Herries said no more, but he looked rather spitefully at his cousin. Perhaps he was not flattered at being told he was 'as safe as a convent.'
In the meantime, the coach was ready for its start. Herries had selected a fine roomy vehicle, with a glass front, and had ordered three horses. Danny was in a seventh heaven of delight, and so forgot the pain of parting. There was a cracking of whips, a tremendous clatter of hoofs on the cobbles, a cheer from the little crowd that had collected to see the start. Nancy, from the causeway, fluttered a dainty pocket-handkerchief, and Jean waved her work-worn hand. Hers were the only tears that watered this farewell; one or two fell on her coarse apron as she trudged home behind her mistress.
'Yon poor bairn will never come back,' she said to herself, and drew the back of her hand across her eyes.
The village of Prestonpans lies, as all men know, about ten miles east of Edinburgh, on the shores of the Firth of Forth, as it widens to the sea. It is a fine drive down there, by the Portobello and the Musselburgh roads, for you perceive that there widens out before you one of the great waterways of the world—the ocean-path to this cold northern country of our love. Perhaps only the trading vessels and the fishing boats go there now, but it was the galleons of old that cleaved that mighty swirl, half river and half sea, and the sailing ships that brought Queen Mary to her fateful kingdom, curtseyed to that tawny tide. The instructive Herries was not slow to point out these matters to his young companions. There was no cloud upon his august brow, and so Alison became very happy. They were busy with the little boys all the way down, curbing the frantic excitement of Willy, who had been promised an hour on the sands, and encouraging Danny, whose spirit flagged, and who asked plaintive and difficult questions about his mother's absence. It was high noon when they rattled into Prestonpans, and Alison stepped out into the village street, where the queer, little, secretive-looking white houses shouldered each other on to the road, and the growl of the sea could be heard at their backs.
The woman who was to have the charge of Danny lived in a little house to which you climbed by a wooden outside stair. She was a most cheerful person, whom Herries addressed as 'Isabella,' and who, in her turn, patted him on the shoulders, and called him 'Master Archie.' She bustled them all into the warm, clean, homely cottage, and showed off with pride her preparations for Danny's sojourn—his little bed covered with a patch-work quilt, his chair with a cushion on it, the very kitten to play with 'when he wearied.' She lugged out of some recess a curious old battered tin vessel, bearing some faint resemblance to the modern hip bath.
'Ye see,' she said, 'I'm well acquaint wi' they delicut bairns. It's a while sin' syne, but I had ane wi' me—the brawest bairn ever ye saw—but he had the one leg shorter than the t'ither, and ay the somethin' wrong wi' the one foot; an' it was the sea watter for him too. Here's his bit bath—I hae ay keepit it. One Walter Scott they ca'd him,' she added, 'a writer's son; a gran' strappin' callant now, though he hirples yet; but he's mindfu' o' an auld body, and comes to see me whiles.' And her listeners of that benighted generation heard that wonder-working name, and knew it not for a magician's!
Then it was arranged that Alison and her escort should take Willy to the sands while the day was at its best, and when they came back Isabella would give them a 'sup o' broth and a tattie,' she said, 'to warm them up before the long drive home.'
CHAPTER XXV.
It was one of those days when the land lies under the spell of a long and sunny frost; the ground rang iron to the foot, but the sea smiled and sparkled to the sun, and the Lomonds of Fife, beyond the Firth, were clear against the winter sky. Herries and his companions walked briskly down the village and along the links. Away to their right stretched the fields, where, not a generation since, the blood of a great battle had been spilt, but where now the peaceful stubble grew over the scattered implements of war and over the bones of men,—and quiet cottages smoked to tranquil skies.
'Shouldn't you like to be a soldier, Willy?' Alison asked the little boy, who pranced beside her, tugging at her arm.