The heir started violently. With an eager look he tried to penetrate the network of boughs and opening leaves, and failing that, followed with his eyes the very smoke as it curled away into the clouds. His heart beat so loudly that, for a moment, it made him sick.
“Allenders!—my home, their home!” murmured Harry; and he felt his breast swell as if with a rising sob.
A drive of a few miles from Stirling brought them to the other side of Allenders. There was less wood there, and the view was towards the wide strath in which lies Bannockburn. But Harry had not time to look at the prospect without—there was something, at the moment, greatly more interesting to him in the gray gables and dilapidated rooms within.
The house was not large, but it was tall, with windows specked over it in all corners, without an attempt at regularity; and on the eastern side was a curious little turret, obtruding itself abruptly from the wall, and throwing up a spear point, now black and tarnished, over the heads of the high trees.
The door was opened to them tardily by an old man, who did not seem at all desirous that they should penetrate beyond the threshold. This custodier of the house of Allenders was thin and shrivelled, and had a face dingy with age and smoke, the small features of which seemed to have shrunk and crept together, under the touch of time. A few thin, white hairs strayed over his head, diverging from the crown in all directions with genuine independence; and his dress was of homespun blue, with great ribbed stockings and buckled shoes. Those poor thin angular limbs seemed to bend any way with the stiff facility of wooden joints; and as he dangled his lean arms by his side, and gazed with light grey unmeaning eyes into their faces, it seemed as if the chill winter of years and poverty had frozen his very soul.
“You must let us in to see the house, my man,” said Lindsay briskly. “This is the young laird I have brought with me. Do you think he’s like the old Allenders, Dragon?—you should know them well.”
“Whilk ane is it, Mr. Lindsay—the muckle ane or the little ane?” asked the old man.
Now Harry was by no means little. He did not at all relish the adjective.
“This is Mr. Muir—Allenders of Allenders,” said Lindsay, hastily. “Come in; I’ll be your guide, and Dragon here will overlook us, and see we take nothing away.”
They entered a small square hall, dimly lighted, at the further end of which was a stone staircase of good proportions; but the walls were black with the dust of years, and the oak banisters of the stairs were broken and dilapidated. It had a dreary, deserted, uninhabitable look; and Harry, quickly impressed for good or evil, was half inclined to think Mrs. Rodger’s little parlour a brighter home than this after all.