“Yes, but something can be worse,” said the girl firmly, never shifting the fixed determination of her gaze from the spot whence the constables had disappeared.  “Willy, there is worse to come of this business, and Ralph should be told of it if we can tell him.”

“You don’t know my brother,” repeated Willy in a high tone of extreme vexation.  “He would be banished, I say.”

“And if so—­” said Rotha.

“If so!” cried Willy, catching at her unfinished words,—­“if so we should purchase our privilege of not being kicked out of this place at the price of my brother’s liberty.  Can you be so mean of soul, Rotha?”

“Your resolve is a noble one, but you do me much wrong,” said Rotha with more spirit than before.

“Nay, then,” said Willy, assuming a tone of some anger, not unmixed with a trace of reproach, “I see how it is.  I know now what you’d have me to do.  You’d keep me from exasperating these bloodhounds to further destruction in the hope of saving these pitiful properties to us, and perchance to our children.  But with what relish could I enjoy them if bought at such a price?  Do you think of that?  And do you think of the curse that would hang on them—­every stone and every coin—­for us and for our children, and our children’s children?  Heaven forgive me, but I was beginning to doubt if one who could feel so concerning these things were worthy to bear the name that goes along with them.”

“Nay, sir, but if it’s a rue-bargain it is easily mended,” said the girl, her eyes aflame and her figure quivering and erect.

Willy scarcely waited for her response.  Turning hurriedly about, he hastened out of the house.

“It is a noble resolve,” Rotha said to herself when left alone; “and it makes up for a worse offence.  Yes, such self-sacrifice merits a deeper forgiveness than it is mine to offer.  He deserves my pardon.  And he shall have it, such as it is.  But what he said was cruel indeed—­indeed it was.”

The girl walked to the neuk window and put her hand on the old wheel.  The tears were creeping up into the eyes that looked vacantly towards the south.

“Very, very cruel; but then he was angry.  The men had angered him.  He was sore put about.  Poor Willy, he suffers much.  Yet it was cruel; it was cruel, indeed it was.”

Rotha walked across the kitchen and again took hold of the rannel-tree.  It was as though her tempest-tossed soul were traversing afresh every incident of the scenes that had just before been enacted on that spot where now she stood alone.

Alone! the burden of a new grief was with her.  To be suspected of selfish motives when nothing but sacrifice had been in her heart, that was hard to bear.  To be suspected of such motives by that man, of all others, who should have looked into her heart and seen what lay there, that was yet harder.  “Willy’s sore put about, poor lad,” she told herself again; but close behind this soothing reflection crept the biting memory, “It was cruel, what he said; indeed it was.”