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The well-stocked larder had sufficed the two for quite a long time without any recourse to 'the stocking. There was very little further friendship between the village and the Red Glen. Such of the neighbours as were led there at first by curiosity found the door shut in their faces, for Mary had Margret's suspiciousness many times intensified.
He could see Margret's window, and a dim light in it: she would be awake, praying for him, no doubt. He pondered on that. Would you think Holmes weak, if he forsook the faith of Fichte, sometime, led by a woman's hand? Think of the apostle of the positive philosophers, and say no more.
Many a good woman appreciated the waste of good food even while she added to it, and sighed after that full larder for the benefit of her man and the weans at home; but all the time there was the dancing marsh-light of Margret's money luring the good souls on.
Then follow the stories, well worth reading in the Saga itself, of the raising and lowering of the sails on Ragnvald's ships and of the mutiny of Paul's followers, and of the dowsing of the beacons on the Fair Isle by Uni, Ragnvald's ally, of Ragnvald's landing in Westray, of his suppression of all opposition to him, of the spies at Paul's Thing, of Sweyn's junction of forces with Ragnvald, of Sweyn's visit to Margret at Athole, and his dramatic kidnapping of Jarl Paul while hunting otters near Westness in the Isle of Rousay, in Orkney, and of the jarl's deportation by Sweyn first to Dufeyra and thence via Ekkjals-bakki to Athole to his sister Margret, who receives him with the utmost show of cordiality, and finally of Paul's abdication in favour of Margret's second son, Harold Maddadson, then a boy of five years of age, with the instructions to Sweyn to tell the Orkneymen that Paul himself was blinded, or, worse still, maimed, so that his friends should not seek him out, and restore him to his jarldom.
Jack was fairly confident all the time that if any one on the Island got Margret's nest-egg it would be herself, but she had a misgiving which she imparted to her husband that the whole might go to Father Tiernay for charities. Any attempt at getting inside the shell which hid Margret's heart from the world her sister-in-law had long given up.
'Divil a letther but the priest's they don't open an' read, she said, 'an' tells the news afterwards to the man or woman that owns it. The news gets to them before the letter. An' if I put the fortune in there I'm doubtin' 'twould ever see London. I know an honest man in the Whiterock post office I'd betther be trustin'. And that is how Margret's 'stocking' left the Island.
Yet neither seemed pleased to see the other a little later in the day, when Mrs. Cahill climbing the hill with a full basket met Mrs. Devine descending with an empty one. For all of a sudden a pilgrimage to Margret's cottage in the Red Glen became the recognised thing.
Then she said quietly, 'I'm thinkin' I'll make no more journeys to the Chapel. Father Tiernay'll have to be coming to me instead. 'Tut, tut, woman dear, said Mrs. Jack, with two hard red spots coming into her cheeks, 'we'll be seein' you about finely when the weather gets milder. And then she insinuated in a wheedling voice something about Margret's affairs being settled.
The Doctor idly wondered who had blacked them, glancing at Margret's fingers. There was a flower stuck in the button-hole of the school-master's coat, a pale tea-rose. If Dr. A scholar, a gentleman, though in patched shoes and trousers a world too short.
There had never been any organised robbery in the Island since the cattle-lifting of the kernes long ago; but many a good woman fell of a tremble now when she thought of Margret and her 'stocking' alone through the silent night, and at the mercy of midnight robbers. There was not a day that several offerings were not laid at Margret's feet.
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