to you, may I speir?... Or maybe I
should speir what he did.... Eh?" he grinned.

"By God, I'll kill ye," screamed John, springing to his feet, with the
poker in his hand. The hammer went whizzing past his ear. Mrs. Gourlay
screamed and tried to rise from her chair, her eyes goggling in terror.
As Gourlay leapt, John brought the huge poker with a crash on the
descending brow. The fiercest joy of his life was the dirl that went up
his arm as the steel thrilled to its own hard impact on the bone.
Gourlay thudded on the fender, his brow crashing on the rim.

At the blow there had been a cry as of animals from the two women. There
followed an eternity of silence, it seemed, and a haze about the place;
yet not a haze, for everything was intensely clear; only it belonged to
another world. One terrible fact had changed the Universe. The air was
different now--it was full of murder. Everything in the room had a new
significance, a sinister meaning. The effect was that of an unholy
spell.

As through a dream Mrs. Gourlay's voice was heard crying on her God.

John stood there, suddenly weak in his limbs, and stared, as if
petrified, at the red poker in his hand. A little wisp of grizzled hair
stuck to the square of it, severed, as by scissors, between the sharp
edge and the bone. It was the sight of that bit of hair that roused him
from his stupor--it seemed so monstrous and horrible, sticking all by
itself to the poker. "I didna strike him so hard," he pleaded, staring
vaguely, "I didna strike him so hard." Now that the frenzy had left him,
he failed to realize the force of his own blow. Then with a horrid fear
on him, "Get up, faither," he entreated; "get up, faither! O man, you
micht get up!"

Janet, who had bent above the fallen man, raised an ashen face to her
brother, and whispered hoarsely, "His heart has stopped, John; you have
killed him!"

Steps were heard coming through the scullery. In the fear of discovery
Mrs. Gourlay shook off the apathy that held her paralyzed. She sprang
up, snatched the poker from her son, and thrust it in the embers.

"Run, John; run for the doctor," she screamed.--"O Mrs. Webster, Mrs.
Webster, I'm glad to see ye. Mr. Gourlay fell from the top o' the
ladder, and smashed his brow on the muckle fender."

CHAPTER XXVI.

"Mother!" came the startled whisper, "mother! O woman, waken and speak
to me!"

No comforting answer came from the darkness to tell of a human being
close at