crafty, that lay in wait.”
Again Donald’s glance wandered to the Flodden pike.
“Be gentle with an old man who sees before and after, and must ease his
mind. There are cairns in my country, reared to Hielandmen who died with
the broadsword in their hands. There’s not one to speak of those who
fought poverty, the hardest foe of all.”
Then his restless mind went wandering down the centuries. He told of
Macbeth and Duncan—of Glencoe and its narrow shambles—of Prestonpans
and Derby Town and red Culloden Moor—as of staunch, forthright matters
he had shared. And, whether he lived or died in far-off tumults, there
was constantly the joy of well-worth-while, the thud of blows, the
heartening wonder of the pipes, playing men up the further hills.
It was only when he came to the tale of his journey from the Highlands
that the song went out of his voice, the light from his eyes. Hardcastle
grew ashamed of his own wealth and ease, as he listened to the slow
recountal of trinkets sold here, to earn a bed for the night—of
fortunes told in an alien country to win the price of a wayside meal.
The tale was so simply told that he, too, felt footsore and heartsore as
he listened. Donald roused himself at last from his journeys down the
years. The quiet, beguiling smile crept once more across the grey
creases of his face.
“Have I wearied you with my chatter—as I tire you because I’m so long
in dying?”
“We shall get you strong again——”
“No,” broke in Donald. “Something tells me the end is even nearer than
you think—a tame end to a life that has dreamed so much of ancient
battles.”
Hardcastle humoured his mood, garrulous but constantly returning to the
one clouded purpose. For pride’s sake he needed to explain how Causleen
and he came to be travelling the roads, and presently his mind grew
clear.
“We had ever been Stuart men in the old days—losing, and hoping, and
fighting—till little was left me when my time came to be laird in the
dreadful days of honour and peace. That little went, and Causleen had to
make her choice. There was a rich wooer came. A great name he had, and
nothing against him but the one thing that damned all.”
“Go on, Donald.”
“You will not understand. How should you? The Stuarts were discrowned
and out of mind long since, you’d say; but in the Highlands they can
never be discrowned. And the wooer who came was of a clan that had sold
the old allegiance for gold—just for guinea-pieces to jangle in a
purse.”
The fire of youth kindled in Donald’s voice. Consuming wrath was in his
eyes. And Hardcastle understood better than the pedlar guessed; for
Logie moorlands knew the way of staunchness to their own allegiance.
“I left the choice to Causleen, though I’d rather have seen the child in
her shroud than linked to him. ‘He can save the house for us with his
gold,’ I said, to prove her. And, ‘He cannot,’ said she, ‘for there’s
Stuart blood on it. A hundred years is not enough to cleanse it.’ So we
took the roads together, she and I.”
His eyes closed for awhile. One purpose was achieved; but another
clamoured for fulfilment, and he had little time to spare. He was alert
again.
“She took the roads as bravely as she took her choice—but soon she will
be travelling alone.”
There was question in the pedlar’s glance—a pleading that was command
almost. And out of doors a breeze plucked and rattled at the windows, as
if to deepen fear of what the lone highways had in store for Causleen.
Hardcastle watched the lamplight flicker in the draught, looked on the
old, familiar furnishings with new vision—the bell-mouthed
blunder-busses of his father’s time, the pewter polished to dim lustre
by what was known to Rebecca as “elbow grease”—the pike that had given
every son of Logie pause when he was minded to be less than the men who
marched to Flodden long ago.
He knew what Donald hoped for, and with wry humour he recalled the way
of Causleen since he saved her from the snow—her avoidance of him, or
mockery such as she had showered on him from her window when he came by
to-night.
“You would have me guard her? Nothing but marriage could give me that
right.”
“I have watched you, and the laid-by folk see much. It seemed that you
cared, and hope grew apace. That is why I tell you what her proper
station is. My girl would not shame Logie’s pride.”
There was something wistful in the pedlar’s eagerness, his dignity. He
longed for Causleen’s safety, but would not cringe for it.
“She will have none of me, Donald—so how can I ease your mind? I’ll ask
no woman twice.”
A great joy shone in the pedlar’s face. He had had no inkling, till now,
that Hardcastle had forestalled his keen desire.
“Second thoughts are sometimes best—especially a maid’s. She thought
you offered marriage out of pity, maybe.”
“Yes. I could not persuade her from it.”
“You will,” said Donald softly, and drew a long breath of thankfulness,
and dozed awhile.
When he roused himself, his hold on this world seemed gone. He looked
out before him as if no house-walls and no leagues of foreign country
hid the wild glens of Inverness. He was home again.
“I had two dreams,” he said, his voice clear and lusty. “One was to know
Causleen safe, and that comes true. The other was a sick man’s fancy. I
dreamed”—he tried to lift himself, and failed—“dreamed that I died a
warrior, instead of Pedlar Donald.”
With that his eyes closed, and Rebecca, coming to see how it went with
him, stood beside the settle, her grim face softened.
“Sleeps like a babby, poor soul—and it would be as well if he died in
it, instead of living to be bumped on a bracken-sledge to-morrow. Brant
sits snug by my hearth, and tells me you’re for turning the old man out
o’ doors.”
“The Garsykes Men are coming. He’s safer up the moor.”
“His brat is safer, you mean. Why don’t you want to tuck me, too, on the
sledge, if Logie is no place for women? D’ye think that, because I’ve a
face like a hatchet, to scare men with, I’ve a heart after the same
pattern? Ask the lad that keeps tryst with me at the gate, every night
and all.”
She lowered the lamp, took another look at Donald as if he were an
ailing first-born of her own, and together they went out into the
draughty hall.
Storm yapped and whimpered from his cupboard, and Hardcastle went in to
quiet him, thinking only of the dog’s peril, not of Logie’s.
“There’s Brant near by,” he said.
Storm would not be satisfied. He bared his teeth and growled till
Hardcastle cuffed him. Then the sheep-slayer shivered and lay down—but
not for fear of Brant—and whined, as the rising breeze about the house
sobbed from the lost Garsykes lands.
When Hardcastle had fastened him in, with a biscuit or two for company,
he went with Rebecca to the kitchen. They found Brant sitting by the
hearth, a stoup of ale beside him.
“Getting mellow, Stephen?”
“Mellowish, as you might say.”
“There’s naught else to do these days, while the waiting-time is on.”
“He talks of sleeping here to-night,” said Rebecca, harking back to her
grievance, “says he wants to be ready for the sledge-journey you’ve
planned. If you want to kill poor Donald outright—well, bump him to his
death on the bracken-track.”
Hardcastle, a little afraid of his henchwoman in times of ease, was the
master now. “War has come. Will you put that into your mind once for
all?”
“I’m not likely to forget it.”
“They’re coming one day to fire Logie. D’ye think we want to be crippled
by thought of Donald, lying helpless? If he had his choice, would he be
burned in his bed—or risk death on the bracken road, with God’s winds
about him?”
“God’s winds blow snell and cruel these days Indoors or out, there’s
little to choose, and men like Brant come trapesing in to beg a night’s
lodging. He’s killed Storm, he tells us, and should be content with
that, without adding murder of poor Donald to his Judgment tally.”
“Killing of Storm won’t worrit me, when my time comes,” chuckled Brant.
“There’ll be a few score ewes to back me up—ewes that might have gone
into his jaws if it hadn’t been for a lucky shot o’ mine. As for Donald,
I’m with the Master. He’s a better chance on the uplands than tied to
his bed at Logie.”
“Aye, talk at me, now you’re two to one. Beat an old woman down. But
when you’ve killed a lone pedlar—one that’s shared Logie’s salt—don’t
run to my apron for comfort. I’ll give you none.”
“We shouldn’t look for it,” said the Master dryly.
Rebecca, taut as a bow-string, was at war with herself and every living
thing about her, because peril did not come. The lad who had trysted her
at the gate these forty years, had told her yesterday of havoc brewing
up. And instead there was a wet breeze sobbing round the house, and
Brant with the ale-froth about his stubbly beard and Hardcastle, dour
and tall and thinking of Causleen. She knew that he was thinking of her,
and heard children, of his getting, shout in play. Forlorn, alone and
jealous, she sought for a grievance, and found it speedily.
“Your knee’s dripping, Master, and so much for my bandages. A careless
man at all times, you.”
She went to the cupboard near the hearth, and got out a store of lint,
and herbs that staunched the bleeding. The Master was hers for a little
while, before Causleen stole him from her.
“It hurts, as I rub it in?”
“Like the devil, Rebecca. But have your way.”
A bark sounded down the gusty corridor, and Brant cocked a hairy ear.
“If Storm wasn’t dead, I’d have sworn I heard him.”
“His ghost barked,” said Rebecca. “No wonder he’s haunting you from this
to the end of all. Are you sure you killed him?”
“Aye, I’m sure of that. And, as for his ghost, it needn’t trouble me.”
Rebecca finished her task, and gave the bandage a rough, ill-tempered
pat. “There! If fire and slaughter’s coming, it’s as well to have two
legs to stand on instead of one. Men are feckless, left to themselves.”
And now a silence crept about the house, and into the hearts of these
three. They longed for the wind to rattle at the casements; but it, too,
had fallen dumb. Logie was a house aware—its every stone and
rafter-beam—of a peril sinister and urgent.
The brindled cat, catching the stealthy unrest of the house, had gone to
Storm for comfort, only to find his ancient ally prisoned for the night.
He wandered back to the kitchen now, and sprang to the table. His eyes
were big, his fur stiff and ruffled, as if he waited for rats to come to
Logie.
Rebecca glanced at him. “You, Jonah? Drat you for another male that’s
stepped into my kitchen, looking warlike—and finding no sort of
battle.”
She swept him from the table, with a sudden gust of spite, and the cat,
gathering himself up, showed teeth and claws and spat at her.
Then Rebecca laughed and cried, and gathered the great cat into her
arms.
“I didn’t mean it, Jonah—but my heart’s just breaking with the trouble
of it all.”