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gave her no encouragement. Peats were sullen things and she had to search for wood and chop it before she could re-kindle even a small flame. The stove seemed determined to defy her. It was an awkward contraption, bent on reducing her to exasperation from the beginning. Well, she would leave it and use the cooker!
    The stove, however, was their only means of obtaining hot water and she was forced to persevere. The bitter cold seemed to take possession of the whole kitchen and her mother would be coming downstairs quite soon.
    “Bother you!” she exclaimed, blowing on the peats. “Why can’t you light?”
    “You’d do better if you opened the front!” Kirsty edged her aside. “Peats need plenty of draught.” She knelt down on the hearthrug. “T’ch! you’ve got enough sticks here to light a bonfire and them as scarce as gold! Away ye go and keep an eye on my butter. I’ll see to the stove.”
    Alison pushed the hair from her forehead with the back of a sooty hand. It was no use arguing with Kirsty, and the stove really had defeated her.
    The dairy was ice-cold. She rinsed her hands, trying not to notice how red they were, and began to collect the skimmed milk from the shallow pans into a single can. The newly-acquired electric churn hummed at its work, shutting out all other sound, and the cold grew intense. From long habit Kirsty worked with the door to the yard wide open, and today was no exception. The north-east wind, sweeping down across the moor, swirled a few dead leaves across the yard, striking at her with cruel intent. Her fingers grew numb and clumsy. The pan of milk she lifted seemed suddenly heavier than the others. It caught against the edge of the bench, spilling its contents across the grey stone floor.
    “Oh, no!”
    Her cry of protest rose above the hum of the churn as she watched the white tide of milk spreading to the door. Never had a gallon of anything gone so far! She stood staring down at it for a moment, but there was only one thing to do. Seizing Kirsty’s sackcloth apron, she found a bucket and cloth and started to mop it up. Down on her knees, with the milk sopping around her, she was suddenly, acutely aware of someone watching her.
    Resentfully she raised her eyes. The man was standing less than a dozen paces away. He was tall and well-dressed in rough tweeds, a man of substance with a faintly arrogant air about him which made her embarrassingly aware of her own dishevelled state. His grey eyes met and held hers for a split second, questioning her presence at Craigie Hill.
    “I’d like a word with Kirsty, if I may,” he said. “I generally call in to order butter and eggs on my way.” Alison rose hastily from her knees, drying her hands on the coarse apron and painfully conscious of the flood of colour mounting to her cheeks. Without being told, she knew who he was. Huntley Daviot had come home.
    “I’ll call Kirsty,” she said without attempting to ask him in. “I’ve had an accident with the milk.”
    She indicated the tide of greying liquid between them and fled into the kitchen before he could speak.
    “Kirsty, there’s—someone at the back door. He’s come to order butter and eggs.”
    Kirsty hoisted herself to her feet, flushed with her tussle with the stove.
    “It must be somebody gie important when ye couldn’t tak’ a simple message,” she observed tartly. “Didn’t they give you their name?”
    “No.” Alison had caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the fireplace. “I didn’t ask him who he was. He’s—a customer of some sort.”
    Kirsty was already at the door, peering across the dairy in her short-sighted way.
    “Och, my goodness, it’s Mr. Daviot!” she exclaimed. “And us in such a pickle! Will you step inside?”
    Alison bolted through the doorway into the hall. With a smudge of peat ash on her forehead and her hair like a mop, she was in no mood to meet that penetrating grey gaze a second time. She had been prepared to resent