"Whist!" said he; "we'll talk of that anon."
"We will not," said she. "We will talk of it now. He was my own child,
sir, by the young Laird's own father. That was before he was married
upon the wife he took later--"
Here Mr. Saul nudged me, and whispered: "The old Laird--had her
married to that daunderin' old half-wit Duncan, to cover things up.
This part of the tale is true enough, to my knowledge."
"My bairn was overlaid, sir," the woman went on; "not by purpose,
I will swear before you and God. They buried his poor body without
baptism; but not his poor soul. Only when the young Laird came, and
my own bairn clave to him as Mackenzie to Mackenzie, and wrought and
hunted and mended for him--it was not to be thought that the poor
innocent, without knowledge of God's ways--"
She ran on incoherently, while my thoughts harked back to the voice I
had heard wailing behind the door of the _entresol_ at Brussels; to
the young Laird's face, his furious indignation, followed by hopeless
apathy, as of one who in the interval had learnt what he could never
explain; to the marked coin so mysteriously spirited from sight; to
Mr. Urquhart's words before he left me on the night of Quatre Bras.
"But he was sorry," the woman ran on; "he was sorry--sorry. He came
wailing to me that night; yes, and sobbing. He meant no wrong; it was
just that he loved his own father's son, and knew no better. There was
no priest living within thirty miles; so I dressed, and ran to the
minister here. He gave me no rest until I started."
I addressed Mr. Saul. "Is there reason to suppose that, besides this
woman and (let us say) her accomplice, any one shared the secret of
these pilferings?"
"Ardlaugh never knew," put in the woman quickly. "He may have guessed
we were helping him; but the lad knew nothing, and may the saints
in heaven love him as they ought! He trusted me with his purse, and
slight it was to maintain him. But until too late, he never knew--no,
never, sir!"