a man or
a woman _free_."

"And yet you catch haddock and herring! Bah! we have nothing to do
with each other."

"Then farewell, aunt, and God give you mercy in the day you will need
mercy."

She was suddenly and stolidly silent. She fixed her eyes on the
dull glow of the burning peats, and relapsed into the torpor that
was her habitual mood. Its force was insurmountable. David went
slowly out of her presence, and was unable for some time to cast off
the depression of her icy influence. Yet the meeting had not been
without result. During it he had felt the first conscious throb of
that new passion for freedom which had sprung into existence at the
impetuous, glowing iteration of the mere word from his aunt's lips.
He felt its charm in the unaccustomed liberty of his own actions.
He was now entirely without claims but those his love or liking
voluntarily assumed. No one older than himself had the right to
reprove or direct him. He had at last come to his majority. He was
master of himself and his fate.

The first evidence of this new condition was a dignified reticence
with Barbara Traill. She was conscious of the change in her
lodger. She felt instinctively that he was no longer a child to
be questioned, and there was a tone of authority in his refusal to
discuss his aunt Sabiston with her which she could not but respect.
Indeed, it was no longer possible to speak to him of Mistress
Sabiston as Mistress Sabiston deserved to be spoken of. Her first
censure was checked by David's air of disapproval and his few
words of apology:

"She is, however, my aunt; and when one is ninety years old it is a
good excuse for many faults."

Matilda's utter refusal of his kin or kindness threw him more
exclusively upon Nanna and her child. And as all his efforts to
discover any other family connections were quite futile, he finally
came to believe that they three were the last of a family that had
once filled the lands of the Norsemen with the fame of their great
deeds. Insensibly this thought drew the bond tighter and closer,
though an instinct as pure as it was conventional taught him a
scrupulous delicacy with regard to this friendship. Fortunately,
in Shetland the blood-tie was regarded as a strong enough motive
for all David's attentions to a woman and child so desolate and
helpless. People said simply, "It is a good thing for Nanna Sinclair
that her cousin has come to Shetland." And it did not enter their
hearts to imagi