uch
consequences but for his late growing habit of drinking whisky. As it
was, fever had followed upon the combination of bodily and mental
suffering. But already it had wrought this good in him, that he was far
more keenly aware of the brutality of the offence of which he had been
guilty than he would otherwise have been all his life through. To his
wife, who first learned the reason of Malcolm's treatment of him from
his delirious talk in the night, it did not, circumstances considered,
appear an enormity, and her indignation with the avenger of it, whom she
had all but hated before, was furious. Malcolm, on his part, was greatly
concerned to hear the result of his severity. He refrained, however,
from calling to inquire, knowing it would be interpreted as an insult,
not accepted as a sign of sympathy. He went to the doctor instead, who,
to his consternation, looked very serious at first. But when he learned
all about the affair, he changed his view considerably, and condescended
to give good hopes of his coming through, even adding that it would
lengthen his life by twenty years if it broke him of his habits of
whisky-drinking and rage.

And now Malcolm had a little time of leisure, which he put to the best
possible use in strengthening his relations with the fishers. For he had
nothing to do about the House except look after Kelpie; and Florimel, as
if determined to make him feel that he was less to her than before, much
as she used to enjoy seeing him sit his mare, never took him out with
her--always Stoat. He resolved therefore, seeing he must yet delay
action a while in the hope of the appearance of Lenorme, to go out as in
the old days after the herring, both for the sake of splicing, if
possible, what strands had been broken between him and the fishers, and
of renewing for himself the delights of elemental conflict. With these
views he hired himself to the Partan, whose boat's crew was
short-handed. And now, night after night, he reveled in the old
pleasure, enhanced by so many months of deprivation. Joy itself seemed
embodied in the wind blowing on him out of the misty infinite while his
boat rocked and swung on the waters, hanging between two worlds--that in
which the wind blew, and that other dark-swaying mystery whereinto the
nets to which it was tied went away down and down, gathering the harvest
of the ocean. It was as if Nature called up all her motherhood to greet
and embrace her long-absent son. When i