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Even Mrs Catanach's cur had never offered him a bite in return for a caress. He could make a bird's nest, of any sort common in the neighbourhood, so as deceive the most cunning of the nest harrying youths of the parish.* Hardly was he an hour in his new abode ere the sparrows and robins began to visit him.
He was followed to the schoolmaster's lodging, and thence, an hour after, to his own, by a little boy far too little to excite suspicion, the grandson of Mrs Catanach's friend, the herb doctor. Until now the woman had not known that Malcolm was in London.
He knew absolutely nothing against her not even that she was the person he had seen in Mrs Catanach's company in the garret of Lossie House. But he steeled himself to distrust her, and held his peace. "It is clear," she resumed after a pause, "that the intervention of some friend of both is the only thing that can be of the smallest use.
The blood of red wrath was seething in Mrs Catanach's face; she drew herself up, and stood flaming before him, on the verge of explosion. "Gang frae the hoose," said Malcolm, "or I'll set the muckle hun' to shaw ye the gait." Her face turned the colour of ashes, and with hanging cheeks and scared but not the less wicked eyes, she turned from the room.
"Weel, weel! we'll see," said Malcolm. On his way back to the House, he knocked at Mrs Catanach's door, and said a few words to her which had a remarkable effect on the expression of her plump countenance and deep set black eyes. When he reached home, he ran up the main staircase, knocked at the first door, opened it, and peeped in.
Heartily enjoying a row, he stopped instantly, and signing a halt to his followers, stood listening to the mud geyser that now burst from Mrs Catanach's throat. "Ye blin' abortion o' Sawtan's soo!" she cried, "didna I tak ye to du wi' ye as I likit. He's naething but ane o' yer hatit Cawm'ells!"
When they passed Mrs Catanach's cottage an hour after, on their way to the harbour, they saw the blinds drawn down, as if a dead man lay within: according to after report, she had the brute already laid out like a human being, and sat by the bedside awaiting a coffin which she had ordered of Watty Witherspail. The day continued lovely, with a fine breeze.
Only a few nights before had Phemy been taken to the room where they found her. She had been carried from place to place, and had been some time, she believed, in Mrs Catanach's own house. They had always kept her in the dark, and removed her at night, blindfolded.
They had not gone many steps from the top of the ascent, however, before the fugitive threw himself on the ground exhausted, and it was all Malcolm could do to get him to the town, where, unable to go a pace further, he sank down on Mrs Catanach's doorstep.
From Mrs Catanach's behaviour, every one believed that she knew all about the affair, but no one had a suspicion that she was the hidden fountain and prime mover of the report so far to the contrary was it that people generally anticipated a frightful result for her when the truth came to be known, for that Mrs Stewart would follow her with all the vengeance of a bereaved tigress.
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