Malcolm | Page 7

of her fish for the requirements
of the day. I may add that, although her eldest child was probably born
within a few weeks after her marriage, infidelity was almost unknown
amongst them.
In some respects, although in none of its good qualities, Mrs. Mair was
an exception from her class. Her mother had been the daughter of a
small farmer, and she had well to do relations in an inland parish; but
how much these facts were concerned in the result it would be hard to
say: certainly she was one of those elect whom Nature sends into the
world for the softening and elevation of her other children. She was
still slight and graceful, with a clear complexion, and the prettiest teeth
possible; the former two at least of which advantages she must have
lost long before, had it not been that, while her husband's prudence had
rendered hard work less imperative, he had a singular care over her
good looks; and that a rough, honest, elder sister of his lived with them,
whom it would have been no kindness to keep from the hardest work,
seeing it was only through such that she could have found a sufficiency
of healthy interest in life. While Janet Mair carried the creel, Annie
only assisted in making the nets, and in cleaning and drying the fish, of
which they cured considerable quantities; these, with her household and
maternal duties, afforded her ample occupation. Their children were
well trained, and being of necessity, from the narrowness of their house
accommodation, a great deal with their parents, heard enough to make
them think after their faculty.
The mad laird was, as I have said, a visitor at their house oftener than
anywhere else. On such occasions he slept in a garret accessible by a
ladder from the ground floor, which consisted only of a kitchen and a
closet. Little Phemy Mair was therefore familiar with his appearance,
his ways, and his speech; and she was a favourite with him, although
hitherto his shyness had been sufficient to prevent any approach to
intimacy with even a child of ten.
When the poor fellow had got some little distance beyond the boats, he

stopped and withdrew his hands from his ears: in rushed the sound of
the sea, the louder that the caverns of his brain had been so long closed
to its entrance. With a moan of dismay he once more pressed his palms
against them, and thus deafened, shouted with a voice of agony into the
noise of the rising tide: "I dinna ken whaur I come frae!" after which
cry, wrung from the grief of human ignorance, he once more took to his
heels, though with far less swiftness than before, and fled stumbling
and scrambling over the rocks.
Scarcely had he vanished from view of the boats, when Phemy
scrambled out of her big mussell shell. Its upheaved side being toward
the boat at which her father was at work, she escaped unperceived, and
so ran along the base of the promontory, where the rough way was
perhaps easier to the feet of a child content to take smaller steps and
climb or descend by the help of more insignificant inequalities. She
came within sight of the laird just as he turned into the mouth of a well
known cave and vanished.
Phemy was one of those rare and blessed natures which have endless
courage because they have no distrust, and she ran straight into the cave
after him, without even first stopping to look in.
It was not a very interesting cave to look into. The strata of which it
was composed, upheaved almost to the perpendicular, shaped an
opening like the half of a Gothic arch divided vertically and leaning
over a little to one side, which opening rose to the full height of the
cave, and seemed to lay bare every corner of it to a single glance. In
length it was only about four or five times its width. The floor was
smooth and dry, consisting of hard rock. The walls and roof were
jagged with projections and shadowed with recesses, but there was
little to rouse any frightful fancies.
When Phemy entered, the laird was nowhere to be seen. But she went
straight to the back of the cave, to its farthest visible point. There she
rounded a projection and began an ascent which only familiarity with
rocky ways could have enabled such a child to accomplish. At the top
she passed through another opening, and by a longer and more gently
sloping descent reached the floor of a second cave, as level and nearly
as smooth as a table. On her left hand, what light managed to creep
through the tortuous entrance was caught and