If Mrs Ogilvy had been at home, it is almost certain that none of these things could have happened—if she had not been kept so long, if Mr Somerville’s other client had not detained him, and, worst of all, if she had not been beguiled by the unaccustomed relief of a sympathetic listener, a friendly hand held out to help her, to waste that precious hour in taking her luncheon with her old friend. That was pure waste—to please him, and in a foolish yielding to those claims of nature which Mrs Ogilvy, like so many women, thought she could defy. To-day, in the temporary relief of her mind after pouring out all her troubles—a process which for the moment felt almost like the removal of them—she had become aware of her own exhaustion and need of refreshment and rest. And thus she had thrown away voluntarily a precious hour.

She met Susie and Mrs Ainslie at her own gate,{254} and though tired with her walk from the station, stopped to speak to them. “We found the gentlemen at their dinner,” Mrs Ainslie said, her usual jaunty air increased by a sort of triumphant excitement, “and therefore of course we did not go in; but I rested a little outside, and the sound of their jolly voices quite did me good. They don’t speak between their teeth, like all you people here.”

“My son—has a friend with him,—for a very short time,” Mrs Ogilvy said.

“Oh yes, I know—the friend with whom he takes long walks late in the evening. I have often heard of them in the village,” Mrs Ainslie said.

“His visit is almost over—he is just going away,” said Mrs Ogilvy, faintly. “I am just a little tired with my walk. Susie, you would perhaps see—my son?”

“I saw Robbie—for a minute. We had no time to say anything. I—could not keep him from his dinner—and his friend,” Susie said, with a flush. It hurt her to speak of Robbie, who had not cared to see her, who had nothing to say to her. “We are keeping you, and you are tired: and me, I have much to do—and perhaps soon going away altogether,” said Susie, not able to keep a complaint which was almost an appeal out of her voice.

“She will go to her own house, I hope,” cried Mrs Ainslie; “and I hope you who are a friend of the{255} family will advise her for her good, Mrs Ogilvy. A good husband waiting for her—and she threatens to go away altogether, as if we were driving her out. Was there ever anything so silly—and cruel to her father—not to speak of me——”

“Oh, my dear Susie! if I were not so faint—and tired,” Mrs Ogilvy said.

And Susie, full of tender compunction and interest, but daring to ask nothing except with her eyes, hurried her companion away.

Mrs Ogilvy went up with a slow step to her own house. She was in haste to get there—yet would have liked to linger, to leave herself a little more time before she confronted again those two who were so strong against her in their combination, so careless of what she said or felt. She thought, with a sickness at her heart, of those “jolly voices” which that woman had heard. She knew exactly what they were—the noise, the laughter, which at first she had been so glad to hear as a sign that Robbie’s heart had recovered the cheerfulness of youth, but which sometimes made her sick with misery and the sense of helplessness. She would find them so now, rattling away with their disjointed talk, and in her fatigue and trouble it would “turn her heart.” She went up slowly, saying to herself, as a sort of excuse, that she could not walk as she once could, that her breath was short and her foot uncertain and tremulous, so that{256} she could not be sure of not stumbling even in the approach to her own house.

It was a great surprise to her to see that Robbie was looking out for her at the door. Her alarm jumped at once to the other side. Something had happened. She was wanted. The fact that she was being looked for, instead of pleasing her, as it might have done in other circumstances, alarmed her now. She hurried on, not lingering any more, and reached the door out of breath. “Is anything wrong? has anything happened?” she cried.

“What should have happened?” he answered, fretfully; “only that you have been so long away. What have you been doing in Edinburgh? We thought, of course, you would be back for dinner.”

“I could not help it, Robbie. I had to wait till I saw—the person I went to see.”

“And who was the person you went to see?” he said, in that tone half-contemptuous, as if no one she wished to see could be of the slightest importance, and yet with an excited curiosity lest she might have been doing something prejudicial and was not to be trusted. These inferences of voice jarred on Mrs Ogilvy’s nerves in the weariness and over-strain.

“It is of no consequence,” she said. “Let me in, Robbie—let me come in at my own door: I am so wearied that I must rest.”

“Who was keeping you out of your own door?”{257} he cried, making way for her resentfully. “You tell me one moment that everything is mine—and then you remind me for ever that it’s yours and not mine, with this talk about your own door.”

Mrs Ogilvy looked up at him for a moment in dismay, feeling as if there was justice, something she had not thought of, in his remark; and then, being overwhelmed with fatigue and the conflict of so many feelings, went into her parlour, and sat down to recover herself in her chair. There were no “jolly voices” about, no sound of the other whose movements were always noisier than those of Robbie; and Robbie himself, as he hung about, had less colour and energy than usual—or perhaps it was only because she was tired, and everything around took colour from her own mood.

“Is he not with you to-day?” she said faintly.

“Is he not with me?—you mean Lew, I suppose: where else should he be? He’s up-stairs, I think, in his room.”

“You say where else should he be, Robbie? Is he always to be here? I’m wishing him no harm—far, far from that; but it would be better for himself as well as for you if he were not here. Where you are, oh Robbie, my dear, there’s always a clue to him: and they will come looking for him—and they will find him—and you too—and you too!”{258}

“What’s the meaning of all this fuss, mother—me too, as you say?”

“Well,” said Mrs Ogilvy, “it is perhaps not extraordinary—my only son; but I’ve no wish that harm should come to him—oh, not in this house, not in this house! If he would but take warning and go away where he would be safer than here! I’ve been in Edinburgh to ask my old friend, and your father’s friend, and your friend too, Robbie, what could be done—if there was anything that could be done.”

“You have gone and betrayed us, mother!”

“I have done no such thing!” cried Mrs Ogilvy, raising herself up with a flush of indignation—“no such thing! It was Mr Somerville who brought me the news first, before you appeared at all. He was to hurry out to that weary America to defend you—or send a better than himself: that was before you came back, when we thought you were there still, and to be tried for your life. I was going—myself,” she said, suddenly faltering and breaking down.

“You would not have gone, mother,” said Robbie, with a certain flash of self-appreciation and bitter consciousness.

“Ay, that I would to the ends of the earth! You are my Robbie, my son, whatever you are—and oh, laddie, you might be yet—everything that you might have been.”

“Not very likely,” he said, with a half groan and{259} half sneer. “And what might I have been? A respectable clod, tramping to kirk and market—not a thought in my head nor a feeling in my heart—all just habit and jog-trot. I’m better as I am.”

“You are not better as you are. You are just good for nothing in this bonnie world that God has made—except to put good meat into you that other folk have laboured to get ready, and to kill the blessed days He has given you to serve Him in, with your old books, and your cards, and any silly things that come into your head. I have seen you throwing sticks at a bit of wood for hours together, and been thankful sometimes that you were diverting yourselves like two bairns, and no just lying and lounging about like two dogs in the warmth of the fire. Oh, Robbie, what it is to me to say that to my son! and all the time the sword hanging over your heads that any day, any day may come down!”

“By Jove, the old girl’s right, Bob!” said a voice behind. Lew had become curious as to the soft murmur of Mrs Ogilvy’s voice, which he could hear running on faintly, not much interrupted by Robbie’s deeper tones. It was not often she “preached,” as they said—indeed she had seldom been allowed to go further than the mildest beginning; but Rob had been this time caught unprepared, and his mother had taken the advantage. Lew came in softly, with his{260} lips framed to whistle, and his hands in his pockets. He had already picked his comrade out of a sudden Slough of Despond, caused by alarm at the declaration of the visitor, which, to tell the truth, had made himself very uneasy. It would not do to let the mother complete the discouragement: but this adventurer from the wilds had a candid soul; and while Robert stood sullen, beat down by what his mother said, yet resisting it, the other came in with a look and word of acquiescence. “Yes, by Jove, she was right!” It did not cost him much to acknowledge this theoretical justice of reproof.

“The difficulty is,” he added calmly, “to know what to do in strange diggings like these. They’re out of our line, don’t you know. I was talking seriously to him there the other day about doing a stroke of work: but he wouldn’t hear of it—not here, he said, not in his own country. Ask him; he’ll tell you. I don’t understand the reason why.”

Mrs Ogilvy, startled, looked from one to another: she did not know what to think. What was the stroke of work which the leader had proposed, which the f............