“Six of us feel like that,” said Hardcastle, glancing down to where Garsykes caught the last of the crimson sun-glow.
“Aye, and six o’ that sort can be fifty or two-score when need asks. I couldn’t have thought it—the way old bones grow young in these good times.”
All they had shared of peril lay silent between them, but confessed, as they watched the last glow redden and die out across the Garsykes hollow, leaving it to a grey, disastrous sleep.
“I’ll go agateards with you, Master,” said Draycott by and by—“lest young blood gets the better of you, and you run single-handed into yond foul stye.”
“There’s no likelihood, Michael. I’m ready for them if they come to Logie, and it stands at that.”
“Ah, but you’re young. And youth can’t bide to wait sometimes.”
Michael went with him as far as the turn of the track, where the heather ran down to the pastures; and then he bade him a hale good-night and God-speed.
“I’ve a sick heifer needing me, Master—and, forgive me, I was thinking of the feud instead.”
Hardcastle swung down the track. The sun had westered now about these higher slopes, and dusk overtook him as he reached the top of the sheep-track that wound to Logie. Across the frost-haze of the valley, lights twinkled out from Garsykes one by one, and he laughed grimly as he stood and watched them. Tired wayfarers might mistake them for stars of hope, might blunder out of the hill-top wastes into such welcome as waited for them there.
A harsh joy in feud came to him. The end of Logie was sure as anything could be in this world, but he would hold his good house to the last. There would be no surrender, and with a quick flash of humour he pictured Rebecca playing a besom heftily amid the flaming havoc of her kitchen. And Storm, maybe, after much red sheep-slaying, would kill a man or two of the Wilderness, and so die an honest dog.