While she stood looking, Peter Malloch came out of his door and walked towards her. Here at any rate was one man coming to the meeting. It was getting late, but then the village time would get astray sometimes. It depended on the watch of the stage coach guard, a not very accurate timekeeper, as its hands would sometimes be moved twenty minutes forward or half an hour back that the coach might arrive at its different stages in time, whereby its internal economy would become deranged, and it would be sent for a fortnight to recruit at the watchmaker's. Farther down the street she now descried Ebenezer Prittie. No doubt it was the clocks which were to blame. But no! When Peter Malloch reached the corner of the lane, he stopped short for an instant, and then hastily turned down it and disappeared. Ebenezer marched steadily along till he came to the same point, but then he also stopped and straightway vanished, like the other. What could it mean? Roderick was restless and very ill. It would require all his strength to get through the proceedings in the quietest way possible, and she could not think of fretting him, neither could she say anything to Eppie now. That good soul had been rather tiresome as it was, for the past few days. She was always kind and attentive, though a trifle more motherly than Mary considered the circumstances to warrant, for she objected to the old woman's view of her as a helpless young thing who needed to be clucked over, and protected with beak and feather, like some unfledged nurseling of the poultry yard. Of late Eppie's commiserating sympathy and sad devotion had become nearly overpowering, as Mary could divine no possible ground for anything so pathetic; things had appeared to be going much as usual, the only unwonted circumstance having been her own return home a day or two before in the Inchbracken dog-cart, driven by Kenneth. Eppie must have got it into her head that she was falling under the influence of those black persecutors, the Drysdales, and that her soul was in danger; and that was too provokingly absurd altogether and not to be tolerated. Mary flushed slightly to think of it, though there came also a light into her eye, as though in some aspects the idea was not so grievous after all. But it must be put down, whether or no, and she had been endeavouring to assume a deportment of severe and dignified distance, which would put the old body back in her proper place. Poor child! Her attempts at offended reserve were like the snaps of a toothless puppy, they had small resemblance to biting, and were far more likely to tickle the offending hand than to hurt it.