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Updated: June 8, 2025
Then Maddad, his father, Earl of Athole, died; and the widowed Margret, Harold's mother, came north to Orkney, still dangerous, still beautiful and attractive, especially to Gunni, Sweyn's brother, by whom she had a child, for which Gunni was outlawed, a punishment which alienated his brother Sweyn from Harold Maddadson.
That man has a natural hankering after treason against the people. Lord, Margret! what a stiff old head he'd have carried to the guillotine! How he'd have looked at the canaille!" He helped her up gently enough. "Your bonnet's like a wet rag," with a furtive glance at the worn-out face.
She had also given up trying to interest Margret in 'the childher, or bidding young Jack be on his best behaviour before the Sunday guest. The young folk didn't like the derision in Margret's pale eyes, and kept out of her way as much as possible, since they feared their mother too much to flout her openly, as they were often tempted to do.
The small face was purely cut, haggard, patient in its sleep, the soft, fair hair gathered off the tired forehead. Margret leaned over her, shuddering, pinning her handkerchief about the child's dead neck. "How young she is!" muttered Knowles. "Merciful God, how young she is! What is that you say?" sharply, seeing Margret's lips move.
Margret, going down the stairs that morning, found none of the chivalric unselfish glow of the night before in her home. It was an old, bare house in the midst of dreary stubble fields, in which her life was slowly to be worn out: working for those who did not comprehend her; thanked her little, that was all. It did not matter; life was short: she could thank God for that at least.
Margret had her doubts, and so would you, if you had heard how it creaked under the load, how they piled in great straw panniers of apples: black apples with yellow hearts, scarlet veined, golden pippin apples, that held the warmth and light longest, russet apples with a hot blush on their rough brown skins, plums shining coldly in their delicate purple bloom, peaches with the crimson velvet of their cheeks aglow with the prisoned heat of a hundred summer days.
"'Onorate l' altissmo poeta!" he said, gently lifting his finger to his forehead in a military fashion. "Where is my cane, Margret? The Doctor and I will go and walk on the porch before it grows dark." The sun had gone down long before, and the stars were out; but no one spoke of this.
Jack's were perhaps the most ill-natured surmises as to the reasons for Margret's silence and the meaning of that queer checked garb. For a quarter of a century Margret lived among her fowl, untroubled by her kin. Then the talk about the money grew from little beginnings like a snowball. It fired Mrs.
'You great stupid omadhaun! she hissed between the shakes, 'that couldn't have the nature in you to see to your own sister, an' she a lone woman! That very day Jack went off stupidly to try to bridge over with Margret the gulf of nearly thirty years. He got very little help from his sister.
The cows sauntered through the clover by the fences, until they wound up by lying down in it and sleeping outright. The country-people, jogging along to the mill, walked their fat old nags through the stillness and warmth so slowly that even Margret left them far behind.
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