“Dinna greet, Jean, as though we hed nae lassie,” said Burnbrae, “for there's naethin' here but the dust. Ye mind what the minister read that day, 'He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom.'
“Be thankfu' we have the fower laddies spared, a' daein' weel, an' ane near ready for a kirk, an' you an' me thegither still. We 've hed mony mercies, Jean.”
“A 'm no denyin' that, John, an' a'm prood o' the laddies; but there 's no' a day a' dinna miss ma lassie, an' a' can hear her sayin' 'mither' still when ye 're a' in the fields and a'm alane.”
“Wae 's me, wha will care for her grave when we 're far awa an' no a Baxter left in the Glen? It's no lichtsome to leave the hoose whar we 've livit sae lang, an' the fields ye 've lookit at a' yir days, but it 's sairest tae leave yir dead.” The past with the tender associations that make a woman's life was tightening its hold on Jean, and when they looked down on the Glen from the height of Burnbrae, her voice broke again:
“It's a bonnie sicht, John, an' kindly tae oor eyes; we 'ill never see anither tae sateesfy oor auld age.”
“A've seen nae ither a' ma days,” said Burnbrae, “an' there can be nane sae dear tae me noo in this warld; but it can be boucht ower dear, lass,” and when she looked at him, “wi' oor souls, Jean, wi' oor souls.”
No Drumtochty man felt at ease on Sabbath, or spoke quite like himself at home, till he had escaped from his blacks and had his tea. Then he stretched himself with an air of negligence, and started on a survey of his farm, which allowed of endless meditation, and lasted in summer time unto the going down of the sun. It was a leisurely progress, in which time was of no importance, from field to field and into every corner of each field, and from beast to beast and round every beast to the completion of as many circles as there were beasts. The rate was about one and a half miles an hour, excluding halts, and the thumbs were never removed from the armholes except for experimental observations. No one forgot that it was Sabbath, and there were things no right-thinking man would do. Drumsheugh might sample a head of oats in his hand, in sheer absence of mind, but he would have been ashamed to lift a shaw of potatoes; and although Hillocks usually settled the price he would ask for his fat cattle in the midst of these reveries, he always felt their ribs on a Saturday. When the gudeman came in, he had taken stock with considerable accuracy, but he was justly horrified to find his wife asleep, with her head uncomfortably pillowed on the open family Bible.
With the more religious men these Sabbath evening walks had in them less of this world and more of that which is to come. Donald Menzies had seen strange things in the fading light as he wandered among the cattle, and this evening the years that were gone came back to Burnbrae. For a townsman may be born in one city and educated in a second, and married in a third, and work in a fourth. His houses are but inns, which he uses and forgets; he has no roots, and is a vagrant on the face of the earth. But the countryman is born and bred, and marries and toils and dies on one farm, and the scene he looks at in his old age is the same he saw in his boyhood. His roots are struck deep into the soil, and if you tear them up, his heart withers and dies. When some townsman therefore reads of a peasant being cast out of his little holding, he must not consider that it is the same as a tenant going from one street to another, for it is not a house this farmer leaves: it is his life.
Burnbrae passed through the kitchen on his way out, and an old chair by the fireside made him a laddie again, gathered with the family on a winter Sabbath evening, and he heard his father asking the “chief end of man.” The first gate on the farm swung open at a touch, and he remembered this was his father's idea, and he found the wedge that changed the elevation of the hinge. That was a dyke he built in his youth, and there was the stone he blasted out of the field, for the hole was still open. Down in that meadow there used to be a pond where he was almost drowned nearly seventy years ago, but he had drained it, and the corn upon the place was growing rank. This was the little bridge he had mended for the homecoming of his bride, and from that rock his old father had directed him with keen interest, and in that clump of trees, alone before the Eternal, the great event of his soul had come to pass. He had often thought that some day he would be carried over that bridge, and trusted he was ready, but he hoped he might be spared to see the Black Watch come home, and to hear his youngest son preach in Drumtochty Free Kirk. The agony of leaving came upon him, and Burnbrae turned aside among the trees.
He sought out Jean on his return, and found her in a little summer-house, which he had made the first year of their marriage. As they sat together in silence, each feeling for the other, Burnbrae's eyes fell on a patch of annuals, and it seemed to him as if they made some letters.