Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 131.djvu/193

Rh what you're about, and show suitable respect to your superiors, or as sure as judgment you'll go back to your fish-guts."

While he spoke Malcolm had been smoothing Kelpie all over with his palms: the moment the factor ceased talking he ceased stroking, and with one arm thrown over the mare's back looked him full in the face. "Gien ye imaigine, Maister Crathie," he said, "at I coont it ony rise i' the warl' 'at brings me un'er the orders o' a man less honest than, he micht be, ye're mista'en. I dinna think it's pride this time: I wad ile Blue Peter's lang butes till him, but I winna lee for ony factor atween this an' Davy Jones."

It was too much. Mr. Crathie's feelings overcame him, and he was a wrathful man to see as he strode up to the youth with clenched fist.

"Haud frae the mere, for God's sake, Maister Crathie!" cried Malcolm.

But even as he spoke two reversed Moorish arches of gleaming iron opened on the terror-quickened imagination of the factor a threatened descent from which his most potent instinct, that of self-preservation, shrank in horror. He started back, white with dismay, having by a bare inch of space and a bare moment of time escaped what he called eternity. Dazed with fear, he turned and had staggered half-way across the yard, as if going home, before he recovered himself. Then he turned again, and, with what dignity he could scrape together, said, "MacPhail, you go about your business."

In his foolish heart he believed Malcolm had made the brute strike out.

"I canna weel gang till Stoat comes hame," answered Malcolm.

"If I see you about the place after sunset I'll horsewhip you," said the factor, and walked away, showing the crown of his hat.

Malcolm again smiled oddly, but made no reply. He undid the mare's halter and led her into the stable. There he fed her, standing by her all the time she ate, and not once taking his eye off her. His father, the late marquis, had bought her at the sale of the stud of a neighboring laird, whose whole being had been devoted to horses till the pale one came to fetch himself: the men about the stable had drugged her, and taken with the splendid lines of the animal, nor seeing cause to doubt her temper as she quietly obeyed the halter, he had bid for her, and, as he thought, had her a great bargain. The accident that finally caused his death followed soon after, and while he was ill no one cared to vex him by saying what she had turned out. But Malcolm had even then taken her in hand in the hope of taming her a little before his master, who often spoke of his latest purchase, should see her again. In this he had very partially succeeded, but, if only for the sake of him whom he now knew for his father, nothing would have made him part with the animal. Besides, he had been compelled to use her with so much severity at times that he had grown attached to her from the reaction of pity, as well as from admiration of her physical qualities and the habitude of ministering to her wants and comforts. The factor, who knew Malcolm only as a servant, had afterward allowed her to remain in his charge, merely in the hope, through his treatment, of by-and-by selling her, as she had been bought, for a faultless animal, but at a far better price.

 

she had finished her oats Malcolm left her busy with her hay, for she was a huge eater, and went into the house, passing through the kitchen and ascending a spiral stone stair to the library, the only room not now dismantled. As he went along the narrow passage on the second floor leading to it from the head of the stair, the housekeeper, Mrs. Courthope, peeped after him from one of the many bedrooms opening upon it, and watched him as he went, nodding her head two or three times with decision: he reminded her so strongly, not of his father, the late marquis, but the brother who had preceded him, that she felt all but certain, whoever might be his mother, he had as much of the Colonsay blood in his veins as any marquis of them all. It was in consideration of this likeness that Mr. Crathie had permitted the youth, when his services were not required, to read in the library.

Malcolm went straight to a certain corner, and from amongst a dingy set of old classics took down a small Greek book in a large type. It was the manual of that slave among slaves, that noble among the free — Epictetus. He was no great Greek scholar, but, with the help of the Latin translation and the gloss of his own rathe experience, he could lay hold of the mind of that slave of a slave, whose very slavery was his slave to carry him to the heights of freedom. It was not Greek he cared for, but Epictetus. It was but little he read, however, for the occurrence of the 