Strangers seldom approached that sequestered spot—passengers never. They observed, while yet at a good distance, Barnaby’s mother standing amid her burly boys at the end of the cottage, watching their approach, and they heard her calling distinctly to her husband, “Aigh! Geordie, yon’s our ain Barny, I ken by auld Help’s motions; but wha she is that he’s bringing wi’ him, is ayont my comprehension.”
She hurried away in to put her fire-side in some order, and nought was then to be seen but two or three bare-headed boys, with their hair the colour of peat-ashes, setting their heads always now and then by the corner of the house, and vanishing again in a twinkling. The old shepherd was sitting on his divot-seat, without the door, mending a shoe. Barnaby strode up to him. “How are ye the night, father?”
“No that ill, Barny lad—is that you? How are ye yoursel?” said a decent-looking middle-aged man, scratching his head at the same time with the awl, and fixing his eyes, not on his son, but the companion that he had brought with him. When he saw her so young, so beautiful, and the child in her arms, the enquiring look that he cast on his son was unutterable. Silence reigned for the space of a minute. Barnaby made holes in the ground with his staff—the old shepherd began again to sew his shoe, and little George prattled to his mamma, “It’s a vely good bonny halp, mamma; Geoge nevel saw sic a good halp.”
“An’ how hae ye been sin’ we saw ye, Barny?”
“Gaylys!”
“I think ye hae brought twa young strangers wi’ ye?”
“I wat have I.”
“Whar fell ye in wi’ them?”
“I want to speak a word to you, father.”
The old shepherd flung down his work, and followed his son round the corner of the house. It was not two minutes till he came back. Jane had sat down on the sod-seat.