She heard a step on the gravel coming up the slope, slow as it was now, not springy and swift as Robbie’s once was, and her anguish grew. She took hold of his arm again, of his hand. “Come with me, come with me,” she cried, scarcely able to get out the words, “before you are seen! Come with me before you are seen!” He was so carried away by her passion, of which all the same he was very suspicious, that he permitted her to raise him to his feet, following her impulse with a curious smile on his face, perhaps touched by the feeling of the small old soft hand that laid hold upon his--when Janet with her large solid figure filling the whole framework of the door suddenly appeared behind him. “Will I bring in the supper, mem?” Janet said in her tranquil tones, “for I hear Mr Robert coming up the road: and you’re ower lang out in the night and the falling dew.” The stranger threw himself back on the bench with a loud laugh that seemed to tear the silence and rend it. “So that’s how it is!” he said. “You’ve got Rob here--that’s how it is! I thought you knew more than you said. Dash you, old woman, I was beginning to believe in you! And all the time it was for your precious son!” Mrs Ogilvy took hold of the back of her chair again to support her. Here was this strange man now in possession of her poor little fortress. And Robbie would be here also in a moment. Two lawless broken men, and only she between them, a small old woman, to restrain them, to conceal them, to feed and care for them, to save their lives it might be. She felt that if the little support of the chair were taken from her she would drop. And yet she must stand for them, fight for them, face the world as their champion. She felt the stranger’s reproach, too, thrill through her with a pang of compunction over all. Yes, it had been not for his sake, not for pity or the love of God, but for her son’s sake, for the love of Robbie. She was the tigress with her cub, after all. Her heart spoke a word faintly in her own defence, that it was not to betray this strange man that she had intended, but to save him too: only also to get him out of her way, out of Robbie’s way; to save her son from the danger of his company, and from those still more apparent dangers which might arise from his mere presence here. She did not say a word, however, except faintly, with a little nod of her head to Janet, “Ay,--and put another place.” The words were so little distinct that, but for her mistress’s look towards the equally indistinct figure on the bench, Janet would not have understood. With a little start of surprise and alarm she disappeared into the house, troubled in her mind, she knew not why. “Andrew,” she said to her husband when she returned to the kitchen, “I would just take a turn about the doors, if I were you, in case ye should be wanted.” “Wha would want me? and what for should I turn about the doors at this hour of the nicht?” “Oh, I was just thinking----” said