ak with travel.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE WATER OF THE WELL OF BETHLEHEM THAT IS BESIDE THE GATE.

With that a kind of madness came over me and took possession of my mind
and body. I cannot account for or excuse it, save that the sun had
stricken me unawares and moidered my head.

I remember saying over and over to myself these words, which I had often
heard my father read as he took the Book, "O that one would give me to
drink of the water of the Well of Bethlehem that is beside the Gate." So
I rose out of the lair where I was, took off my shoes and stockings, and
went down to the river-side. Ken Water is very low at that season, and
looking over I could see the fish lying in the black pools with their
noses up stream, waiting for a spate to run into the shallows of the
burns. I declare that had my mind not been set on the well-house, I
should have stripped there and then for a plunge after them. But in a
trice I had crossed the river, wading to my middle in the clear warm
pool. I think it was surely the only time that man ever waded Ken to get
a drink of spring water.

When I reached the farther side--the nearer to my mother--I lay for a
long time on the bank overcome with the water and the sun. Now I was
plainly to be seen from the house, and had the sentinel so much as
looked my way, I could not have escaped his notice. But no one came near
me or stirred me in any way. Then at last, after a long time, I roused
myself, and betook me through the thick woods which lie on the side
towards the Clachan of St. John. The wood here is composed of great
oaks--the finest, as all allow, in Galloway--of which that wherein my
brother Sandy was afterwards often concealed, is but one. Underneath was
a thick growth of hazel and birch. The whole makes cover of the densest,
through which no trooper could ride, and no seeing eye pierce.

So I was here upon well-kenned ground. Every tree-stem I knew by touch
of hand, and in my youth I had creeped into every hidie hole that would
hold a squirrel. Times without number had Sandy and I played at
hide-and-seek in the woods. And there, at the back of one of the great
trees, was where we had fought because he had called me "puny crowl."
Whereat I bit him in the thumb till it bled grievously, to teach him not
to call names, and also (more generally) for the health of his soul.

Now lying here in the Earlstoun wood, all this came back to me, and it
seemed that Sandy and I were again pl