but I maun tell my wife."

"Rin, an' fess her here than, for I'm fleyed at yer sister, honest
wuman, an' little Phemy. It wad blaud a' thing gien I was hurried
to du something afore I kenned what."

"I s' ha'e her oot in a meenute," said Joseph, and scrambled up
the cliff.



CHAPTER VIII: VOYAGE TO LONDON


For a few minutes Malcolm stood alone in the dim starlight of
winter, looking out on the dusky sea, dark as his own future, into
which the wind now blowing behind him would soon begin to carry
him. He anticipated its difficulties, but never thought of perils:
it was seldom anything oppressed him but the doubt of what he ought
to do. This was ever the cold mist that swallowed the airy castles
he built and peopled with all the friends and acquaintances of his
youth. But the very first step towards action is the death warrant
of doubt, and the tide of Malcolm's being ran higher that night, as
he stood thus alone under the stars, than he had ever yet known it
run. With all his common sense, and the abundance of his philosophy,
which the much leisure belonging to certain phases of his life had
combined with the slow strength of his intellect to render somewhat
long winded in utterance, there was yet room in Malcolm's bonnet
for a bee above the ordinary size, and if it buzzed a little
too romantically for the taste of the nineteenth century, about