John Burnet of Barns: A Romance. Buchan John

you for years, thinking of you at all times, and now you come to-day, speaking as if you had scarce seen me before. Surely I will bear you company in life, as I have been your comrade at its beginning."

      What followed I need scarce tell, since it is but part of the old comedy of life, which our grandfathers and grandmothers played before us, and mayhap our grand-children will be playing even now when our back is turned. Under the spring sky among the lilies we plighted our troth for the years, and I entered from careless youth into the dim and resolute region of manhood.

      With a great joy in my heart I rode home. I took the high way over the shoulder of Scrape, for I knew that few folk ever went that road, and I wished to be alone. The birds were singing, the fresh clean air was blowing on my face, and the primroses and wind-flowers made a gay carpet under my horse's feet. All the earth seemed to partake in my gladness. It was a good world, I thought, full of true hearts, fair faces, and much good; and though I have seen much wickedness and sorrow in my day, I am still of the same way of thinking. It is a brave world; a royal world for brave-hearted men.

      When I came to Barns I found that my cousin had gone out an hour since and left my father greatly wondering at my absence. He sat in the chair by the fireplace, looking more withered and old than I had ever seen him. My heart smote me for not staying at his side, and so I sat down by him and told him many things of my doings in Glasgow, and how I desired above all things to see the world, having had my fill of books and colleges. Then I told him what he had long guessed, of my love for Marjory Veitch and the promise which she had given me. He heard me in silence, but when he spoke, his words were cheerful, for he had long liked the lass. He made no refusal, too, to the rest of my plans. "You shall go and see the world, John," he said, "and take my blessing with you. It ill becomes a young mettlesome lad in these stirring times to lounge at home, when he might be wearing a steel breastplate in the King's Guards, or trying the manners of twenty nations. Though I could wish you to bide at home, for I am an old broken man with few pleasures, and I love the sight of your face."

      "Nay, I will never leave you," I said, "an you wish it. I am young yet and a boy's road is a long road. Time enough for all."

      After this I went out to see if the Weasel had come to any mishap in the last night's ride. I found him as stout as ever, so I saddled him and rode away by the green haughlands up the valley of the Manor, for I longed for motion and air to relieve my spirit: and coming home in the afternoon, I found my cousin returned and sitting with my father in the dining-hall.

      He glanced sharply at me when I entered, and I saw by his looks that he was in no good temper. His heavy face was flushed and his shaggy eyebrows were lowered more than their wont.

      "Where have you been, Gilbert?" I asked. "I found you gone when I came back in the morning."

      "I took my horse down to Peebles to the farrier. Its knees were sorely hurt last night on your infernal hills."

      Now I knew that this was a lie, for I had looked at his horse before I went out in the morning, and its wounds were so slight that it would have been mere folly to take him to a farrier; and Gilbert, I well knew, was not the man to be in error where horses were concerned. So I judged that he had ridden in the contrary direction, and gone to Dawyck, and, as I inferred from his sour looks, met with no good reception there. I could afford to be generous; I felt a sort of half-pity for his discomfiture, and forbore to ask him any further questions.

      We sat down to supper, he and I and my father, in a sober frame of mind. I was full of my own thoughts, which were of the pleasantest; my cousin was plainly angry with something or other; and my father, in his weakness dimly perceiving that all was not right, set himself to mend matters by engaging him in talk.

      "You're a good shot with the musket, they tell me, Gibbie," he said, using the old name which he had called him by when he first came to Barns as a boy, "and I was thinking that it would be a rare ploy for you and John to go down the water to Traquair, where Captain Keith's horse are lying. He is an old friend of mine, and would be blithe to see any of my kin. They tell me he has great trials of skill in all exercises, and that he has gathered half the gentry in the place about him."

      "John," said my cousin in a scornful voice, "John is too busily employed at Dawyck to care much for anything else. A flighty maid is a sore burden on any man."

      "I would have you learn, Master Gilbert," I said angrily, "to speak in a better way of myself and my friends. You may be a very great gentleman elsewhere, but you seem to leave your gentility behind when you come here."

      Now my cousin and I were of such opposite natures that I took most things seriously, while he found matter for a jest in all – yet not in full good-nature, but with a touch of acrid satire.

      "Even a barn-door cock will defend his own roost. How one sees the truth of proverbs!"

      And then he added that which I will not set down, but which brought my father and myself to our feet with flashing eyes and quivering lips. I would have spoken, but my father motioned me to be silent.

      "Gilbert," he said, his voice shaking with age and anger, "you will leave this house the morn. I will have no scoundrelly fellow of your kidney here. You are no true nephew of mine, and God pity the father that begat you."

      My cousin smiled disdainfully and rose from his chair. "Surely I will go and at once when my hospitable uncle bids me. The entertainment in this damned hole is not so good as to keep me long. As for you, Cousin John," and he eyed me malignantly, "you and I will meet some day, where there are no dotards and wenches to come between us. Then I promise you some sport. Till then, farewell. I will down to Peebles to-night and trouble you no more." With a wave of his hand he was gone, and five minutes later we heard his horse's hooves clatter over the stones of the yard.

      When he was gone his conduct came back to my father with a rush, and he fell to upbraiding himself for his breach of hospitality and family honour. He would have me call Gilbert back, and when I showed him how futile it was, fell into low spirits and repented in great bitterness.

      Now the worst of this day's business remains to be told. For when I looked at my father some time after I found him sunk in his chair with his face as pale as death. With the help of Jean Morran and Tam Todd I got him to bed, from which he never rose, but passed peacefully away in the fear of God two days later. The heat into which he had been thrown was the direct cause, and though I could not very well lay the thing to my cousin's charge when the man was already so far down the vale of years, yet in my heart I set it against him. Indeed from this day I date my antagonism to the man, which before had been a mere boyish rivalry.

      I stayed with my father to the end. Just before he died he bade me come near and gave me his blessing, bidding me be a better gentleman than he had been. We did not bury him in the Kirk of Lyne, for he had always said he never could abide to lie within walls. but on a green flat above Tweed, where the echo of the river and the crying of moorbirds are never absent from his grave.

      CHAPTER VII

      THE PEGASUS INN AT PEEBLES AND HOW A STRANGER RETURNED FROM THE WARS

      Of my doings for some months after my father's death I must tell hastily. I fell heir to the lands of Barns, and being of age entered at once into my possession. The place remained the same as in my father's time, the same servants and the same ways about the house. I lived simply as I had always lived, spending my days in seeing to the land, in field sports, and some little study, for I had not altogether forsaken the Muses. But all the time I felt as one who is kept at home against his will, being conscious of a restlessness and an inclination to travel which was new to me, but which I doubt not is common to all young men at this time of life. I talked much with Tam Todd of the lands which he had visited, and heard of the Dutch towns with their strange shipping, their canals and orderly houses, and of the rough Norlanders, clad in the skins of wild animals, who came down to the Swedish markets to trade; of the soldiery of Germany and France and the Scots who had gone over there to push their fortunes with their swords; and what I loved best, of the salt sea with its boundless waste of waters and wild tales of shipwreck. Formerly I had been wont often to bid Tam sharply to hold his peace when he entered on one of his interminable narrations; but now I sat and drank in every word like a thirsty man. It was the winter-time, when the roads were often snowed up and all the folk of the place