y whereon
befell the weary leaguer of Bothwell when the enemy beset the Brig, and
the good Blue Banner gat fyled and reddened with other dye-stuff than
the brown moss-water. I mind it well, for I had grown to be man-muckle
since the day on the Tinklers' Loup. After a day of heat there fell a
night like pitch. A soughing wind went round the house and round the
house, whispering and groping, like a forlorn ghost trying to find his
way within.

If there was a shut eye in the great House of Earlstoun that night, it
was neither mine nor my mother's. We lay and thought of them that were
over the hill, striving for the Other King and the good cause. And our
thoughts were prayers, though there was none to "take the Book" in
Earlstoun that night, for I was never gifted that way. So we bedded
without sound of singing or voice of prayer, though I think Jean
Hamilton had done it for the asking.

I lay in my naked bed and listened all the night with unshut eye. I
could hear in my mother's room the boards creak as she rose every
quarter hour and looked out into the rayless dark. Maisie Lennox of the
Duchrae, old Anton's daughter, now a well grown lass, lay with her. And
Sandy's young wife, Jean Hamilton, with her sucking bairn, was in the
little angled chamber that opens off the turret stair near by.

It befell at the back of one, or mayhap betwixt that and two, that there
came a sound at the nether door that affrighted us all.

"Rise, William! Haste ye," cried my mother with great eagerness in her
voice, coming to my door in the dark. "Your father is at the nether
door, new lichted doon from off Gay Garland. Rise an' let him in!"

And as I sat up on my elbow and hearkened, I heard as clearly as now I
hear the clock strike, the knocking of my father's riding-boots on the
step of the outer door. For it was ever his wont, when he came that way,
to knap his toes on the edge of the step, that the room floorings might
not be defiled with the black peat soil which is commonest about the
Earlstoun. I have heard my father tell it a thousand times in his
pleasantry, how it was when my mother was a bride but newly come home
and notionate, that she learned him these tricks. For otherwise his ways
were not dainty, but rather careless--and it might be, even rough.

So, as I listened, I heard very clear outside the house the knocking of
my father's feet, and the little hoast he always gave before he tirled
at the pin to be let in, when he ro