'What a fool I have been, when in the city, not to call upon old MacWadsett, the W.S., about the exact terms of my father's will. They never reached me in Egypt—the Bedouins at Ramleh made free with the mail-bags. Besides, I need not have gone before this, as the old fellow has been on the Continent.'
So he consoled himself with the inevitable cigar, while the train rolled on by many a familiar scene, on which he had not looked for an age, as it seemed now; by the 'lang, lang town' of Kirkaldy, and picturesque Dysart, with its zigzag streets, overlooked by the gaunt dwelling-place of Queen Annabella, and the sea-beaten rock of Ravenscraig; anon past Falkland Woods, and after he crossed the Eden he began to trace the landmarks of Earlshaugh, and the train halted at a little wayside station, close beside an old and almost unused avenue that led to the latter, and he sprang out upon the platform, where he seemed to be the only passenger. The two or three officials who were loitering about were strangers, and eyed him leisurely.
'Has not a trap come for my luggage?' he asked.
'For where, sir?'
'Earlshaugh.'
'No sir,' replied one, touching his cap, an ex-soldier recognising his questioner's military air. 'No trap is here.'
'Strange!' muttered Roland, giving his moustache an angry twist; 'and yet I wrote—I'll walk on, and send for my things,' he added.
The house was little more than a mile distant, and every foot of the way had been familiar to him from infancy.
On many a strange and foreign scene had he looked, and many a peril had he faced, in the land of the Pharaohs since last he had trod that shady avenue—the land of the Sphinx and the Pyramids, where the hot sand of the desert seemed to vibrate and quiver under the fierce glare of the unclouded sun.
Forgetful of old superstitions, he had entered the avenue by the Weird Yett. It was deemed unlucky for a Lindsay of Earlshaugh to approach his house after a long absence through that barrier; but as the gate was open, Roland, full of his own thoughts, passed in, heedless of the legend which told that the Lindsay fared ill who did so.