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But one day in the long main street she was fairly caught by a mob of boys hunting and hooting after a negro man. They paid no heed to Kirstie, who shrank into a doorway as he passed down the causeway–a seaman, belike, trudging to Irvine or Saltcoats. He seemed by his gait to be more than half drunk, and by the way he shook his stick back at the boys and cursed them; but they would not be shaken off, and in the end he took refuge in the “Leaping Fish,” where his tormentors gathered about the doorway and continued their booing until the landlord came forth and dispersed them.

By this time Kirstie had bolted from the doorway and run home. She said nothing of her adventure to Mrs. Johnstone; but in the dusk of the evening a riot began in the street a little way below the cottage. The black seaman had been drinking all day, and on leaving the “Leaping Fish,” had fallen into a savage quarrel with a drover. Two or three decent fellows stopped the fight and pulled him off; but they had done better by following up their kindness and seeing him out of the village, for he was now planted with his back to a railing, brandishing his stick and furiously challenging the whole mob. So far as concerned him the mischief ended by his overbalancing to aim a vicious blow at an urchin, and crashing down upon the kerb, where he lay and groaned, while the blood flowed from an ugly cut across the eyebrow.

For a while the crowd stood about him in some dismay. A few were for carrying him back to the public-house; but at some evil prompting a voice cried out, “Take him to the widow Johnstone’s! A witch should know how to deal with her sib, the black man.” I believe so godless a jest would never have been played, had not the cottage stood handy and (as one may say) closer than their better thoughts. But certain it is that they hoisted the poor creature and bore him into Mrs. Johnstone’s garden, and began to fling handfuls of gravel at the upper windows, where a light was burning.

At the noise of it against the pane Mrs. Johnstone, who was bending over the bedroom fire and heating milk for her supper, let the pan fall from her hand. For the moment Kirstie thought she would swoon. But helping her to a seat in the armchair, the brave lass bade her be comforted–it could be naught but some roystering drunkard–and herself went downstairs and unbarred the door. At the sight of her–so frail a girl–quietly confronting them with a demand to know their business, the crowd fell back a step or two, and in that space of time by God’s providence arrived Peter Lawler, the constable, a very religious man, who gave the ringleaders some advice and warning they were not likely to forget. Being by this made heartily ashamed of themselves, they obeyed his order to pick up the man from the doorstep, where he lay at Kirstie’s feet, and carry him back to the “Leaping Fish;” and so slunk out of the garden.

When all were gone Kirstie closed and bolted the door and returned upstairs to her mistress, whom she found sitting in her chair and listening intently.

“Who was it?” she demanded.

“Oh, nothing to trouble us, ma’am; but just a poor wandering blackamoor I met in the street to-day. The people, it seems, were bringing him here by mistake.”

“A blackamoor!” cried Mrs. Johnstone, gasping. “A blackamoor!”

Now Kirstie was for running downstairs again to fetch some milk in place of what was spilt, but at the sound of the woman’s voice she faced about.

“Pick together the silver, Kirstie, and fetch me my bonnet!” At first Mrs. Johnstone began to totter about the room without aim, but presently fell to choosing this and that of her small possessions and tossing them into the seat of the armchair in a nervous hurry which seemed to gather with her strength. “Quick, lass! Did he see you? . . . ah, but that would not tell him. What like was he?” She pulled herself together and her voice quavered across the room. “Lass, lass, you will not forsake me? Do not speir now, but do all that I say. You promised–you did promise!” All this while she was working in a fever of haste, pulling even the quilt from the bed and anon tossing it aside as too burdensome. She was past all control. “Do not speir of me,” she kept repeating.