she on her part looked on the ground like a person lost
in listening. I broke out of my reserve.

"If I were you, Mr. Henry," said I, "I would deal openly with my lord."

"Mackellar, Mackellar," said he, "you do not see the weakness of my
ground. I can carry no such base thoughts to any one--to my father least
of all; that would be to fall into the bottom of his scorn. The weakness
of my ground," he continued, "lies in myself, that I am not one who
engages love. I have their gratitude, they all tell me that; I have a
rich estate of it! But I am not present in their minds; they are moved
neither to think with me nor to think for me. There is my loss!" He got
to his feet, and trod down the fire. "But some method must be found,
Mackellar," said he, looking at me suddenly over his shoulder; "some way
must be found. I am a man of a great deal of patience--far too much--far
too much. I begin to despise myself. And yet, sure, never was a man
involved in such a toil!" He fell back to his brooding.

"Cheer up," said I. "It will burst of itself."

"I am far past anger now," says he, which had so little coherency with
my own observation that I let both fall.

CHAPTER V

ACCOUNT OF ALL THAT PASSED ON THE NIGHT OF FEBRUARY 27TH, 1757

On the evening of the interview referred to, the Master went abroad; he
was abroad a great deal of the next day also, that fatal 27th; but where
he went, or what he did, we never concerned ourselves to ask until next
day. If we had done so, and by any chance found out, it might have
changed all. But as all we did was done in ignorance, and should be so
judged, I shall so narrate these passages as they appeared to us in the
moment of their birth, and reserve all that I since discovered for the
time of its discovery. For I have now come to one of the dark parts of
my narrative, and must engage the reader's indulgence for my patron.

All the 27th that rigorous weather endured: a stifling cold; the folk
passing about like smoking chimneys; the wide hearth in the hall piled
high with fuel; some of the spring birds that had already blundered
north into our neighbourhood besieging the windows of the house or
trotting on the frozen turf like things distracted. About noon there
came a blink of sunshine; showing a very pretty, wintry, frosty
landscape of white hills and woods, with Crail's lugger waiting for a
wind under the Craig Head, and the smoke mounting straight into the air
from every farm