Malcolm | Page 4

her the moment she began to speak.
"Is that wuman furth the hoose, Jean?" she asked, in the tone of one
who waited her answer in the affirmative as a preliminary condition of
all further conversation.
"She's gane, mem," answered Jean--adding to herself in a wordless
thought, "I'm no sayin' whaur."
"She's a wuman I wadna hae ye throng wi', Jean."
"I ken no ill o' her, mem," returned Jean.
"She's eneuch to corrup' a kirkyaird!" said her mistress, with more force
than fitness.
Jean, however, was on the shady side of fifty, more likely to have
already yielded than to be liable to a first assault of corruption; and
little did Miss Horn think how useless was her warning, or where
Barbara Catanach was at that very moment Trusting to Jean's cunning,
as well she might; she was in the dead chamber, and standing over the
dead. She had folded back the sheet--not from the face, but from the
feet--and raised the night dress of fine linen in which the love of her
cousin had robed the dead for the repose of the tomb.
"It wad hae been tellin' her," she muttered, "to hae spoken Bawby fair!
I'm no used to be fa'en foul o' that gait. I 's be even wi' her yet, I'm
thinkin'--the auld speldin'! Losh! and Praise be thankit! there it's! It's
there!--a wee darker, but the same --jist whaur I could ha' laid the pint

o' my finger upo't i' the mirk!--Noo lat the worms eat it," she concluded,
as she folded down the linen of shroud and sheet--"an' no mortal ken o'
't but mysel' an' him 'at bude till hae seen 't, gien he was a hair better
nor Glenkindie's man i' the auld ballant!"
The instant she had rearranged the garments of the dead, she turned and
made for the door with a softness of step that strangely contrasted with
the ponderousness of her figure, and indicated great muscular strength,
opened it with noiseless circumspection to the width of an inch, peeped
out from the crack, and seeing the opposite door still shut, stepped out
with a swift, noiseless swing of person and door simultaneously, closed
the door behind her, stole down the stairs, and left the house. Not a
board creaked, not a latch clicked as she went. She stepped into the
street as sedately as if she had come from paying to the dead the last
offices of her composite calling, the projected front of her person
appearing itself aware of its dignity as the visible sign and symbol of a
good conscience and kindly heart.

CHAPTER III
: THE MAD LAIRD
When Mistress Catanach arrived at the opening of a street which was
just opposite her own door, and led steep toward the sea town, she
stood, and shading her eyes with her hooded hand, although the sun
was far behind her, looked out to sea. It was the forenoon of a day of
early summer. The larks were many and loud in the skies above
her--for, although she stood in a street, she was only a few yards from
the green fields--but she could hardly have heard them, for their music
was not for her. To the northward, whither her gaze--if gaze it could be
called--was directed, all but cloudless blue heavens stretched over an
all but shadowless blue sea; two bold, jagged promontories, one on
each side of her, formed a wide bay; between that on the west and the
sea town at her feet, lay a great curve of yellow sand, upon which the
long breakers, born of last night's wind, were still roaring from the
northeast, although the gale had now sunk to a breeze--cold and of
doubtful influence. From the chimneys of the fishermen's houses below,
ascended a yellowish smoke, which, against the blue of the sea,
assumed a dull green colour as it drifted vanishing towards the

southwest. But Mrs Catanach was looking neither at nor for anything:
she had no fisherman husband, or any other relative at sea; she was but
revolving something in her unwholesome mind, and this was her mode
of concealing an operation which naturally would have been performed
with down bent head and eyes on the ground.
While she thus stood a strange figure drew near, approaching her with
step almost as noiseless as that with which she had herself made her
escape from Miss Horn's house. At a few yards' distance from her it
stood, and gazed up at her countenance as intently as she seemed to be
gazing on the sea. It was a man of dwarfish height and uncertain age,
with a huge hump upon his back, features of great refinement, a long
thin beard, and a forehead unnaturally large, over eyes which, although
of