Then he fainted away on the Windmill Steps.

April was in with a wild burst of the bonniest weather, fleecings of clouds sailed over Duncairn with the honking geese from Footforthie’s marshes. Out in the little back-garden Chris saw the buds unfolding on bush and twig, and got out her hoe from its winter sleep, over the walls other garden folk were chintering and tamping on the drying earth. And Chris thought in that hour of the bright April day as she hoed round the blackberry bushes and roses—suddenly, with a long-forgotten thrill—what a fine smell was the smell of the earth, earth in long sweeping parks that rolled dark-red in ploughing up the hills of the Howe, earth churned in great acres by the splattering feet of the Clydesdale horses, their breath ablow on a morning like this, their smell the unforgotten stable smell, the curling rigs running to meet the sun. Earth … and she sossed about here in a little yard of stuff that the men she’d once known wouldn’t have paused to wipe their nebs with!

If Ewan had been as that other Ewan … and she paused, bent over the hoe, at the thought. Was he so unalike? There was something about him since that awful time when he’d fainted on the Steps of Windmill Brae that had minded her of his father back from the War—not the Ewan of the foul mind and foul speech, but that darker being she’d not kenned in those days, only later when the tale of his death was brought her: that being who had been the real Ewan imprisoned, desperate, a wild beast seeking a shelter she hadn’t provided, a torn and tormented thing seeking a refuge—

Och, she was silly to think that in this case of her little lad whom those beasts had mistreated—though he’d had no great mistreating, he’d told her, he was fine and would soon be about again.

She heard the sound of footsteps coming from the house and looked up and saw, and looked down again. And she thought with a whimsical, cool dismay it was funny she couldn’t be letten a-be even out in the yard—a sore-harried body! And the whimsy went, she was cool and kind.

Ay, mistress, I want a bit crack with you.

—Yes, Ake.

He blew out a cloud of smoke, brushed it aside, he was standing with his big, well-blacked boots unlaced, his waistcoat open, his mouser well-curled, undisturbed, unhur-rying, she felt his gaze on the side of her face. And he said they’d held up this business of a decision while he’d loaned her the money to carry on the house and ward off Mistress Cleghorn’s holy bitch of a niece: but now came an accounting one way or the other: Are you going to have me, then, as your man?

And Chris unbent from the hoe and turned to him and that thing that had once been a poet in Ake’s heart and was strangled with rage ere it ever reached vision, started sudden within him, oh bonny she was, sulky and gay with her bonny bronze hair. And she said, quiet and sweet, Yes, if he’d have her. She was nothing of a bargain for all that he’d done.