‘I don’t see why a woman should leave to any man what she’s able to do for herself!’ said Kirsty, as if communing with her own thoughts.-- ‘Francie, you’re no gentleman; you are a scoundrel and a coward!’ she immediately added aloud. ‘Very well,’ returned Francis angrily; ‘since you choose to be treated as a man, and tell me I am no gentleman, I tell you I wouldn’t marry the girl if the two of you went on your knees to me!--A common, silly, country-bred flirt!--ready for anything a man----’ Kirsty’s whip descended upon him with a merciless lash. The hiss of it, as it cut the air with all the force of her strong arm, startled her mare, and she sprang aside, so that Kirsty, who, leaning forward, had thrown the strength of her whole body into the blow, could not but lose her seat. But it was only to stand upright on her feet, fronting her--call him enemy, antagonist, victim, what you will. Gordon was grasping his head: the blow had for a moment blinded him. She gave him another stinging cut across the hands. ‘That’s frae yer father! The whup was his, and his swoord never did fairer wark!’ she said. ‘--I hae dune for him what I cud!’ she added in a low sorrowful voice, and stepped back, as having fulfilled her mission. He rushed at her with a sudden torrent of evil words. But he was no match for her in agility as, I am almost certain, he would have proved none in strength had she allowed him to close with her: she avoided him as she had more than once _jinkit_ a charging bull, every now and then dealing him another sharp blow from his father’s whip. The treatment began to bring him to his senses. ‘For God’s sake, Kirsty,’ he cried, ceasing his attempts to lay hold of her, ‘behaud, or we’ll hae the haill hoose oot, and what’ll come o’ me than I daurna think! I doobt I’ll never hear the last o’ ’t as ’tis!’ ‘Am I to trust ye, Francie?’ ‘I winna lay a finger upo’ ye, damn ye!’ he said in mingled wrath and humiliation. Throughout, Kirsty had held her mare by the bridle, and she, although behaving as well as she could, had, in the fright the laird’s rushes and the sounds of the whip caused her, added not a little to her mistress’s difficulties. Just as she sprang on her back, the door opened, and faces looked peering out; whereupon with a cut or two she encouraged a few wild gambols, so that all the trouble seemed to have been with the mare. Then she rode quietly through the gate. Gordon stood in a motionless fury until he heard the soft thunder of the mare’s hoofs on the turf as Kirsty rode home at a fierce gallop; then he turned and went into the house, not to communicate what had taken place, but to lie about it as like truth as he might find possible. About half-way home, on the side of a hill, across which a low wind, the long death-moan of autumn, blew with a hopeless, undulant, but not intermittent wail among the heather, Kirsty broke into a passionate fit of weeping, but ere she reached home all traces of her tears had vanished.