The Elect Lady Part 28

"I do not choose to answer the question."

"Very well, sir."

Dawtie turned to leave the room.

"Stop! stop!" cried Crawford; "I have not done with you yet, my girl.

You have not told me what you meant when you said the cup did not belong to the laird."

"I do not choose to answer the question," said Dawtie.

"Then you shall answer it to a magistrate."

"I will, sir," she replied, and stood.

Crawford left the room.

He rode home in a rage. Dawtie went about her work with a bright spot on each cheek, indignant at the man's rudeness, but praying G.o.d to take her heart in His hand, and cool the fever of it.

The words rose in her mind:

"It must needs be that offenses come, but woe onto that man by whom they come."

She was at once filled with pity for the man who could side with the wrong, and want everything his own way, for, sooner or later, confusion must be his portion; the Lord had said: "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known."

"He needs to be shamed," she said, "but he is thy child; care for him, too."

George felt that he had not borne a dignified part, and knew that his last chance with Alexa was gone. Then he too felt the situation unendurable, and set about removing his property. He wrote to Alexa that he could no longer doubt it her wish to be rid of the collection, and able to use the room. It was desirable also, he said, that a thorough search should be made in those rooms before he placed the matter of the missing cup in the hands of the magistrates.

Dawtie's last words had sufficed to remove any lingering doubt as to what had become of the chalice. It did not occur to him that one so anxious to do the justice of restoration would hardly be capable of telling lies, of defiling her soul that a bit of property might be recovered; he took it for granted that she meant to be liberally rewarded by the earl.

George would have ill understood the distinction Dawtie made--that the body of the cup _might_ belong to him, but the soul of the cup _did_ belong to another; or her a.s.sertion that where the soul was there the body ought to be; or her argument that He who had the soul had the right to ransom the body--a reasoning possible to a child-like nature only; she had pondered to find the true law of the case, and this was her conclusion.

George suspected, and grew convinced that Alexa was a party to the abstraction of the cup. She had, he said, begun to share in the extravagant notions of a group of pietists whose leader was that detestable fellow, Ingram. Alexa was attached to Dawtie, and Dawtie was one of them. He believed Alexa would do anything to spite him. To bring trouble on Dawtie would be to punish her mistress, and the pious farmer, too.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

THE PROSECUTION.

As soon as Crawford had his things away from Potlurg, satisfied the cup was nowhere among them, he made a statement of the case to a magistrate he knew; and so represented it, as the outcome of the hypocrisy of pietism, that the magistrate, hating everything called fanatical, at once granted him a warrant to apprehend Dawtie on the charge of theft.

It was a terrible shock. Alexa cried out with indignation. Dawtie turned white and then red, but uttered never a word.

"Dawtie," said her mistress, "tell me what you know about the cup. You do know something that you have not told me!"

"I do, ma'am, but I will not tell it except I am forced."

"That you are going to be, my poor girl! I am very sorry, for I am perfectly sure you have done nothing you know to be wrong!"

"I have done nothing you or anybody would think wrong, ma'am."

She put on her Sunday frock, and went down to go with the policeman. To her joy she found her mistress at the door, ready to accompany her. They had two miles or more to walk, but that was nothing to either.

Questioned by the magistrate, not unkindly, for her mistress was there, Dawtie told everything--how first she came upon the likeness and history of the cup, and then saw the cup itself in her master's hands.

Crawford told how the laird had warned him against Dawtie, giving him to understand that she had been seized with a pa.s.sion for the goblet such that she would peril her soul to possess it, and that he dared not let her know where it was.

"Sir," said Dawtie, "he could na hae distrusted me like that, for he gae me his keys, and sent me to fetch the cup when he was ower ill to gang till't."

"If that be true, your wors.h.i.+p," said Crawford, "it does not affect the fact that the cup was in the hands of the old man when I left him and she went to him, and from that moment it has not been seen."

"Did he have it when you went to him?" asked the magistrate.

"I didna see't, sir. He was in a kind o' faint when I got up."

Crawford said that, hearing a cry, he ran up again, and found the old man at the point of death, with just strength to cry out before he died, that Dawtie had taken the cup from him. Dawtie was leaning over him, but he had not imagined the accusation more than the delirious fancy of a dying man, till it appeared that the cup was not to be found.

The magistrate made out Dawtie's commitment for trial. He remarked that she might have been misled by a false notion of duty: he had been informed that she belonged to a sect claiming the right to think for themselves on the profoundest mysteries--and here was the result! There was not a man in Scotland less capable of knowing what any woman was thinking, or more incapable of doubting his own insight.

Doubtless, he went on, she had superst.i.tiously regarded the cup as exercising a Satanic influence on the mind of her master; but even if she confessed it now, he must make an example of one whose fanaticism would set wrong right after the notions of an illiterate sect, and not according to the laws of the land. He just send the case to be tried by a jury! If she convinced the twelve men composing that jury, of the innocence she protested, she would then be a free woman.

Dawtie stood very white all the time he was speaking, and her lips every now and then quivered as if she were going to cry, but she did not.

Alexa offered bail, but his wors.h.i.+p would not accept it: his righteous soul was too indignant. She went to Dawtie and kissed her, and together they followed the policeman to the door, where Dawtie was to get into a spring-cart with him, and be driven to the county town, there to lie waiting the a.s.sizes.

The bad news had spread so fast that as they came out, up came Andrew.

At sight of him Dawtie gently laughed, like a pleased child. The policeman, who, like many present, had been prejudiced by her looks in her favor, dropped behind, and she walked between her mistress and Andrew to the cart.

"Dawtie!" said Andrew.

"Oh, Andrew! has G.o.d forgotten me?" she returned, stopping short.

"For G.o.d to forget," answered Andrew, "would be not to be G.o.d any longer!"

"But here I am on my road til a prison, Andrew! I didna think He would hae latten them do't!"

"A bairn micht jist as weel say, whan its nurse lays't intil its cradle, and says: 'Noo, lie still!' 'Mammy, I didna think ye would hae latten her do't!' He's a' aboot ye and in ye, Dawtie, and this is come to ye jist to lat ye ken 'at He is. He raised ye up jist to spen' His glory upo'! I say, Dawtie, did Jesus Christ deserve what He got?"

"No ae bit, Andrew! What for should ye speir sic a thing?"

"Then do ye think G.o.d hae forgotten Him?"

"May be He thoucht it jist for a minute!"

"Well, ye hae thoucht jist for a minute, and ye maun think it nae mair."

"But G.o.d couldna forget _Him_, An'rew: He got it a' for doin' His will!"