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Do what I ask you to, just this once!" Dukovski went down on his knees. "Nicholas Yermolaiyevitch! Be kind! Call me a blackguard, a ne'er-do-weel, if I am mistaken about this woman. You see what an affair it is. What a case it is. A romance! A woman murdering her own husband for love! The fame of it will go all over Russia. They will make you investigator in all important cases.
He was looking for my gun, too, but that was in a hidy-hole. I got up next morning with a dizzy head, and followed him nigh ten miles. I had a shot at him, but I missed, and his legs were too long for me. Yon's the dangerous lad." "Where did he go, think you?" I asked. "To the hills. To the refuge of every ne'er-do-weel. Belike the Indians have got his scalp, and I'm not regretting it."
From what he remembered of Partan Jeannie's reputation as a being only tolerated and assisted by his mother, on account of her extreme misery and destitution, he could believe that the ne'er-do-weel son, who must have forsaken her before he himself was born, might have really been raised in morality by association with the grave, faithful, and temperate followers of Mohammed, rather than the scum of the port of Eyemouth.
Her father's name was Westbrook; he was a scene-painter, a thriftless ne'er-do-weel, whose intemperate habits had brought them to poverty and broken his wife's heart; but in his sober moments he was good to the child, and she certainly seemed devoted to him." "Oh dear, how sad it sounds, Malcolm!" "My dear, it was far sadder in reality.
"I, as you all remember, was the weak one the ne'er-do-weel. When all of you were grown and had homes of your own, I still remained under the family roof-tree, fed by our father's bounty and looking to our father's justice for that share of his savings which he had promised to all alike.
Elspie, indeed, was all that could be desired, and Fergus was in all respects a sterling man; but the head of the family was, as we have seen, open to improvement in many respects, and Duncan junior was of that heart-breaking character which is known as ne'er-do-weel. Possibly, if differently treated by his father, he might have been a better man.
Once only he met with a harsher greeting. It was from a tall, white-headed, red-faced man whom they met upon the moor. "Good-morrow, dear father!" cried Aylward. "How is it with you at Crooksbury? And how are the new black cow and the ewes from Alton and Mary the dairymaid and all your gear?" "It ill becomes you to ask, you ne'er-do-weel," said the old man.
While these matters were in discussion, Madge Wildfire entered, and her first exclamation was, "Eh! see if there isna our auld ne'er-do-weel deevil's-buckie o' a mither Hegh, sirs! but we are a hopeful family, to be twa o' us in the Guard at ance But there were better days wi' us ance were there na, mither?"
The white park-gate is held wide open by a poor ne'er-do-weel in a shabby old red coat John Ellis by name. How he gets his living no one knows, but if there is a meet of fox-hounds anywhere within ten miles, there he is sure to be, holding people's horses or ready at a gate for stray pennies and sixpences.
That he should have a younger son also named Duncan a cross ne'er-do-weel like himself was natural, but how he came to have such a sweet daughter as Elspie, and such a good elder son as Fergus, are mysteries which we do not attempt to unravel or explain. Perhaps these two took after their departed mother. We know not, for we never met her.
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