"Oh yes, he's common--the demon! But somehow I could find him in Ian Rullock, though all covered up with gold. But doubtless," said Greenlaw, debonairly, "it would be the much of the fellow in me that would recognize much in another!" He put his gray into motion. "Good day, sir!" He was gone, disappearing down the long street, into the snow that was now falling like a veil.

Strickland turned homeward. The snow fell fast and thick in large white flakes. Glenfernie House rose before him, crowning the craggy hill, the modern building and the remnant of the old castle, not a great place, but an ancient, settled, and rooted, part of a land poor but not without grandeur, not without a rhythm attained between grandeur and homeliness. The road swept around and up between leafless trees and green cone-bearing ones. The snow was whitening the branches, the snow wrapped house and landscape in its veil. It broke, in part it obliterated, line and modeling; the whole seemed on the point of dissolving into a vast and silent unity. "Like a dying man,"

thought Strickland. He came upon the narrow level s.p.a.ce about the house, pa.s.sed the great cedar planted by a pilgrim laird the year of Flodden Field, and entered by a door in the southern face.

Davie met him. "Eh, sir, Mr. Alexander's come!"

"Come!"

"Aye, just! An hour past, riding Black Alan, with Tam d.i.c.kson behind on Whitefoot, and weary enough thae horses looked! Mr. Alexander wad ha' gane without bite or sup to the laird's room, but he's lying asleep. So now he's gane to his ain auld room for a bit of rest.

Haith, sir," said Davie, "but he's like the auld laird when he was twenty-eight!"

CHAPTER VIII

Strickland went, to the hall, where he found Alice.

"Come to the fire! I've been watching the snow, but it is so white and thick and still it fair frightens me! Davie told you that Alexander has come?"

"Yes. From Edinburgh to-day."

"Yes. He left London as soon as he had our letters."

She stood opposite him, a bright and bonny la.s.s, with a look of her mother, but with more beauty. The light from the burning logs deepened the gold in her hair, as the warmth made more vivid the rose of her cheek. She owned a warm and laughing heart, a natural goodness.

Strickland, who had watched and taught her since she was a slip of a child, had for her a great fondness.

Jamie entered the hall. "Father's awake now, but Aunt Grizel and Tibbie Ross will not tell him Alexander's come until they've given him something to eat." He came to the fire and stood, his blue eyes glinting light. "It's fine to see Alexander! The whole place feels different!"

"You've got a fine love for Alexander," said Strickland. So long had he lived with the Jardines of Glenfernie that they had grown like own folk to him, and he to them. He looked very kindly at the young man, handsome, big, flushed with feeling. He did not say, "Now you'll be going, Jamie, and he'll be staying," but the thought was in mind, and presently Alice gave it voice.

"He says that he has seen his earth, and that now he means to be a long time at home."

Davie appeared. "Mr. Alexander has gone to the laird's room. Mrs.

Grizel wad have ye all come, too, sae be ye move saftly and sit dumb."

The three went. The laird's room was large and somewhat grimly bare.

When his wife died he would have taken out every luxury. But a great fire burned on the hearth and gave a touch of redemption. A couch, too, had been brought in for the watcher at night, and a great flowered chair. In this now sat Mrs. Grizel Kerr, a pleasant, elderly, comely body, noted for her housewifery and her garden of herbs. Behind her, out of a shadowy corner, gleamed the white mutch of Tibbie Ross, the best nurse in that countryside. Jamie and Alice took two chairs that had been set for them near the bed. Strickland moved to the recess of a window. Outside the snow fell in very large flakes, large and many, straight and steady, there being no wind.

In a chair drawn close to the great bed, on a line with the sick man's hand lying on the coverlet, sat the heir of Glenfernie. He sat leaning forward, with one hand near the hand of his father. The laird's eyes were closed. He had been given a stimulant and he now lay gathering his powers that were not far from this life's frontier. The curtains of the bed had been drawn quite back; propped by pillows into a half-sitting posture, he was plain to all in the room, in the ruddy light of the fire. A clock upon the wall ticked, ticked. Those in the room sat very still.

The laird drew a determined breath and opened his eyes. "Alexander!"

"Father!"

"You look like myself sitting there, and yet not myself. I am going to die."

"If that's your will, father."

"Aye, it's my will, for I've made it mine. I can't talk much. We'll talk at times and sit still between. Are you going to stay with me to-night?"

"Indeed I am, father. Right here beside you."

"Well, I've missed you. But you had to have your wanderings and your life of men. I understood that."

"You've been most good to me. It is in my heart and in the tears of my eyes."

"I did not grudge the siller. And I've had a pride in you, Alexander.

Now you'll be the laird. Now let's sit quiet a bit."

The snow fell, the fire burned, the clock ticked. He spoke again.

"It's before an eye inside that you'll be a wanderer and a goer about yet--within and without, my laddie, within and without! Do not forget, though, to hold the old place together that so many Jardines have been born in, and to care for the tenant bodies and the old folk--and there's your brother and sister."

"I will forget nothing that you say, father."

"I have kept that to say on top of my mind.... The old place and the tenant bodies and old folk, and your brother and sister. I have your word, and so," said the laird, "that's done and may drift by.--Grizel, I wad sleep a bit. Let him go and come again."

His eyes closed. Alexander rose from the chair beside him. Coming to Alice, he put his arm around her, and with Jamie at his other hand the three went from the room. Strickland tarried a moment to consult with Mrs. Grizel.

"The doctor comes to-morrow?"

"Aye. Tibbie thinks him a bit stronger."

"I will watch to-night with Alexander."

"Hoot, man! ye maun be weary enough yourself!" said Mrs. Grizel.

"No, I am not. I will sleep awhile after supper, and come in about ten. So you and Tibbie may get one good night."

Some hours later, in the room that had been his since his first coming to Glenfernie, he gazed out of window before turning to go down-stairs. The snow had ceased to fall, and out of a great streaming floe of clouds looked a half-moon. Under it lay wan hill and plain.

The clouds were all of a size and vast in number, a herd of the upper air. The wind drove them, not like a shepherd, but like a wolf at their heels. The moon seemed the shepherd, laboring for control. Then the clouds themselves seemed the wolves, and the moon a traveler against whom they leaped, who was thrown among them, and rose again.... Then the moon was a soul, struggling with the wrack and wave of things.

Strickland went down the old, winding Glenfernie stair, and came at last to the laird's room. Tibbie Ross opened the door to him, and he saw it all in low firelight and made ready for the night. The laird lay propped as before in the great bed, but seemed asleep. Alexander sat before the fire, elbows upon knees and chin in hand, brooding over the red coals. Tibbie murmured a direction or two and showed wine and bread set in the deep window. Then with a courtesy and a breathed, "Gie ye gude night, sirs!" she was forth to her own rest. The door closed softly behind her. Strickland stepped as softly to the chair beyond Alexander. The couch was spread for the watchers' alternate use, if so they chose; on a table burned shaded candles. Strickland had a book in his pocket. Sitting down, he produced this, for he would not seem to watch the man by the fire.

Alexander Jardine, large and strong of frame, with a countenance ma.s.sive and thoughtful for so young a man, bronzed, with well-turned features, gazed steadily into the red hollows where the light played, withdrew and played again. Strickland tried to read, but the sense of the other's presence affected him, came between his mind and the page.

Involuntarily he began to occupy himself with Alexander and to picture his life away from Glenfernie, away, too, from Edinburgh and Scotland.

It was now six years since, definitely, he had given up the law, throwing himself, as it were, on the laird's mercy both for long and wide travel, and for life among books other than those indicated for advocates. The laird had let him go his gait--the laird with Mrs.

Jardine a little before him. The Jardine fortune was not a great one, but there was enough for an heir who showed no inclination to live and to travel _en prince_, who in certain ways was nearer the ascetic than the spendthrift.... Before Strickland's mind, strolling dreamily, came pictures of far back, of years ago, of long since. A by-wind had brought to the tutor then certain curious bits of knowledge.

Alexander, a student in Edinburgh, had lived for some time upon half of his allowance in order to accommodate Ian Rullock with the other half, the latter being in a crisis of quarrel with his uncle, who, when he quarreled, used always, where he could, the money screw.

Strickland had listened to his Edinburgh informant, but had never divulged the news given. No more had he told another bit, floated to him again by that ancient Edinburgh friend and gossip, who had young cousins at college and listened to their talk. It pertained to a time a little before that of the shared income. This time it had been shared blood. Strickland, sitting with his book in the quiet room, saw in imagination the students' chambers in Edinburgh, and the little throng of very young men, flushed with wine and with youth, making friendships, and talking of friendships made, and dubbing Alexander Damon and Ian Pythias. Then more wine and a bravura pa.s.sage. Damon and Pythias opening each a vein with some convenient dagger, smearing into the wound some drops of the other's blood, and going home each with a tourniquet above the right wrist.... Well, that was years ago--and youth loved such pa.s.sages!

Alexander, by the fire, stooped to put back a coal that had fallen upon the oak boards, then sank again into his reverie. Strickland read a paragraph without any especial comprehension, after which he found himself again by the stream of Alexander's life. That friendship with Ian Rullock utterly held, he believed. Well, Ian Rullock, too, seemed somehow a great personage. Very different from Alexander, and yet somehow large to match.... Where had Alexander been after Edinburgh--where had he not been? Very often Ian was with him, but sometimes and for months he would seem to have been alone. Glenfernie might receive letters from Germany, from Italy or Egypt, or from further yet to the east. He had been alone this year, for Ian was now the King's man and with his regiment, Strickland supposed, wherever that might be. Alexander had written from Buda-Pesth, from Erfurt, from Amsterdam, from London. Now he sat here at Glenfernie, looking into the fire. Strickland, who liked books of travel, wondered what he saw of old cities, grave or gay, of ruined temples, sphinxes, monuments, gra.s.s-grown battle-fields, and ships at sea, storied lands, peoples, individual men and women. He had wayfared long; he must have had many an adventure. He had been from childhood a learner. His touch upon a book spoke of adeptship in that world.... Well, here he was, and what would he do now, when he was laird? Strickland lost himself in speculation. Little or naught had ever been in Alexander's letters about women.

The white ash fell, the clock ticked, the wind went around the house with a faint, banshee crying. The figure by the fire rested there, silent, still, and brooding. Strickland observed with some wonder its power of long, concentrated thinking. It sat there, not visibly tense, seemingly relaxed, yet as evidently looking into some place of inner motion, wider and swifter than that of the night world about it.

Strickland tried to read. The clock hand moved toward midnight.

The laird spoke from the great bed. "Alexander--"