de home late from Kirkcudbright.
Hearing which we were greatly rejoiced, and I hasted to draw on my
knee-breeks, crying "Bide a wee, faither, an' briskly I'll be wi' ye to
let ye in!"

For I was a little lame, halting on one foot ever since the affair of
Tinkler Marshall, though I think not to any noticeable extent.

My mother at the door of her chamber cried, "Haste ye, William, or I
must run mysel'!"

For my father had made her promise that she would not go out of her
chamber to meet him at the return, being easily touched in her breast
with the night air.

So I hasted and ran down as I was, with my points all untied, and set
wide open the door.

"Faither!" I cried as I undid the bolt and pushed the leaves of the door
abroad, "Faither, ye are welcome hame!" And I could hear my mother
listening above, for his foot over the threshold. Yet he came not
within, which was a wonder to me. So I went out upon the step of the
nether door, but my father was not there. Only the same strange chill
wind went round the house, soughing and moaning blindly as before, and a
smoor of white fog blew like muirburn past the door.

Then my hair rose upon my head and the skin of my brow pricked, because
I knew that strange portents were abroad that night.

"What for does your faither no come ben the hoose to me?" cried my
mother impatiently from the stairhead. I could hear her clasping and
unclasping her hands, for my ears are quick at taking sounds.

"I think he must be gone to the stable with Gay Garland, to stall him
beside Philiphaugh," I answered, for so my father's old white horse was
named, because in his young days my father had been at that place on the
day when Montrose and his Highlandmen got their settling. This is what I
said to my mother, but indeed my thought was far other.

I lifted a loaded pistol that lay ever in the aumrie by the door-cheek
and went off in the direction of the stable. The door was shut, but I
undid the pin and went within. _My father was not there._ The horses
were moving restlessly and lifting their feet uneasily as they do on ice
or other kittle footing. Then of a truth I knew there was something more
than canny abroad about Earlstoun that night, and that we should hear
ill news or the morning. And when a bundle of reins slipped from the
shelf and fell on my shoulder like a man's hand clapping on me unaware,
I cried out like a frighted fowl and dropped almost to the ground. Yet
though I am del