would be sweirt to mak' ony preference. And, forbye, I've lang ootgrown the ither.' "There's nae risin' for timber," said the miller's man authoritatively. "What! What! Then where'll Watty be withoot his fiddle? Is there no' a soul in fiddles, laird?" "I'll warrant ye that!" said Captain Cutlass. "There's soul in a' things tangible, even the mute things o' the earth, and what for no' the fiddle that has laughed and cried? I'm only fear't my ain'll rise in judgment up against me. But I didna guess your epitaph was for a fiddler, Alick. To the epitaphs o' artists we should bring some art, and the Vulcan spoke with an abated breath becoming to a sad calamity; in Schawfield visitations of the kind were rare, and always terrible, turning the bravest into cowards. "Good Lord! who's looking after the poor fellow?" asked the baronet impulsively, and his company betrayed confusion. "The puir soul's done!" said the smith defensively. "And he has the doctor." "And never a woman near him!" cried Sir Andrew furiously. "Don't tell me those old craven terrors still persist in Schawfield, or, by heavens ! I'll tear the roofs down on your heads and plant the site o' a town wi' turnips!" His chin thrust out like a ram of a ship, and his nostrils spread; they had touched Jack Easy on the proud-flesh when they showed him of what dastard cruelty his folk were capable, and he quivered at the smart. At no time was he more admired than when he was the righteous and commanding autocrat, when he stung them like a conscience; one roar of the quarter-deck in crisis, and the spirit of democracy himself had fostered shrivelled at its roots and they were the slaves of Captain Cutlass. The blacksmith rose to the encounter manfully. "It's no' sae bad as that, Sir Andrew," he explained. "It's only the married women that are frichtened-no' for themselves, but for their bairns." "Such women should have no bairns, then," said the bar onet, still with his unabated. anger the Lord be praised, I was guid enough for the servants' ha'. I'm no carin' - they understood me and they liked me fine in the servants' ha'. I doot I'm a done man, Captain, when the doctor's at me, damn his eyes! Talks about bringin' in a woman! Have I no' my ain wee fiddle?" "It may be so," retorted Alick Brodie wisely; "but they hae, and we canna help it. There's no' a mother in the village that'll venture into Watty's Wynd." "What about the unmarried women, then?" asked Captain Cutlass. "Surely there are plenty." "Far ower mony for Watty Fraser! What did he keep a gander for, if it wasna to scare them aff? He never would let a spinster ower his door in case she'd grab him when his back was turned and marry him." "This notion that women marry men in spite of themselves seems curiously prevalent in Schawfield," said Sir Andrew, cooling. "It's no' peculiar to Schawfield, sir; it's universal," said the blacksmith grimly. "And "And whether it's right or wrang, there's no' a wanter that'll dare gang near-hand Watty." "He swears like a dragoon,' said the miller's man, and the baronet breathed more freely. "That's hopeful!" he exclaimed. "It's the sign o' no surrender." He hurried round to the attic in Watty's Wynd and found the fiddler sitting up in bed with his instrument upon his knees, plucking the strings at times with nervous fingers, the fire of his trouble lighting up his face with an unnatural ardency, his tongue hysterical and uncontrolled. "Ken ye fine, Captain! Kent yer faither!' faither!" he exclaimed. 66 They wouldna let me play at his weddin', but, The visitor felt the coolness and the sanity of his flesh, the power of his body, a taunt to the broken minstrel. "Nae man's done, Watty, till the wright has got him. How did this come on ye?" "The doctor says it was playin' to the tinklers in the quarry. He's maybe richt, confoond him! I never played before to tinklers-just a wheen o' cattle! But ye ken yoursel' the feelin', Captain-a fiddler maun be fiddlin', and it's meat and drink to see the creatures dancin'. . . I'm trying to mind a tuneHe hissed a bar or two of an air between his parched lips. "Damn me! that's Monymusk,' it's no the tune at a'. . . and the warst o't is I canna tune the fiddle." He pushed the instrument away from him with irritation. "You must have some one to look after you some woman body, Watty," said Sir Andrew gently. petticoat 'll flaff across the door o' Watty Fraser!" Sir Andrew's news at Fancy Farm that night affected the "I'm no sae bad's a' that," ladies variously. Miss Amelia's said the patient anxiously. feeling was one of wroth that "Good Lord! they're easier to he should have come to them— get in than oot. If it wasna even with all precautions-from for Jock I would be pestered the side of a fever-bed, and wi' them and their tantrums. Norah had a share in her Guid enough for dancin'! apprehensions, though for a There was never a woman in different reason. But Pen this house for a dozen years, amazed them all by eagerly except Miss Grant a month or volunteering to go down hertwa ago and Miss Colquhoun, self and nurse the fiddler in the They hae a bonny taste for absence of any more experifiddlin', and they're welcome enced aid to a distracted to come back, but never another doctor. CHAPTER XXVI. Pen came like a blast of wholesome wind to Watty's Wynd; burst open windows in the flats that had never been really aired since the builder left them; loosed cataracts of soap-and-water on the stairs, swept sanitary tides up to the highest attics. Marvellous was her power to influence and command! That she should be brave enough to hazard risks they feared themselves, and look upon a fever and Jock Fraser with the same contempt, secured their admiration and docility. Miss Amelia Schaw was used to preach what the tenements called "highjinkics"—a gospel of hot baths for Saturdays, carbolic powder, flannel next the skin, but not directly in the unregenerate wynds, since she never had got there; they laughed at her highjinkics as they laughed at her calves foot jelly which she thought was indicated, as the doctors say, for every village ailment, from whooping-cough to broken legs. Highjinkics seemed entitled to more respect as Penelope Colquhoun commended them a a girl who could say, "For Heaven's sake, give me a pail of water and I'll wash your stair myself!" She found an empty garret on Watty's flat; rendered it habitable in an afternoon, made it the base for a great campaign against the forces of unimaginable squalor. For a fortnight she kept away from Fancy Farm, and Sir Andrew, who had one day taken off his hat to Jock with a droll apology for breaking through the lines, had climbed the attic stairs to find himself rebuffed. Pen was too busy to see him, he was told, and he could on no account have parley with the fiddler. A fever was a fever, and the terrors of Miss Amelia for infection must be decently respected. no The need for epitaphs seemed speedily averted. Watty Fraser got the turn, and swore longer; he was the most tractable of patients, though he grudged her every hour she stole from nursing him to carry on the campaign of hygienics in the neighbourhood. "If I had known," said he, "that women were so handy, I would never have got a gander," he informed the doctor. "Give me a nurse like her for the rest of my days, and I'll never ask to get up again; you might burn my clothes. She's splendid, man! she's splendid!" "A man like you should have married long ago," Penelope told him. "Your way of life is pitiful and unnatural. It is not good for man to live alone." "So they're always telling me!" he answered. "But hadn't I my fiddle? When ye're tired o' a fiddle ye can hang it up. And there's plenty o' time, forbye, for me to think o' marryin'; a man can mairry ony time. It's different wi' the women,that's the way they're sae deevilish desperate when they're young; naething in their heids but husbands." - down grotesquely; a spasm suspiciously like a wink came to his parchment countenance; he coughed ambiguously, then slily laughed with crackling incredulity. "Ye needna tell us that in Schawfield!" he exclaimed. "At least," said the stickler for strict veracity, "I never allowed myself to think of such a thing a moment longer than I could help. Of course there are thousands of silly thoughts that come into one's head uninvited, and that take a moment or two to expel. It's time for your medicine, Watty!" "Might as weel sup saepsapples!" he protested, grimacing; but where the doctor had failed to coerce, Penelope could coax successfully. "We'll dae Mrs Nish between us!" was his boast. "If I was allooin' mysel' to be hurled to the kirk-yaird in yon crystal hearse o' hers, I would never be able to show my face in the next warld." But this harmless chaff on matrimony went one day a little further in a stimulated hour of Watty's, and Pen was shocked to find from the manner of her patient in a pawky humour that her position in Fancy Farm was liable to misconstruction. The fiddler's innuendoes revealed that the village gossip linked her name with that of Captain Cutlass; anticipating a romantic and immediate close to the Hunt, on which she had not once reflected after her recovery from the chagrin she had felt at alluding to it on the evening of her drive with the fictitious Tom Dunn. She flamed at the suggestion. Blissfully unconscious that he stung her to the quick, poor Watty followed up the theme with rustic humour. "So you'll hae to have me on my legs in time to fiddle at the weddin'," he went on, "though I didna get playin' at his faither's and only got the Haymakers at Lady Jean's." "It's not very respectful to Sir Andrew, and not very kind to me, to talk such nonsense!" she remonstrated breathlessly. "Who could be so cruel as to set about such silly gossip?" "Naebody set it about at a"," said Watty shrewdly. "That's the usual way wi' gossip-it never tak's a wing to itsel' unless it's just what everybody's thinkin', and this has been in the air since ever ye cam to Schawfield; it couldna weel be otherwise. We used to jalouse it was boun' to be Miss Norah, but she taen up wi' the poet, and the Captain onyway wouldna mairry money. What's a' the trainin' for-the dancin', and the ridin', and the fencin', and the rest o't, if he didn't mean to mak ye Lady Schaw?... What! me'm, are ye angry?" He could not mistake the shame and indignation of her countenance; she looked for a moment like shaking him, and, speechless, left the room. It was not the association of her name with that of Sir Andrew Schaw that rankled, but the revelation of deliberate training. A hundred things were now made plain to her-subtle emendations and suggestions towards improvement, artful leads to more accepted standards from Norah; the baronet's enthusiastic interest in deportment and in tone. The pride of the Colquhouns was touched; each family, even the humblest, has its own variety, and hers revolted at the thought of being moulded to a pattern, even though it might be elegant and pleasing to her friends. She felt ill for hours that afternoon-sick with vexation, exceeding lonely and insignificant, a pawn in a game of chess she did not understand. All the plain old ways of home came back transfigured to her recollection, the humdrum hours, the noisy sisters, the lamp at night, the strict routine of useful duties. What had she learned in the past nine months from her assiduous and cunning teachers? To fence-whose father hated warfare of the body! To ridewho must trudge through life on foot as her people had done before her! To dance-who seemed at the moment quite unlikely ever to have the mood of a quadrille again! To swim -who henceforth should never see the waves without recalling that she had been found deceitful! To prattle of books, pictures, music, in the passing and conventional jargon of the times, making art a fetish! Was she the happier for her new accomplishments? No; life, that now seemed more complex, had not a gladder hour to give her than she knew before; cells of the heart and brain that had tingled hitherto |