When Miss Horn left him--with a farewell kindlier than her greeting--rendered yet more restless by her talk, he went back to the stable, saddled Kelpie, and took her out for an airing. As he passed the factor’s house, Mrs Crathie saw him from the window. Her colour rose. She arose herself also, and looked after him from the door--a proud and peevish woman, jealous of her husband’s dignity, still more jealous of her own. “The verra image o’ the auld markis!” she said to herself; for in the recesses of her bosom she spoke the Scotch she scorned to utter aloud; “and sits jist like himsel’, wi’ a wee stoop i’ the saiddle, and ilka noo an’ than a swing o’ his haill boady back, as gien some thoucht had set him straught.--Gien the fractious brute wad but brak a bane or twa o’ him!” she went on in growing anger. “The impidence o’ the fallow! He has his leave: what for disna he tak it an’ gang? But oot o’ this, gang he sall. To ca’ a man like mine a heepocreet ’cause he wadna procleem till a haill market ilka secret fau’t o’ the horse he had to sell! Haith, he cam upo’ the wrang side o’ the sheet to play the lord and maister here! and that I can tell him!” The mare was fresh, and the roads through the policy hard both by nature and by frost, so that he could not let her go, and had enough to do with her. He turned, therefore, towards the sea-gate, and soon reached the shore. There, westward of the Seaton, where the fisher-folk lived, the sand lay smooth, flat, and wet along the edge of the receding tide: he gave Kelpie the rein, and she sprang into a wild gallop, every now and then flinging her heels as high as her rider’s head. But finding, as they approached the stony part from which rose the great rock called the Bored Craig, that he could not pull her up in time, he turned her head towards the long dune of sand which, a little beyond the tide, ran parallel with the shore. It was dry and loose, and the ascent steep. Kelpie’s hoofs sank at every step, and when she reached the top, with wide-spread struggling haunches, and “nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,” he had her in hand. She stood panting, yet pawing and dancing, and making the sand fly in all directions. Suddenly a woman with a child in her arms rose, as it seemed to Malcolm, under Kelpie’s very head. She wheeled and reared, and, in wrath or in terror, strained every nerve to unseat her rider, while, whether from faith or despair, the woman stood still as a statue, staring at the struggle. “Haud awa’ a bit, Lizzy,” cried Malcolm. “She’s a mad brute, an’ I mayna be able to haud her. Ye ha’e the bairnie, ye see!” She was a young woman, with a sad white face. To what Malcolm said she paid no heed, but stood with her child in her arms and gazed at Kelpie as she went on plunging and kicking about on the top of the dune. “I reckon ye wadna care though the she-deevil knockit oot yer harns; but ye ha’e the bairn, woman! Ha’e mercy on the bairn, an’ rin to the boddom.”