LITMIR.BIZ

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the angle of the wall. Though he was a few years younger than herself he looked much older; there was white on his unshaven chin, and she saw, as she approached, that he was almost in rags. Whether he were a beggar or not, he had the unmistakable shifting look of mendicancy. But his features were unchanged and she would have known the set of his eyebrows anywhere. She opened her lips to speak, but the pounding of her heart choked her breath.

      ‘A’ve been seekin’ ye,’ he said, in the thick voice that told of long drinking. ‘A speired at Netherside an’ they tellt me ye was here.’

      Netherside was Margaret’s old home; a village over the county border.

      ‘We got word ye was deid after ye cam’ oot o’ jail,’ said she, ‘but a didna ken whether tae believe it. But when sic a time gaed by—’

      ‘Heuch!’ rejoined he, with a flicker of grim humour, ‘a was fine an’ pleased tae be deid; a grave’s a bonnie safe place. They canna catch ye there, ye ken.’

      ‘And what way was it ye didna send me word? A micht hae gi’ed ye a hand, Tam.’

      ‘A tell ye a was deid. An’ a wasna needin’ ye in Ameriky.’

      A throb of pity came to her as she saw his shaking hands, and the way he drew his ragged coat together as the wind played in gusts over the grass. It is terrible to see the professional attitudes of the beggar in one we have once loved, no matter how far life may have drifted him from us. Margaret had not a spark of affection left for the wretched creature before her, but she had a long memory.

      ‘Ye’re gey an’ braw,’ he said, with a sidelong glance at her tidy clothes and the rich colouring of her fine shawl. ‘Ye bide wi’ the grieve, a’m tellt. Maybe ye’ve pit by a bittie.’

      Margaret’s lips shook, and, for a moment, her eyes looked on beyond him into space.

      ‘Tam, we’ll need to do oor best,’ she began tremulously, brought back to the present by the mention of Hedderwick. ‘A’ve a bit saved. Maybe we micht gang to Dundee an’ get work i’ the mills—’

      ‘An’ wha tellt ye a was seekin’ work? A’m no needin’ work an’ a’m no needin’ you. Bide you wi’ the grieve – I’ll no tak’ ye frae him; but a’ll be here-about till the new year an’ a’ll come tae the hoose the nicht. Ye can gie me a piece an’ a wheen siller tae gang on wi’.’

      ‘A’ll no let ye near the hoose,’ said Margaret firmly.

      ‘An’ a’m no askin’ ye. A’m tae come.’

      ‘But Hedderwick’ll see ye, Tam.’

      ‘Dod, a’m no carin’ for Hedderwick.’

      ‘But a’ll come oot-by an’ bring ye a piece!’ she exclaimed in terror. ‘Ye’ll no need tae come then.’

      They parted a few minutes later and she returned home. Her world had indeed grown complicated in the last hour, and the light of duty, for which, in all her troubled life, she had been wont to look, seemed to have gone out, extinguished by some diabolical hand. It was plain that her husband would have none of her, and had no desire that she should throw in her lot with his; he feared respectability as she feared sin, and, while she was in a position to minister to his wants, his present way of living would suit him well. She had promised, before leaving him, to bring him a little money, if he would wait after dusk, where the larch-wood hid the road from the kirk. She refused to bring him food, for though her small savings were her own, every crumb in the house was the grieve’s and she would sooner have died than take so much as a crust. Whosoever might suffer for what had happened that day, it should not be Hedderwick.

      It was almost dark that evening as she slipped out of the house and went towards the larches; she had a little money in her hand, taken out of the box in which she kept her savings. The owls were beginning to call and hoot from the wood by the manse, and she hurried along among the eerie voices floating in shrill mockery over the plough-land. Tom Weir was lurking like a shadow at the appointed place, and when she had given him her dole he departed towards the farm on the hill; a deserted cottage which stood in a field over the crest would shelter him that night, he said, and be a place to which he could come back in the intervals of tramping. He was going off on the morrow and would expect her to meet him on his return with a further pittance. Her hesitation brought down a shower of abuse.

      Margaret knew well to what slavery she was condemning herself when she put the money into his dirty palm; but she dared not tell Hedderwick, for, besides her dismay at the thought of confessing what she had kept from him so long, she had a vague dread that the law, were her case known, would force her to return to Weir. Weir did not want her, but she had known of old that his spite was a thing to be reckoned with, and it might be gratified by her downfall, when her savings came to an end. That knowledge and the fear that he might make a public claim on her, were she to refuse him help, bound her hand and foot. She had not the courage to turn her back on all she had grown to love, and she quieted her scruples by vowing that, while keeping the grieve in ignorance, she would not bestow on her tormentor one crust that she had not paid for herself; but she was prepared, were it necessary, to threaten her own departure from her employment and the consequent stoppage of her means of supply, should he approach the grey house. She was prepared, also, to keep her word. It should be her last resource.

      And so the final, dying month of autumn went by and winter fell on the land, crisping the edges of the long furrows and setting a tracery of bare boughs against the diminished light. Weir came and went, haunting the towns within reach, and coming back every seven days to take his tithe of her dwindling purse; and winter fell, too, upon Margaret’s heart. Saturday brought a sinister end to her week; and her troubles, as dusk set in, were intensified by the presence of Rob Hedderwick, who now returned by the midday train on that day to spend Sunday at his father’s house. It was difficult to escape his sharp eye and restless mind – made, perhaps, more intrusive by perpetual prying into the workings of complicated things. It did not take the young man long to notice her absences. In the evenings by the fireside he would look covertly at her from behind his paper, or over the top of his book, as she sat at her knitting; his thoughts were busy with the mystery he scented. Once or twice he had left the kitchen before dark, and, from the shadow of the wash-house door, watched her go silently towards the road with something in her apron. He did not like Margaret. Once, too, he had mentioned his suspicions to the grieve, bidding him look to his money-box; and, angered by the scant encouragement that he got, and by the scathing definitions of the limits of his own business, he determined to justify himself; for his growing suspicion that his father’s housekeeper sold the food, or disposed of it in some way profitable to herself, could, he believed, be proved. He was bent upon proving it, for, in addition to his dislike, he had the thirsty rabidness of the would-be detective.

      There was a cessation of his visits through January and February, as the master watchmaker was called away and his assistant left for a two months’ charge of the shop; therefore it was on a moonless March evening that Rob Hedderwick hid himself in the manse wood. It touched the road just where the path to the grieve’s house joined it, and in its shelter he waited till he heard a woman’s step come down the track. Margaret passed within a few yards of him, her head muffled in a woollen wrapper and her apron gathered into a bag and bulging with what she carried in it. He had never yet followed her, but he meant to do so now, for there was just enough of hidden starlight behind the thin clouds to enable him to keep her in sight from a little distance.

      Her figure disappeared among the larches by the kirk; he almost came upon her, for the road between them made a bend, and she had stopped, apparently expecting to be joined by someone. Her back was to him and he retreated softly. The cold was considerable and Rob had forgotten to put on his greatcoat; so when, after what seemed to him nearer to half an hour than a quarter, she went swiftly up the hill towards the farm on its summit, he followed again, thankful to be moving.

      She never slackened her pace till she had reached the top. Led more by sound than by sight, he trod in her wake; the desolation of night was wide around them, and from the ridge the land was as though falling away into nothingness before and behind. The farm was quiet as they passed it

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