Scotch Marriages, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

Balcairnie could have spoken out and enlightened the neighbourhood, but / he did not. Affectionately attached as he was both to Drumsheugh and / Peggy, he had not as yet any strong temptation to speak out and shame / the Devil, while delivering his victims. Granted that the position / was most awkward and indefensible, it had not become so untenable as / to shock and scare a man like Balcairnie -- not wholly unaccustomed to / such difficult conditions -- into breaking his word and exposing the / offenders, with whom he had been ‘art and part,' for the good of one or / both.

It was hardly possible that Drumsheugh's passion would remain at / its first white heat. It was too probable that it might pass into / weariness, even disgust, where the poor girl he had married was / concerned. True, there had been no such fundamental disparity between / the two as may be imagined. Still, Drumsheugh was a man with a man's / power of varying his life. He could not rid himself of his blue blood / and his lairdship. The likelihood was that the longer he lived their / claims on him would increase and intensify, till what he had slighted / in his youth might, in inverse proportion, become a heavy chain on / his mature years. He might come to clutch his hereditary advantages / and brandish them in a surly fashion in the face of poor Peggy, who / not only lacked such on her own account, but would to a considerable / extent qualify and damage her husband's privileges. The shallowness / of the laird's nature, in the middle of its single-heartedness and / transparency, would tend to this result.

In the meantime Peggy, arrested and isolated by her own deed, instead / of moving on and becoming transplanted, would stand still or retrograde / in her false suspended position. Half envied, half doubted, and blamed / by her former equals, wholly distrusted and shunned by those who were / still her social superiors, her heart would grow sick under the painful / ordeal, her gentle, modest nature wax bold and defiant. The very / appearance of evil -- which is to be avoided in its turn -- would work much / of the harm of the evil itself.

But long before this deplorable conclusion was reached, within three or / four months of the unceremonious marriage, while the laird was still / the fond bridegroom and Peggy the tender bride, an accident happened / which brought matters to an unexpected crisis.

One windy October afternoon the laird had been helping to take down / the first new stack to be thrashed or flailed out from the stack-yard / of the home-farm, when by some chance he missed his footing, fell / headlong from the stack-head among the horses' feet below, and received / a kick in the chest from one of the startled horses. He was taken up / insensible and carried to the mansion-house. The misadventure created a / lively sensation, and the news gathered gravity and tragic horror as it / spread abroad.

It was said that Drumsheugh was dead, that he had been vomiting blood, / that he had never spoken, that he had cried loudly for Peggy Hedderwick / to bid her a last farewell. In the conflicting testimony one serious / bit of evidence was certain. Dr. Forsyth had been summoned post-haste / from Craigie. Balcairnie had been seen riding like a madman from / his biggest potatoe field, in which the gatherers had been toiling / anxiously all day, for frost was in the air, and if the potatoes were / not ‘pitted' in time there would be havock among the earth-apples.

It was almost night-fall before the calamitous tidings got Peggy's / length. They were thrown in at the half-open door of the cottage in / which she and her mother dwelt, by an ill-conditioned drunken brute of / a carter, who was driving by, and had caught a glimpse of the girl as / she moved about between the dim gloaming without and the fire-light / within. In the spirit of mischief and strange pleasure in inflicting / pain which belongs to very small, low, and morbidly hostile natures, / just as the man in other circumstances might have pelted her with a / snow-ball in which lay lodged a cruelly sharp stone; so he called / out to her in a bullying, inhumanly indifferent tone, ‘Hey! Peggy / Hedderwick, what are you doing there? Do you ken your fine laird's / felled? He's met his dead in the corn-yard of Drumsheugh an hour or / twa syne.'