John Burnet of Barns: A Romance. Buchan John

green meadowlands about the house of Barns. Here I dismounted and waited for my cousin, for I did not care to have the serving-men laugh at him riding in after me.

      I waited a good half-hour before he appeared. A sorry sight he presented. His breeches and jerkin had more than one rent in them; his hat was gone; and his face was flushed almost crimson with effort. His horse had bleeding knees, and its shoulders shook pitifully.

      "Pardon me, Gilbert," I said in a fit of repentance; "it was a foolish thing in me to lead you such a senseless road. I might have known that your horse was too heavy for the work. It was no fault of yours that you did not come home before me. I trust that we may forget our quarrels, and live in friendship, as kinsmen should."

      "Friendship be damned," he cried in a mighty rage.

      CHAPTER VI

      HOW MASTER GILBERT BURNET PLAYED A GAME AND WAS CHECKMATED

      That night I was too wearied and sore in body to sleep. My mind also was troubled, for I had made an enemy of my cousin, who, as I knew, was not of a nature to forgive readily. His words about Marjory had put me into a ferment of anxiety. Here was my love, bound to me by no promise, at the mercy of all the gallants of the countryside. Who was I, to call myself her lover, when, as yet, no word of love had passed between us? Yet, in my inmost heart, I knew that I might get the promise any day I chose. Then thoughts of my cousin came to trouble me. I feared him no more than a fly in matters betwixt man and man; but might he not take it into his head to make love to the mistress of Dawyck? and all maids dearly love a dashing cavalier. At length, after much stormy indecision, I made up my mind. I would ride to Dawyck next morn and get my lady's word, and so forestall Gilbert, or any other.

      I woke about six o'clock; and, looking out from the narrow window, for Barns had been built three hundred years before, I saw that the sky was cloudless and blue, and the morning as clear as could be seen in spring. I hastily dressed, and, getting some slight breakfast from Jean Morran, saddled Maisie, who was now as active as ever, and rode out among the trees. I feared to come to Dawyck too early, so I forded Tweed below the island, and took the road up the further bank by Lyne and Stobo. All the world was bright; an early lark sang high in the heaven; merles and thrushes were making fine music among the low trees by the river. The haze was lifting off the great Manor Water hills; the Red Syke, the scene of the last night's escapade, looked very distant in the morning light; and far beyond all Dollar Law and the high hills about Manorhead were flushed with sunlight on their broad foreheads. A great gladness rose in me when I looked at the hills, for they were the hills of my own country; I knew every glen and corrie, every water and little burn. Before me the Lyne Water hills were green as grass with no patch of heather, and to the left, the mighty form of Scrape, half-clothed in forest, lay quiet and sunlit. I know of no fairer sight on earth; and this I say, after having travelled in other countries, and seen something of their wonders; for, to my mind, there is a grace, a wild loveliness in Tweedside, like a flower-garden on the edge of a moorland, which is wholly its own.

      I crossed Lyne Water by the new bridge, just finished in the year before, and entered the wood of Dawyck. For this great forest stretches on both sides of Tweed, though it is greater on the side on which stands the house. In the place where I rode it was thinner, and the trees smaller, and, indeed, around the little village of Stobo, there lies an open part of some fields' width. At the little inn there, I had a morning's draught of ale, for I was somewhat cold with riding in the spring air. Then I forded Tweed at a place called the Cow Ford, and, riding through a wide avenue of lime-trees, came in sight of the grey towers of Dawyck.

      I kept well round to the back, for I did not care that the serving-folk should see me and spread tales over all the countryside. I knew that Marjory's window looked sharp down on a patch of green lawn, bordered by lime-trees, so I rode into the shadow and dismounted. I whistled thrice in a way which I had, and which Marjory had learned to know long before, when we were children, and I used to come and beguile her out for long trampings among the hills. To-day it had no effect, for the singing of birds drowned my notes, so I had nothing left but to throw bits of bark against her window. This rude expedient met with more success than it deserved, for in a minute I saw her face behind the glass. She smiled gladly when she saw me, and disappeared, only to appear again in the little door beside the lilacs. She had no hat, so her bright hair hung loose over her neck and was blown about by the morning winds. Her cheeks were pink and white, like apple-blossom, and her lithe form was clad in a dress of blue velvet, plainly adorned as for a country maiden. A spray of lilac was in her breast, and she carried a bunch of sweet-smelling stuff in her hands.

      She came gladly towards me, her eyes dancing with pleasure. "How soon you have returned! And how brave you look," said she, with many more pretty and undeserved compliments.

      "Ay, Marjory," I answered, "I have come back to Tweeddale, for I have had enough of Glasgow College and books, and I was wearying for the hills and Tweed and a sight of your face. There are no maidens who come near to you with all their finery. You are as fair as the spring lilies in the garden at Barns."

      "Oh, John," she laughed, "where did you learn to pay fine compliments? You will soon be as expert at the trade as any of them. I met a man yesterday in the woods who spoke like you, though with a more practised air; but I bade him keep his fine words for his fine ladies, for they suited ill with the hills and a plain country maid."

      At this, I must suppose that my brows grew dark, for she went on laughingly.

      "Nay, you are not jealous? It ill becomes a scholar and a philosopher as you are, Master John, to think so much of an idle word. Confess, sir, that you are jealous. Why, you are as bad as a lady in a play."

      I could not make out her mood, which was a new one to me – a mocking pleasant raillery, which I took for the rightful punishment of my past follies.

      "I am not jealous," I said, "for jealousy is a feeling which needs an object ere it can exist. No man may be jealous, unless he has something to be jealous about."

      "John, John," she cried, and shook her head prettily, "you are incorrigible. I had thought you had learned manners in the town, and behold, you are worse than when you went away. You come here, and your first word to me is that I am nothing."

      "God knows," I said, "I would fain be jealous, and yet – " I became awkward and nervous, for I felt that my mission was not prospering, and that I was becoming entangled in a maze of meaningless speech. The shortest and plainest way is still the best in love as in all things.

      But I was not to be let off, and she finished my sentence for me. "If only you could find a worthy object for your feeling, you mean," she said. "Very well, sir, since I am so little valued in your eyes, we will speak no more on the matter."

      "Marjory," I said, coming to the matter at once, "you and I have been old comrades. We have fished and walked together, we have climbed the hills and ridden in the meadows. I have done your bidding for many years."

      "True, John," she said with an accent of grudging reminiscence, "you have dragged me into many a pretty pickle. I have torn my dress on rough rocks and soaked my shoes in bogs, all in your company. Surely we have had a brave time together."

      "You met a man in the wood yesterday who would fain have made love to you. That man was my cousin Gilbert."

      "Oh," she replied in a tone of mock solemnity and amused wonder, for I had blurted out my last words like the last dying confession of some prisoner. "Verily you are honoured in your cousinship, John."

      "It is against him and such as him that I would protect you," I said.

      "Nay," she cried, with an affected remonstrance. "I will have no fighting between cousins on my account. I will even defend myself, as Alison did when the miller made love to her."

      "O Marjory," I burst out, "will you not give me this right to defend you? We have been old companions, but it was only yesterday that I knew how dearly I loved you. I have had more cares since yester-night than ever in my life. We have been comrades in childhood; let us be comrades on the rough paths of the world."

      I spoke earnestly, and her face, which had been filled with mockery, changed gently to something akin to tenderness.

      "How little you know of women!" she cried. "I have loved