"Leave the house instantly," he said, "or I will knock you down.""O papa!" moaned Ginevra wildly--it was the braver of her that she was trembling from head to foot--"don't speak so to Gibbie. He is a good boy. It was he that Angus whipped so cruelly--long ago: I have never been able to forget it."Her father was confounded at her presumption: how dared she expostulate with him! She had grown a bold, bad girl! Good heavens! Evil communications!
"If he does not get out of this directly," he cried, "I will have him whipped again. Angus."He shouted the name, and its echo came back in a wild tone, altogether strange to Ginevra. She seemed struggling in the meshes of an evil dream. Involuntarily she uttered a cry of terror and distress. Gibbie was at her side instantly, putting out his hand to comfort her. She was just laying hers on his arm, scarcely knowing what she did, when her father seized him, and dashed him to the other side of the room. He went staggering backwards, vainly trying to recover himself, and fell, his head striking against the wall.
The same instant Angus entered, saw nothing of Gibbie where he lay, and approached his master. But when he caught sight of Ginevra, he gave a gasp of terror that ended in a broken yell, and stared as if he had come suddenly on the verge of the bottomless pit, while all round his head his hair stood out as if he had been electrified.
Before he came to himself, Gibbie had recovered and risen. He saw now that he could be of no service to Ginevra, and that his presence only made things worse for her. But he saw also that she was unhappy about him, and that must not be. He broke into such a merry laugh--and it had need to be merry, for it had to do the work of many words of reassurance--that she could scarcely refrain from a half-hysterical response as he walked from the room. The moment he was out of the house, he began to sing; and for many minutes, as he walked up the gulf hollowed by the Glashburn, Ginevra could hear the strange, other-world voice, and knew it was meant to hold communion with her and comfort her.
"What do you know of that fellow, Angus!" asked his master.
"He's the verra deevil himsel', sir," muttered Angus, whom Gibbie's laughter had in a measure brought to his senses.
"You will see that he is sent off the property at once--and for good, Angus," said the laird. "His insolence is insufferable. The scoundrel!"On the pretext of following Gibbie, Angus was only too glad to leave the room. Then Mr. Galbraith upon his daughter.
"So, Jenny!" he said, with, his loose lips pulled out straight, "that is the sort of companion you choose when left to yourself!--a low, beggarly, insolent scamp!--scarcely the equal of the brutes he has the charge of!""They're sheep, papa!" pleaded Ginevra, in a wail that rose almost to a scream.
"I do believe the girl is an idiot!" said her father, and turned from her contemptuously.
"I think I am, papa," she sobbed. "Don't mind me. Let me go away, and I will never trouble you any more." She would go to the mountain, she thought, and be a shepherdess with Gibbie.
Her father took her roughly by the arm, pushed her into a closet, locked the door, went and had his luncheon, and in the afternoon, having borrowed Snowball, took her just as she was, drove to meet the mail coach, and in the middle of the night was set down with her at the principal hotel in the city, whence the next morning he set out early to find a school where he might leave her and his responsibility with her.
When Gibbie knew himself beyond the hearing of Ginevra, his song died away, and he went home sad. The gentle girl had stepped at once from the day into the dark, and he was troubled for her. But he remembered that she had another father besides the laird, and comforted himself.
When he reached home, he found his mother in serious talk with a stranger. The tears were in her eyes, and had been running down her cheeks, but she was calm and dignified as usual.
"Here he comes!" she said as he entered. "The will o' the Lord be dene--noo an' for ever-mair! I'm at his biddin'.--An' sae's Gibbie."It was Mr. Sclater. The witch had sailed her brander well.