"The land and the folk'll be blithe to see him—if it was not for the occasion of his coming! If there's aught a body can do for any at Glenfernie—?"
"Every one has been as good as gold, Greenlaw. But you know there's not much at the last that can be done—"
"No. We all pass, and they that bide can but make the dirge. But I'll be obliged if you'll say to Mr. Alexander that if there is aught—" He gathered up the reins. "It will be snowing presently. I always thought that I'd like to part on a day like this, gray and quiet, with all the color and the shouting lifted elsewhere." He was gone, trotting before them on his big horse.
Strickland and the minister looked after him. "There's one to be liked no little!" said Strickland.
But Mr. M'Nab's answering tone was wintry yet. "He makes mair songs than he listens to sermons! Jarvis Barrow, that's a strong witness, should have had another sort of great-nephew! And so he that will be laird comes home to-morrow? It's little that he has been at home of late years."
"Yes, little."
The manse with the kirk beyond rose before them, drawn against the pallid sky. "A wanderer to and fro in the earth, and I doubt not—though we do not hear much of it—an eater of husks!—Will you not come in, Mr. Strickland?"
"Another time, Mr. M'Nab. I've an errand in the village.—Touching Alexander Jardine. I suppose that the whole sense-bound world might be called by a world farther on an eater of husks. But I know naught to justify any especial application of the phrase to him. I know, indeed, a good deal quite to the contrary. You are, it seems to me, something less than charitable—"
M'Nab regarded him with an earnest, narrow, wintry look. "I would not wish to deserve that epithet, Mr. Strickland. But the world is evil, and Satan stands close at the ear of the young, both the poor and them of place and world's gear! So I doubt not that he eats the husks. I doubt not, either, that the Lord has a rod for him, as for us all, that will drive him, willy-nilly, home. So I'll say good day, sir. To-morrow I'll go again to the laird, and so every day until his summons comes."
They parted at the manse door. The world was gray, the snow swiftening its approach. Strickland, passing the kirk, kept on down the one village street. All and any who were out of doors spoke to him, asking how did the laird. Some asked if "the young laird" had come.