“Surely, my dear Mr MacPhail,” returned the lady in her most persuasive tones, and with her sweetest smile, “you cannot call it harming a poor idiot to restore him to the care of his own mother!” “That’s as it turnt oot,” rejoined Malcolm. “But I’m sure o’ ae thing, mem, an’ that is, ’at he’s no sae muckle o’ an eediot as some fowk wad hae him.” Mrs Stewart’s face fell, she turned from him, and going back to her seat hid her face in her handkerchief. “I’m afraid,” she said sadly, after a moment, “I must give up my last hope: you are not disposed to be friendly to me, Mr MacPhail; you too have been believing hard things of me.” “That’s true; but no frae hearsay alane,” returned Malcolm. “The luik o’ the puir fallow whan he but hears the chance word _mither_, ’s a sicht no to be forgotten. He grips his lugs atween ’s twa han’s, an’ rins like a colley wi’ a pan at ’s tail. That couldna come o’ naething.” Mrs Stewart hid her face on the cushioned arm of the settee, and sobbed. A moment after she sat erect again, but languid and red-eyed, saying, as if with sudden resolve: “I will tell you all I know about it, and then you can judge for yourself. When he was a very small child, I took him for advice to the best physicians in London and Paris: all advised a certain operation which had to be performed for consecutive months, at intervals of a few days. Though painful it was simple, yet of such a nature that no one was so fit to attend to it as his mother. Alas! instead of doing him any good, it has done me the worst injury in the world: my child hates me!” Again she hid her face on the settee. The explanation was plausible enough, and the grief of the mother surely apparent! Malcolm could not but be touched. “It’s no ’at I’m no willin’ to be your freen’, mem; but I’m yer son’s freen’ a’ready, an’ gien he war to hear onything ’at gart him mislippen till me, it wad gang to my hert.” “Then you can judge what I feel!” said the lady. “Gien it wad hale your hert to hurt mine, I wad think aboot it, mem; but gien it hurtit a’ three o’ ’s, and did guid to nane, it wad be a misfit a’thegither. I’ll du naething till I’m doonricht sure it’s the pairt o’ a freen’.” “That’s just what makes you the only fit person to help me that I know. If I were to employ people in the affair, they might be rough with the poor fellow.” “Like eneuch, mem,” assented Malcolm, while the words put him afresh on his guard. “But I might be driven to it,” she added. Malcolm responded with an unuttered vow. “It might become necessary to use force--whereas you could lead him with a word.” “Na; I’m naither sic witch nor sic traitor.” “Where would be the treachery when you knew it would be for his good?”