Then gradually another element of pleasure crept into his life—­Mrs. Hope’s child.  The boy amused him; he never resented his pretty, authoritative ways; a queer kind of companionship sprang up between them.  It was one of perfect equality every way; an old man easily becomes a little child.  And those who only knew Crawford among coals and pig iron would have been amazed to see him keeping up a mock dispute with this baby.

CHAPTER X.

One day, getting towards the end of December, the laird awoke in a singular mood.  He had no mind to go to the works, and the weather promised to give him a good excuse.  Over the dreary hills there was a mournful floating veil of mist.  Clouds were flying rapidly in great masses, and showers streaming through the air in disordered ranks, driven furiously before a mad wind—­a wind that before noon shook the doors and windows, and drove the bravest birds into hiding.

The laird wandered restlessly up and down.

“There is the dominie,” cried Mrs. Hope, about one o’clock.  “What brings him here through such a storm?”

Crawford walked to the door to meet him.  He came striding over the soaking moor with his plaid folded tightly around him and his head bent before the blast.  He was greatly excited.

“Crawford, come wi’ me.  The Athol passenger packet is driving before this wind, and there is a fishing smack in her wake.”

“Gie us some brandy wi’ us, Mrs. Hope, and you’ll hae fires and blankets and a’ things needfu’ in case O’ accident, ma’am.”  He was putting on his bonnet and plaid as he spoke, and in five minutes the men were hastening to the seaside.

It was a deadly coast to be on in a storm with a gale blowing to land.  A long reef of sharp rocks lay all along it, and now the line of foaming breakers was to any ship a terrible omen of death and destruction.  The packet was almost helpless, and the laird and Tallisker found a crowd of men waiting the catastrophe that was every moment imminent.

“She ought to hae gien hersel’ plenty o’ sea room,” said the laird.  He was half angry to see all the interest centred on the packet.  The little fishing cobble was making, in his opinion, a far more sensible struggle for existence.  She was managing her small resources with desperate skill.

“Tallisker,” said the laird, “you stay here with these men.  Rory and I are going half a mile up the coast.  If the cobble drives on shore, the current will take a boat as light as she is over the Bogie Rock and into the surf yonder.  There are doubtless three or four honest men in her, quite as weel worth the saving as those stranger merchant bodies that will be in the packet.”

So Crawford and Rory hastened to the point they had decided on, and just as they reached it the boat became unmanageable.  The wind took her in its teeth, shook her a moment or two like a thing of straw and rags, and then flung her, keel upwards, on the Bogie Rock.  Two of the men were evidently good swimmers; the others were a boy and an old man.  Crawford plunged boldly in after the latter.  The waves buffeted him, and flung him down, and lifted him up, but he was a fine surf swimmer, and he knew every rock on that dangerous coast.  After a hard struggle, all were brought safe to land.