"Yes, yes; yes, yes," he said, after a moment’s deliberation. "I was thinking too much of the Little Red Dwarf; I was thinking too much of that side of it. I will go back to Lochgarra, and at once. And this is Thursday; the steamer will be coming down from Glasgow to-day; that will be the easiest way for us to go back."
There was a flash of joy and triumph—and of gratitude—in Käthchen’s sufficiently pretty eyes.
The big steamer was slowly and cautiously making in for Lochgarra Bay—slowly and cautiously, for though the harbour is an excellent one after you are in it, the entrance is somewhat difficult of navigation; and Donald Ross and Kate Glendinning were seated in the after part of the boat, passing the time in talking. And of course it was mostly of Miss Stanley they spoke.
"For one thing, you ought to remember," said Käthchen, "the amount of prejudice against you she has had to overcome. If you only knew the character she received of you the very first evening we arrived here! I wonder if you would recognise the picture—a terrible outlaw living in a lonely island, a drunken, thieving, poaching ne’er-do-well, a malignant conspirator and mischief-maker: Mr. Purdie laid on the colours pretty thickly. By the way, I wish you would tell me the cause of that bitter animosity Mr. Purdie shows against you and all your family——"
"It is simple enough—but it is not worth speaking about," he said, with a certain indifference. It was not of Purdie, nor of Purdie’s doings, that he was thinking at the moment.
"But I want to know—I am curious to know," Käthchen insisted.
"It is simple enough, then," he repeated. "When the old factor died—old MacInnes—I hardly remember him, but I fancy he was a decent sort of man—when he died, my father appointed this Purdie, on the recommendation of a friend, and without knowing much about him. Well, Purdie never did get on at all with the people about here. He was an ill-tempered, ill-conditioned brute, to begin with; spiteful, revengeful, and merciless; and of course the people hated him, and of course he came to know it, and had it out with them whenever he got the chance. You see, my father was almost constantly abroad, and Purdie had complete control. My mother tried to interfere a little; and he resented her interference; I think it made him all the more savage. And at last the discontent of the people broke out in open revolt. Purdie happened to have come over to Lochgarra; and when they heard of it, the whole lot of them—from Minard, and Cruagan, and everywhere—came together in front of the inn, and there was no end of howling and hooting. Purdie escaped through the back-garden, and took refuge with the Minister; but the crowd followed him to the Minister’s cottage, and burnt his effigy in front of the door—oh, I don’t know what they didn’t do. Only, it got into the papers; it was a public scandal; and my father, coming to hear of it, at once deposed the twopenny-halfpenny tyrant. That is all the story. But no doubt his being ignominiously dismissed was a sore thing for a man of his nature—the public humiliation, and all the rest of it——"