"
"How should you know anything about my heart, pray?" she asked,
with more amusement than offence.
"Jist by my ain," answered Malcolm.
Lady Florimel began to fear she must have allowed the fisher lad
more liberty than was proper, seeing he dared avow that he knew
the heart of a lady of her position by his own. But indeed Malcolm
was wrong, for in the scale of hearts, Lady Florimel's was far
below his. She stepped quite within the door, and was on the point
of shutting it, but something about the youth restrained her, exciting
at least her curiosity; his eyes glowed with a deep, quiet light,
and his face, even grand at the moment, had a greater influence
upon her than she knew. Instead therefore of interposing the door
between them, she only kept it poised, ready to fall to the moment
the sanity of the youth should become a hair's breadth more doubtful
than she already considered it.
"It's a' pairt o' ae thing, my leddy," Malcolm resumed. "The herrin
's like the fowk 'at cairries the mate an' the pooder an' sic like
for them 'at does the fechtin'. The hert o' the leevin' man's the
place whaur the battle's foucht, an' it's aye gaein' on an' on there
atween God an' Sawtan; an' the fish they haud fowk up till 't."
"Do you mean that the herrings help you to fight for God?" said
Lady Florimel with a superior smile.
"Aither for God or for the deevil, my leddy--that depen's upo'
the fowk themsel's. I say it hauds them up to fecht, an' the thing
maun be fouchten oot.
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