John Burnet of Barns: A Romance

by John Buchan

"Guid day to you, sir," he said, and I protest that the honest fellow had tears in his eyes; and when I had gone on maybe half a mile and looked back, he was still standing like a stone in the same spot.

At first I was somewhat depressed in my mind. It is a hard thing thus to part from one's mistress when the air is thick with perils to both. So as I tramped through the meadows and leaped the brooks, it was with a sad heart, and my whole mind was taken up in conjuring back the pleasant hours I had spent in my lady's company, the old frolics in the wood of Dawyck, the beginnings of our love-making, even the ride hither from the Cor Water. Yesterday, I reflected, she was with me here; now I am alone and like to be so for long. Then I fell to cursing myself for a fool, and went on my way with a better heart.

But it was not till I had crossed the wide stream of the Douglas Water and begun to ascend the hills, that I wholly recovered my composure. Before, I had been straggling in low meadows which do not suit my temper, since I am above all things hill-bred and a lover of dark mountains. So now on the crisp spring grass of the slopes my spirits rose. Was not I young and strong and skilled in the accomplishments of a man? The world was before me—that wide, undiscovered world which had always attracted the more heroic spirits. What hardship was there to live a free life among the hills, under the sunshine and the wind, the clouds and the blue sky?

But my delight could never be unmixed though I tried. After all, was I free? I felt of a sudden that I was not one half equipped for a gipsy, adventurous life. I was tied down to custom and place with too many ties. I came of a line of landed gentlemen. The taint of possession, of mastery and lordship over men and land, was strong in me. I could not bring me to think of myself as a kinless and kithless vagabond, having no sure place of abode. Then my love of letters, my learning, my philosophy, bound me down with indissoluble bands. To have acquired a taste for such things was to have unfitted myself for ever for the life of careless vagabondage. Above all there was my love; and ever, as I went on, my thoughts came home from their aërial flights and settled more and more in a little room in a house in a very little portion of God's universe. And more and more I felt myself a slave to beloved tyrants, and yet would not have been free if I could.

It was always thus with me when alone: I must fall to moralising and self-communing. Still perhaps the master feeling in my mind was one of curiosity and lightheartedness. So I whistled, as I went, all the old tunes of my boyhood which I was wont to whistle when I went out to the hills with my rod and gun, and stepped briskly over the short heather, and snapped my fingers in the face of the world.

Now I dared not go back to Tweeddale by the way by which I had come, for the Clyde valley above Abington would be a hunting-ground of dragoons for many days. There was nothing for it but to make for the lower waters, ford the river above Coulter, and then come to Tweeddale in the lower parts, and thence make my way to the Water of Cor. Even this course was not without its dangers; for the lower glen of Tweed was around Dawyck and Barns, and this was the very part of all the land the most perilous to me at the moment. To add to this, I was well at home among the wilder hills; but it was little I knew of Clydesdale below Abington, till you come to the town of Lanark. This may at first seem a trifling misfortune, but in my present case it was a very great one. For unless a man knows every house and the character of its inmates he is like to be in an ill way if close watched and threatened. However, I dreaded this the less, and looked for my troubles mainly after I had once entered my own lands in Tweeddale.

At the time when the sun rose I was on a long hill called Craigcraw, which hangs at the edge of the narrow crack in the hills through which goes the bridle-road from Lanark to Moffat. I thought it scarce worth my while to be wandering aimlessly among mosses and craigs when something very like a road lay beneath me; so I made haste to get down and ease my limbs with the level way. It was but a narrow strip of grass, running across the darker heath, and coiling in front like a green ribbon through nick or scaur or along the broad brae-face.

Soon I came to the small, roofless shieling of Redshaw, where aforetime lived a villain of rare notoriety, with whose name, "Redshaw Jock," Jean Morran embittered my childhood. I thought of all these old pleasing days, as I passed the bare rickle of stones in the crook of the burn. Here I turned from the path, for I had no desire to go to Abington, and struck up a narrow howe in the hills, which from the direction I guessed must lead to the lower Clyde. It was a lonesome place as ever I have seen. The spring sunshine only made the utter desolation the more apparent and oppressive. Afar on the hillside, by a clump of rowan trees, I saw the herd's house of Wildshaw, well named in its remote solitude. But soon I had come to the head of the burn and mounted the flat tableland, and in a little came to the decline on the other side, and entered the glen of the Roberton Burn.

Here it was about the time of noon, and I halted to eat my midday meal. I know not whether if was the long walk and the rough scrambling, or the clean, fresh spring air, or the bright sunshine, or the clear tinkle of the burn at my feet, or the sense of freedom and adventurous romance, but I have rarely eaten a meal with such serene satisfaction. All this extraordinary day I had been alternating between excessive gaiety and sad regrets. Now the former element had the mastery, and I was as hilarious as a young horse when he is first led out to pasture.

And after a little as I sat there my mirth grew into a sober joy. I remembered all the poets who had sung of the delights of the open air and the unshackled life. I laughed at my former feeling of shame in the matter. Was there any ignominy in being driven from the baseness of settled habitation to live like a prince under God's sky? And yet, as I exulted in the thought, I knew all too well that in a little my feelings would have changed and I would be in the depths of despondency.