good conscience and kindly heart.



CHAPTER III: THE MAD LAIRD


When Mistress Catanach arrived at the opening of a street which
was just opposite her own door, and led steep toward the sea town,
she stood, and shading her eyes with her hooded hand, although the
sun was far behind her, looked out to sea. It was the forenoon of
a day of early summer. The larks were many and loud in the skies
above her--for, although she stood in a street, she was only a
few yards from the green fields--but she could hardly have heard
them, for their music was not for her. To the northward, whither
her gaze--if gaze it could be called--was directed, all but
cloudless blue heavens stretched over an all but shadowless blue
sea; two bold, jagged promontories, one on each side of her, formed
a wide bay; between that on the west and the sea town at her feet,
lay a great curve of yellow sand, upon which the long breakers,
born of last night's wind, were still roaring from the northeast,
although the gale had now sunk to a breeze--cold and of doubtful
influence. From the chimneys of the fishermen's houses below,
ascended a yellowish smoke, which, against the blue of the sea,
assumed a dull green colour as it drifted vanishing towards the
southwest. But Mrs Catanach was looking neither at nor for anything:
she had no fisherman husband, or any other relative at sea; she
was but revolving something in her unwholesome mind, and this was
her mode of concealing an operation which naturally would have been
performed with down bent head and eyes on the ground.