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Updated: June 3, 2025
"'Deed, Mistress Catanach," persisted Malcolm, "I canna say I like to hae my ain fish flung i' my face, nor yet to see ill-faured tykes rin awa' wi' 't afore my verra een." After the warning given him by Miss Horn, and the strange influence her presence had had on his grandfather, Malcolm preferred keeping up a negative quarrel with the woman.
Searching the cottage, he found that his broadsword and dirk, with all his poor finery, were gone. That same night Mrs. Catanach also disappeared. A week after, what was left of Lord Lossie was buried. Malcolm followed the hearse with the household. Miss Horn walked immediately behind him, on the arm of the schoolmaster.
Mrs Catanach in her nightcap looked from her upper window as she passed, like a great spider from the heart of its web, and nodded significantly after her, with a look and a smile such as might mean, that for all her good looks she might have the heartache some day.
Having thought the thing out pretty thoroughly, as he fancied, and resolved at the same time to feel his way towards negotiations with Mrs Catanach, he turned and rode home.
"But Mistress Courthope was doon last nicht, an' wantit the best I cud heuk." "Mistress Courthope! Wha cares for her? A mim, cantin' auld body! Gie me the trootie, Ma'colm. Ye're a bonny laad, an 'it s' be the better for ye." "Deed I cudna du 't, Mistress Catanach though I'm sorry to disobleege ye. It's bespoken, ye see. "Gae 'wa' wi' yer haddies, an' yer goukmeys! Ye sanna gowk me wi' them."
Whether they made it pleasant for each other my reader may debate with himself Before many months had gone by, stared at and shunned by all, even by Miss Horn's Jean, driven back upon her own memories, and the pictures that rose out of them, and deprived of every chance of indulging her dominant passion for mischievous influence, the midwife's face told such a different tale, that the schoolmaster began to cherish a feeble hope that within a few years Mrs Catanach might get so far as to begin to suspect she was a sinner that she had actually done things she ought not to have done.
Invariably also, just as he slipped, the face of the Prince appeared in the breach, but it was at the same time the face of Mrs Catanach. The next morning, Mrs Courthope found him feverish, and insisted on his remaining in bed no small trial to one who had never been an hour ill in his life; but he was suffering so much that he made little resistance.
Mrs Catanach, moreover, absolutely certain that no threats would render Jean capable of holding her tongue, had so impressed upon her the terrible consequences of repeating what she had told her, that, the moment the echo of her own utterances began to return to her own ears, she began to profess an utter disbelief in the whole matter the precise result Mrs Catanach had foreseen and intended: now she lay unsuspected behind Jean, as behind a wall whose door was built up; for she had so graduated her threats, gathering the fullest and vaguest terrors of her supernatural powers about her name, that while Jean dared, with many misgivings, to tamper with the secret itself she dared not once mention Mrs Catanach in connection with it.
The same moment Mrs Catanach glided out with her usual downy step, gave a wink as of mutual intelligence to the group at the door, and vanished. On Malcolm's arm lay the head of a young girl. Her thin, worn countenance was stained with tears, and livid with suffocation. She was recovering, but her eyes rolled stupid and visionless.
On the floor they found a hideous death mask, doubtless the cause of the screams which Mrs Catanach had sought to stifle with the pillows and bedclothes. When Malcolm returned, he went at once to the piper's cottage, where he found him in bed, utterly exhausted, and as utterly restless. "Weel, daddy," he said, "I doobt I daurna come near ye noo." "Come to her arms, my poor poy!" faltered Duncan.
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