After due deliberation, therefore, David Gray resolved to escape out of the country. Attiring himself in his former disguise, with which his sister Jane provided him, he travelled on foot without molestation to Newcastle-on-Tyne, where, after some little delay, he obtained shipment in a trading vessel to Rotterdam, and there we lose sight of him for a while.
CHAPTER XXVI
REST.
The golden radiance of a summer sunset lay upon the vale of Inverburn. The year was in its prime, and everywhere the wealth of her beauty was scattered with no stinted hand. The harvest was ripe for the sickle in the fertile lowlands, and even on the bleaker uplands there was a lovely yellow tinge on the standing corn, which promised an early reaping. Yes, there were peace and plenty in the smiling land once more, for the long reign of bloodshed and terror was over, the house of Stuart had fallen to rise no more, buried in the ruins of its own iniquity, and a wise, just and upright ruler now wielded the sceptre on the throne of England.
There were not altogether lacking evidences of the dark days which had been. Here and there, on some sunny slope or in some sheltered valley, a black and mouldering ruin indicated where the spoiler had waved his destroying brand, and there yet remained many a broad acre left untilled, because those whose inheritance it was had been destroyed, root and branch, old and young, until not a living representative was left.
But in the main, Scotland had returned to her old-time peace and prosperity; again the voice of the husbandman was heard in the fields, again the women folk went about their daily tasks without fear or trembling, and last, and best of all, the kirks were open on the Sabbath Day once more, for the free and pure worship of the Most High.
The village of Inverburn that summer evening presented much the same appearance as it did when first we made acquaintance with it. The pleasant voices of the children at their play filled the summer air, on the cottage doorsteps or in the trellised porches the women sat at their knitting or spinning, while the broad benches in the doorway of the hostelry had each their complement of sturdy yeomen discussing, over their foaming tankards, the events of the day or the graver memories of the past. About the hour of sundown there was observed, coming slowly along the wide and pleasant road from Lanark, two pedestrians, for whose coming the villagers waited with that keen curiosity so characteristic of country folk. They walked very slowly, as I said, and though one appeared to be of tall and erect figure, the other was much bent, and walked leaning heavily on his companion's arm. Just as they entered upon the village street, and speculation began to run higher regarding them, the attention of the idlers was distracted for a little space by the clatter of hoofs in the opposite direction, and presently a horse and rider came rapidly down the slope and drew rein in front of the inn. The horseman was a young man of goodly stature and fine appearance, with a boyish, open countenance, and a winning, fearless eye.
"Guid e'en, Sandy Gray!" cried one or two with familiarity which was pardonable, seeing they had known the lad from his infancy, and some of them his godly forbears before him.
"Guid e'en!" he answered back frankly. "Here, Willie, my man," he added to a curly-headed urchin playing on the step, "run in and tell your mother I want to see her about ale for the reapers."
"Ay, man, is the hairst [harvest] ready on Hartrigge?" queried one of the older men. "Mony a day I bound a stent [sheaf] behind your faither on the rigs o' Hartrigge."