“Had you not better try a remonstrance, Mrs. Catherine,” said James. “It may have been done in ignorance.”
“Remonstrance! a bonnie story that I should condescend to remonstrate with the hounds. Where are you going, Anne? Did I not bid ye remain with us?”
“You forget that Marjory is up stairs, Mrs. Catherine,” said Anne.
“I forget no such thing—the bairns are mad! counselling me with their wisdom in my own house—and that minds me that I am forgetting the comfort of the stranger like a self-seeking old wife as I am. James Aytoun, I will let you see your room—and you, bairns, remain where you are, and dine with him. You are like to be near kindred—it is right you should be friends.”
Mrs. Catherine led James Aytoun away, and Anne and Lewis joined Marjory in the drawing-room, where, the fumes of her indignation scarcely over, she had been firmly shutting her lips for the last hour, lest some hint of the shut-up by-way should escape them, to pain the landless Archibald.
They spent the evening pleasantly together. James Aytoun was fresh from that peculiar society of Edinburgh, whose intellectual progress is the pulse of Scotland, healthful, strong, and bold, as its beatings have been for these past centuries. His own compeers and companions were the rising generation—lawyers, physicians, clergymen, literati, whom the course of some score years would find in the highest places there. The intellectual life and activity which breathed out from his very conversation, stimulated Lewis. These pursuits of science and literature—those professional matters even, to the consideration of which intellect so elevated and acute was devoted, gave the country laird a new idea of the pleasure and dignity of life. Labor—healthful, vigorous, energetic, manly labor—not vacant ease of frivolous enjoyment, was the thing esteemed in that lettered community of beautiful Edinburgh, the names of whose toiling, daring, chivalrous, intellectual workmen, would be household words to the next wave of Scottish population—would have risen into the mental firmament ere then, stars for a world to see.
It was a particularly happy thing for Lewis at this especial time, his encounter with James Aytoun; the unselfish breadth of his good mind and heart, the generous start to exertion, the clear health and readiness of all his well cultured faculties, and his frank and instinctive energy, carried with them all the better part of Lewis Ross’s nature. Their visitor, with his intelligent conversation, and well-cultivated mind, pleased and made friends of them all; but conferred especial benefit and invigoration upon Lewis.
The next day they left the Tower together. Lewis, with his old self-confidence, believing himself sure to help on the search mightily by his presence; but yet so much more earnest and unselfish in his desire to see the truth established, that Anne’s heart rejoiced within her. Mrs. Ross was sulkily reconciling herself to the obvious necessity. She was by no means interested in the result of the investigation, and was inclined to hope that it would be unsuccessful, and that Lewis might be released from his engagement, yet, nevertheless, prepared herself, with much sullenness and ill-humor, for “the worst.”
Anne accompanied Lewis, in the morning, to the Tower, to bid James good-by, and charge him with various kindly messages, and some little tokens of sisterly good-will for Alice. At Mrs. Catherine’s desire she remained. Mrs. Catherine had already despatched Andrew with the following missive to Strathoran:
“Mrs. Catherine Douglas, of the Tower, desires that Lord Gillravidge will explain to her, at his earliest leisure, his motive for shutting up the by-way upon Oranside—a thing both unreasonable and unlawful, and which she has no thought of submitting to for a day. The path belongs to the people of the parish, who had dwelt upon the land for centuries, before ever it passed into Lord Gillravidge’s tenantcy. Mrs. Catherine Douglas desires Lord Gillravidge to know that he has done what is contrary to the law of the land, and expects to have an immediate reason rendered to her, for the insult and hardship inflicted upon her people and parish, by the closing of a known kirk road, and public way.”