Then that daft thought went from her, she went down the stairs and into the kitchen, cold even there, the fire in the range had drooped to ash, she stirred it a little and Jock the cat purred a drowsy greeting a minute, grew silent; she sat and stared in the fading ash, alone and desperate—what would she do?

It was plain enough Ma wouldn’t last long. And then—Chris hadn’t enough money to carry on the house herself and whoever heired Ma mightn’t want to come in with her. So out again, looking for some other thing in this weary life of Duncairn, seeking out some little shop, she supposed, somewhere where she and Ewan could bide and trauchle and fight with the going of the years, he wouldn’t earn money of account for years. And so on and on, streets all about, slippery with slime, the reeking gutters of Paldy Parish, the weary glint of shop-fronts in the Mile—till she grew old and old and haggard, thin—who would have dreamed this for her long syne that night she wedded Ewan in Blawearie, just a night like this she minded now, lights, and Long Rob and Chae at the fiddle, dancing, warmth, the daftness of being young: they’d seemed eternal, to outlast the hills, those moments when Ewan had first ta’en her in his arms, naked, unshielded, unafraid, glad to be his and give and take for the fun and glory of being in love … all far away in the snowing years down the long Howe on Kinraddie’s heights.

And she thought of the croft in the north wind’s blow, of the snow driving about it this night lashing the joists and window-panes, the fly and scurry of the driving flakes about the Stones high up by the loch, the lost rigs sleeping under their covering, the peesies wheeping lost in the dark. Oh idiot, weeping to remember that, all things gone and lost and herself afraid and afraid and a morning coming she was feared to face, lost and alone.

And again she got to her feet and wandered through the hush of the sleeping house, and stood in her own room, with the sickly flare of the gaslight behind her and looked at herself in the mirror, hands clenched, forgetting herself in a sudden wild woe that wouldn’t stop though her mind clamoured it was daft, things would redd up in time, she wasn’t hungry or starved, she had friends, she had Ewan…. SHE HAD NOTHING AT ALL, she had never had anything, nothing in the world she’d believed in but change, unceasing and unstaying as time, light after light went down, hope and fear and hate, love that had lighted hours with a fire, hate freezing through to the blood of one’s heart—Nothing endured, and this hour she stood as alone as she’d been when a quean in those wild, lost moments she climbed the heights of Blawearie brae. And she covered her face with her hands and sat down and so stayed there awhile and then rose and put on her clothes, coldly, mechanically, looking at the clock…. Trudging in the track of those little feet as a tethered beast that went round and round the tethering post in the midst of a park—