"As a bairn how bonnie he was—yea, beautiful as Absalom!"
The quartermaster sighed with impatience, it might be with a little air of disappointment, as he pushed his toddy-jug aside, and proceeded energetically to refill the bowl of his pipe. Why, thought he, has Quentin never written to me, according to his promise?
It was September now. The bearded grain that had been yellowing on the long corn-rigs of Rohallion was already gathered in; the harvest-kirn or home had been held in the great barn of the Home Farm, and the tawny stubbles gave the bared land a sterile aspect, till they disappeared as the plough turned up the shining furrows, where the black ravens flapped their wings, and the hoodie-crows sought for worms. The leaves were becoming brown and yellow as sienna tints spread over the copsewood, and the sound of the axe was heard at times, for now the husbandman looked forward to the closing year, and remembered the rhyming injunction:—
"Ere winter preventeth, while weather is good,
For galling of pasture get home with thy wood;
And carry out gravel to fill up a hole,
Both timber and furzen, the turf and the coal."
"Four weeks—ay, it is September now," said the quartermaster.
"And I fear me the lad will return no more."
"Say not so, dominie; he may come upon us when we least expect him."
"It may be, for, of a verity, life is full of strange coincidences."
"Strange, indeed! I have told you many a soldier's yarn, dominie; but did you ever hear of the strange meeting I had with an old man of the clan Donald?"
"Where—in the Highlands?"