, Hamish; but, man, it was a
king to this weary waiting, a king to this."

CHAPTER XXVI.

A WEDDING ON THE DOORSTEP.

It was at the drakes' dridd that Dan roused me, and we left McAllan's
Locker behind us with its gruesome keepers, and came down the hillside
to the burn. I mind that there was a raven above us in the morning
air, and his vindictive croak-croak was the only living sound that came
to us as we marched.

At the burn I saw the track of the garron where he had crossed in the
night, and at the burnside Dan stopped.

"Many a time have I wearied for the sight o' a burn, Hamish, cold and
sweet and clean, when we would be drinking water that was stinking,"
and he made preparations to splash his face; and it was droll to see
the bronze of his face stop at the throat, and the skin below like a
leek for whiteness.

There were many things to be telling the wanderer--that he had got some
notion of from McNeilage of the _Seagull_, but for the most part it was
hard to talk to a man walking fast.

We came up over the last of the three lonely hills, with bare moorlands
and peat hags fornent us, and away below the sea, and I held on for the
house on the moor that once was McCurdy's hut. The first beast we saw
was a raddy, a droll sheep with four daft-like horns, and there came a
great crying of curlews; and then, when we came near to the house
without yet seeing it, there was a look of wonder in Dan's face.

"There was nae grass here when I left hame," says he; "this will be
your work, Hamish. Ye were aye a great hand for grass."

As he spoke, it seemed to me that the voice was the same voice that I
kent when I was a boy, but I was at the walking now and hurried him on.

"Grass," said I; "look at yon," and I pointed to the parks and the
steading, with the smoke rising straight from the lums into the frosty
morning air.

"That was the young lad's work," said I.

"He will be a farmer at all events . . ." and there was on Dan's face
as he spoke a look of pride and pity all mixed.

"Belle will not be knowing you are here."

"Ay, but she will that, Hamish--ye don't ken Belle; look, man, look,
she's at the doorstep now." And if ever a man had it in his bones to
run it was Dan, and at the door they met--the very door where the woman
had kissed her man and smote him on the cheek, when I lay in the
heather, and the Laird of Scaurdale rode with the wean in the crook of
his arm--the same Helen that had broug