“My queen, my beautiful,” she whispered in her mother’s ear.  “I’m going to be Siegfried and save you from the dragon—­I’m going to take you away, darling—­pick you right up in my arms and run away with you—­”

She stopped, choked by her intensity, while her mother stroked her ruffled hair and smiled faintly.

“You can’t take people up in your arms and snatch them out of life, childie,” she said.  And then they kissed good night.

As she went to her little cold room Marcella heard the padding of feet outside in the croft, and grunts and squeals.  The hungry beasts, as a last resort, had been turned loose to pick up some food in the frost-stiffened grass; incredulous of the neglect they haunted the farm-house, the pigs lively and protestant, the cows solemn and pathetic and patient.  Marcella had taken her piece of oatcake and cheese at supper-time out to the door.  But it was no use to the beasts.  The little black pig gobbled it in a mouthful and squealed for more.  In her agony of pity something dawned on her.

“I suppose,” she said to herself, as she stood shivering, looking over rimed Lashnagar, “that Jesus was as sorry for His disciples as I am for these poor beasts.  He knew they’d be so hungry when He had gone away from them.  So He gave them His body and blood—­it was all He had to give.”

She got into bed, but the thought stayed with her.  It was to come back again many years afterwards, illuminating.

That night she heard steps about the house—­her father’s heavy steps—­but she felt tired, and fell asleep.  It was midnight when her father opened her door and came into the room.

“Marcella, are you asleep?” he said in his beautiful voice that always made her wish he would let her love him.

“No,” she said, starting to wakefulness.

“You’ve no mother now, Marcella,” he said, and turned away.  She heard him stalk heavily up the passage.

When she ran along after him Aunt Janet was holding a hand-mirror over her mother’s mouth and looking at it carefully.  She had red-rimmed eyes.  Marcella stood still, staring, and thought how white her mother’s ear was against the faded blue of her old flannel jacket over which her long black hair lay in two long plaits.  Then her father came in and sent her down to the village for the old woman who attended to the births and deaths of people.  She went over the croft, among the hungry cows that stared at her, one after one as she passed.  Later, when the woman had gone, and the two servant women were crying in the kitchen while they drank scalding tea and spilt it down their aprons from trembling hands, Andrew Lashcairn and Aunt Janet sat in the book-room with all Rose Lashcairn’s papers spread out before them.  Marcella sat for a while watching.