But my aunt was not in his way of thinking.
"There would surely be no occasion," said she (when Margaret was not there), "the woman was well enough done by already."
"You would not have him live there in open scandal?" said I.
"An old song now," says she; "we always kind of put a face on things, but if Dan would be making a decent woman of Belle, there is nothing to be said."
I rode with Hugh and Margaret to be seeing Dan for the first time, and he had his soldier garb on him when we sat down to meat; and Margaret kept close to him at the table, and their talk was of the Low Countries and a soldier's life, and yet for all that he would be telling her how the lassies would be dressing themselves, or the manner of the braiding of their hair, and for Hugh and me he would be giving a great insight into the working of soils and manures, and the different kinds of cattle beasts and horse; and very little talk of war we got from him, unless, maybe, it would be a story he would be telling that would give us an inkling of the business. He would aye be harping on the waste of land, and indeed if there was nothing else to be doing, he would be having good red earth carted from useless places and scattered on his own fields, which I think the old monks would be doing round their monasteries long ago, a practice maybe learned from Rome in the early days, but I have no sure knowledge of it.
It was that day that Helen came to the moor house, and among us, with word from John of Scaurdale for Dan to be coming to see him, and I saw that the very sight of her made a difference; for the face of Hugh flushed as he stood to greet her, and Margaret took to the talking in a vivacious manner that was not like her.
And Dan had many words for his visitor. "For," says he, in a grand fashion, "were it not for you, madam, I might be finding myself lying in harness, with the half o' Europe between me and this bonny place;" and again, after a quizzing look, "I will not be the one to think you will be overly religious either"; but I am thinking I was the only one that would be getting the meaning of that saying.
"But why did you not return—many years?" said Helen.
"Just precisely that I would never be the one to see one o' my name dangling at the end o' a cart tether," said Dan, "or jingling at a cross-roads on a wuddy. Many a night I would be at this place," says he, with a smile to his wife, "but there was no word for me, and the years came and went, and there would be fighting to be going on with—och, it was a weary waiting when there was no little war somewhere, but it's by wi' now, the great thing is that it's by with. . . ."
Hugh and Mistress Helen went their own road, and we watched them from the doorstep, and Dan himself put the saddle gear on Margaret's little horse, and walked a bit of the way with us on the home road.