as
lost on Lashnagar, where she had been tempted by hunger to find more
food. One of the serving women, falling ill, went to Edinburgh to be
cured and never came back; paint, blistered and scarred from the doors
and window frames by the weather, was not replaced; the holes gnawed and
torn by the hungry rats in wainscot and floor were never patched and
food was more scarce than ever. Aunt Janet sat, a dourly silent ghost,
while Marcella read to Andrew, listening sickly to the beasts clamouring
for their scanty meals. And one night, when he had been out alone along
Ben Grief and seen his lands and his old grey house, Lashcairn the
Landless, as they called him, went back to his barrel.

For three days he lived behind the green baize door. On the fourth he
came out with his red-rimmed eyes ablaze, his gaunt face pinched, his
hair bedraggled. And that night a little old man, Rose's cousin from
Winchester, came to see them. He had never seen the mad family into
which his cousin had married; he had not seen her since she was a gentle
little thing in pinafores, with a great family of wax dolls. He did not
know that she was dead. Aunt Janet made no explanations; his small black
eyes took in all the decay and famine of the place; his neat black
Sabbatical coat looked queerly out of place in the book-room with its
scarred oak refectory table, its hard oak chairs and its dusty banner
hung from the ceiling above where Andrew Lashcairn sat. When his host
came into the room he pulled himself to his full five feet five and his
thin white face went even whiter. Andrew, in his frenzy, cursed him and
God and the world, and, in the old Berserk rage, dashed over the heavy
table on which Aunt Janet had set a poor meal for the stranger.

It was a wild, bizarre picture; the fire, fanned by the fierce winds
that swept down the open chimney, kept sending out puffs of smoke that
went like grey wraiths about the room; the top of the table rutted by
hundreds of years' fierce feeding; the shattered crockery and
forlorn-looking mess of food on the floor. Aunt Janet and Marcella
shrunk away--her father never got one of his rages but the girl felt
old agony in her broken arm--but the little white-faced cousin stood in
front of Andrew's gaunt frame, which seemed twice his size.

"What's the matter, Cousin Andrew?" he asked mildly. Then, turning to
the others, he said gently: "Go away for a little while. I'll have a
talk with Andrew about little Rose."