On the little round table was an open Bible which I knew well, and a pair of spectacles lay across the flattened-out leaves. Betty was standing at the bedside, her dimmed eyes fixed on Nathan's long, wan face. She didn't turn her head when I came in, but she held out her hand to me, and together we watched. Suddenly he raised his head from the pillow and his sunken, sightless eyes turned toward the window. 'Ay, imphm!—weel, Betty lass, it's aboot time I was daunerin'. It—it's a nice mornin' for the road; the birds'll be whusslin' bonny in the Gillfit wood, an'—an' the sunshine will be on the hawthorn. No, I'll no' mak' a noise. I'll open the door canny, and I'll no' wauken Maister Weelum. I'll—I'll juist slip oot quietly. Ay'——
And Betty and I watched Nathan slipping out quietly—oh, how quietly!—into the sunshine of God's own everlasting morning.
CHAPTER XX.
Harvest-time in Midlothian. Golden corn in golden stooks dotting the stubble-fields, yellow leaves on the ash and russet nuts on the beech, a beautiful panorama of multi-coloured landscape stretching hazily away southward and cuddling tranquilly between the Moorfoots and the Pentlands; bird song in the woods and laughter in the fields, mingling with the jolting of iron wheels and the cheery rhythmic craik of the levelling reaper. Little wonder Old Sol lingers long this afternoon above Castlelaw. Gladly, I ween, would he stay; but his times of rising and going down are set, and slowly but surely the shadows deepen at the base of Caerketton, and steal upward to its sheltered crown behind Allermuir.
My wife and I drove round by Roslin to-day, called at The Moat, and after having tea with my old friend Mrs Pendriegh, whose soda-scones are almost as good as Betty's, we returned 'in the hush of the corn' to Blackford Hall, viâ Woodfield and Fairmilehead.
This is all strange, unfamiliar country to Désirée. To-day she saw it for the first time and under the most favourable auspices, and already I know, from her looks and words of appreciation, that it has made its appeal. She thinks, with me, that it very much resembles my own homeland scenery, from its undulating fields and bosky woods to its velvety grass-grown hills, so sleek and rounded, she said, that she wanted to clap them. As we drove homeward, quiet thoughts of Thornhill came to us, and we wondered what Betty would be doing, and how she was getting on. For a month she had been with us, our first guest, and the most honoured and most welcome we shall ever have under our roof. Two days ago she returned to what she calls her 'ain auld hoose,' and when Désirée and I saw her off at the station she told us in a shaky voice that 'mebbe she wad be back in the spring, when she had the hoose seen to an' the gairden delved.'
We miss her cheery, motherly presence in the house; and, though it was looking far ahead, we planned a future for Betty as we drove along.
When we reached Blackford Hall I found more than a kenspeckle countryside to remind me of homeland. In the hall was a carpet-bag which I recognised as a Hebron heirloom I had often seen in Nathan's back-room. Two large pictures, indifferently packed and tied round with rope-line, were placed against the hat-rack. One, from the corner of the frame which was uncovered, I knew to be the oil-painting of my father and mother; and the other, from the new brilliancy of the gold, I recognised as Désirée's painting of Nith Bridge. Nathan's old hazel walking-stick, which daily he carried to his work, was lying along the top of the carpet-bag, tied securely to the leather handles.
'Désirée, my dear,' I said, with a happy flutter in my heart, 'I do believe Betty's come back.'