So I was settled in my parish, which was a good one as times went. The manse had recently been put in order. It was a pleasant stone house which sat in the bieldy hollow beneath the Kirk Knowe of Balmaghie. Snug and sheltered it lay, an encampment of great beeches sheltering it from the blasts, and the green-bosomed hills looking down upon it with kindly tolerant silence.

The broad Dee Water floated silently by, murmuring a little after the rains; mostly silent however—the water lapping against the reeds and fretting the low cavernous banks when the wind blew hard, but on the whole slipping past with a certain large peace and attentive stateliness.

My brother Hob abode with me in the manse of Balmaghie to be my man. It was great good fortune thus to keep him; and in{145} the coming troublous days I ken not what I should have done without his good counsel and strongly willing right hand. My father and mother came over to see me on the old pony from Ardarroch, my mother riding on a pillion behind my father, and both of them ready on the sign of the least brae to get off and walk most of the way, with the bridle over my father’s arm, while my mother discoursed of the terrible thing it was to have two of your sons so far from home, strangers, as it were, in a strange land.

It had not seemed so terrible to her when we went to Edinburgh, both because she had never been to the city herself, and never intended to go. On these occasions Hob and I had passed out of sight along the green road to Balmaclellan on the way to Minnyhive, and there was an end of us till the spring, save for the little presents which came by the carrier, and the letters I had to write every fortnight.

But this parish of Balmaghie! It was a far cry and a coarse road, said my mother, and she was sure that we both took our lives in our hands each time that we went across its uncanny pastures.

Nevertheless, once there, she did not halt{146} nor slacken till she had taken in hand the furniture and plenishing of the manse, and brought some kind of order out of the piled and tortured confusion, which had been the best that Hob and I could attain.

“Keep us, laddies!” she cried, after the first hopeless look at our handiwork. “I canna think on either o’ ye takin’ a wife. Yet I’m feared that a wife ye maun get atween ye. For I canna thole to let ye gang on this wild gate, wi’ the minister’s meal o’ meat to ready, and only gomeril Hob to do it.”

“Then ye’ll let Anna come to bide with us for a while, if ye are so vexed for us,” I said, to try her.

“Na, indeed, I canna do that. Anna is needed at hame where she is. There’s your faither now—he’s grown that bairnly he thinks there can be nae guid grass in the meadow that Anna’s foot treads not on. The hens wouldna lay, the kye wouldna let doon their milk withoot Anna. Ardarroch stands on the braeface because ’tis anchored doon wi’ Anna. Saw ye ever sic a fyke made aboot a lass?”

“Quintin has!” said Hob with intention, for which I did not thank him.

“What!” cried my mother, instantly taking{147} fire, “hae some o’ the impudent queans o’ Balmaghie been settin’ their caps at him already?”

“There ye are, mither,” said Hob, “ye speak bravely aboot Quintin gettin’ married. But as soon as we speak aboot ony lass—plaff, ye gang up like a waft o’ tow thrown in the fire.”

“I wad like to see the besom that wad make up to my Quintin!” said my mother, her indignation beginning to simmer down.

“Then come over to the Drum——” he was beginning.

“Hob,” said I, sternly, “that is enough.”

And when I spoke to him thus Hob was amenable enough.

“Aweel, mither!” continued Hob in an injured tone, “ye speak aboot mairrying. Quintin there, ye say, is to get mairried. But how can he get mairried withoot a lass that is fond o’ him? It juist canna be done, at least no in the parish o’ Balmaghie.”

It was my intent to accompany my father and mother back to Ardarroch in name of an escort, but, in truth, chiefly that I might accept the invitation of the laird of Earlstoun and once more see Mary Gordon, the lass{148} whose image I had carried so long on my heart.

For, strange as it may appear, when she went forth from the kirk that day she left a look behind her which went straight to my heart. It was like a dart thrown at random which sticks and is lost, yet inly rankles and will not let itself be forgotten.

I tried to shut the desire of seeing her again out of my heart. But do what I could this was not to be. It would rise, coming between me and the very paper on which I wrote my sermon, before I began to learn to mandate. When the sun looked over the water in the morning and shone on the globed pearls of dew in the hollow palms of the broad dockleaves on the gracious clover blooms, and on the bending heads of the spiked grasses, I rejoiced to think that he shone also on Earlstoun and the sunny head of a fairer and more graceful flower.

God forgive a sinful man! At these times I ought to have been thinking of something else. But when a man carries such an earthly passion in his heart, all the panoply of heavenly love is impotent to restrain thoughts that fly swift as the light from hilltop to hilltop at the sun-risi............