Making early tea in the kitchen next morning Chris looked out and saw that the rain had cleared, Spring was coming clad in pale saffron—the sun hardly seen all the winter months except through the blanket of Duncairn reek. She stood and looked out an un-eident minute till she heard the sound of feet on the stairs, Ake Ogilvie, big, with his swaying watch-chains and his slipperless feet, swinging into the kitchen: Ay then, mistress.

She said absently, her thoughts far away, still looking out at that blink of sun, Morning, Mr Ogilvie, her worries forgotten for a lovely minute. Ake sat down and tamped out his pipe on the range: Well, what are you doing about the bit house?

She’d told him something of her plight before, and he’d listened, douce, with his ploughman’s face, his stare of impudent, grey-green eyes. Ay, a gey bit fix, he’d said, and no more, he wasn’t much interested; why should he be? Now, she thought with a twinge of resentment against him, did he think it light gossip to be taken through hand in the early morning to pass the time? Pouring him a cup of tea she said shortly I’ve no idea. Sell it up, I suppose.

—And after that?

—Oh, something’ll turn up. She turned away with the brimming tray.

He said Well, just gi’es a minute of your crack. Let the sweir folk wait for their tea a while.

Chris put down the tray. Well, a minute. What is’t?

He sat and looked up at her, drinking his tea, a man from the farms and the little touns, the eternal barbarian Robert had once called him. Now he laid down the cup and gave his mouser a dight: Ah well, this is it: I’ve a bit of silver saved myself—about enough to buy the share of the place that Mistress Cleghorn left to her niece. And I’m willing to come in as your partner, like.

—Ake! Oh, Ake, you really mean that?

He said Oh ay, he meant what he said—a habit of his, like. Mistress Colquohoun was willing to take him on, then? He’d look after this lad of hers, Εwan, all right.

Something queer about that: Ewan—what’ll he have to do with it?

—Well, damn’t, as his stepfather I suppose I’ll have more than a bittie to do with him.

Chris stared: One or other of us has gone daft. You were proposing to share my house, weren’t you, Ake?

He looked up and nodded, douce and green-eyed: Ay, lass, and your bed.

Chris went through that day betwixt anger and laughter, the last would come on her in the funniest way, pour over her in a sudden red, senseless wave. Marriage?—marry a lout like him, lose all that she’d ever gained in her life with Robert, the Manse, Ewan her son? The impudence of him—Oh, the beast, the beast! And she’d stand and suddenly picture him, the sneering, half-kindly, half-bull-like face, the face of the folk of the Howe throughout, canny and cruel and kind in one facet, face of the bothies and the little touns … and she’d shiver away from the thought of him, thought of impossible touches, caresses, those red, creased hands and that sun-wrinkled body … awful enough to make her feel ill.