may leave marks of mud, or scars. But the footsteps of God will burn
them all off in the end. I canna prove it, Marcella. But ye'll see it
some day. D'ye mind yon apple that came flooering up through Lashnagar?"

Marcella nodded. It had borne fruit two years now.

"It knew nothing: it was just still and quiet when something told it to
push on. And then life came along it--like a path. If it had known, it
couldna help the life any--"

She nodded again. She felt she understood now.

At the end of the year things began to go badly again at the farm. The
money was almost exhausted; the oat crop failed and one of the cows was
lost on Lashnagar, where she had been tempted by hunger to find more
food. One of the serving women, falling ill, went to Edinburgh to be
cured and never came back; paint, blistered and scarred from the doors
and window frames by the weather, was not replaced; the holes gnawed and
torn by the hungry rats in wainscot and floor were never patched and
food was more scarce than ever. Aunt Janet sat, a dourly silent ghost,
while Marcella read to Andrew, listening sickly to the beasts clamouring
for their scanty meals. And one night, when he had been out alone along
Ben Grief and seen his lands and his old grey house, Lashcairn the
Landless, as they called him, went back to his barrel.

For three days he lived behind the green baize door. On the fourth he
came out with his red-rimmed eyes ablaze, his gaunt face pinched, his
hair bedraggled. And that night a little old man, Rose's cousin from
Winchester, came to see them. He had never seen the mad family into
which his cousin had married; he had not seen her since she was a gentle