“You do not know,” interrupted Mrs. Catherine: “so far as I have seen in my life, a thing does not commonly succeed till it’s tried; ay, tried with labor, and zeal, and longwaiting; and it’s a poor work that is not worth that. I know not but what for the sake of the coming race, there is a clear call to try it. If the first bit petty tyrant that took their right inheritance from clansmen, whose fathers won it by the strong hand, had been resisted in his ill doing, this pang English lordling would not have dared to turn the Macalpines out of Oranmore.”
“But we dont all hold our lands by the strong hand,” said Lewis Ross.
“Lewis, you are a loon; how often have I told you to hold your peace; and what better tenure could the man have for his lands, I would crave to know, than just the tenure of the strong hand? Your fathers knew better, and what they won by their sword and by their bow, was well won I say! won by clansmen and chief together, and by clansmen and chief, in their degree, to be lawfully and justly held—in peace, if the Almighty ordained it so, and if not, in honorable holding of the land they had won, against all aliens and incomers; whether they came by open war, or with courtesies of craft and falsehood, as men do in this time!”
In a few days after, Mrs. Catherine and her train, including Alice Aytoun and her maid Bessie, left Edinburgh for the Tower. In consideration of the six months’ delay to which Lewis had reluctantly submitted, Mrs. Aytoun as reluctantly consented that her little daughter should pay a brief visit to Mrs. Catherine—a visit which was by no means to exceed the limits of a month.
Jacky and Bessie, under the safe-conduct of Johnnie Halflin, were to travel by the coach. When the youthful trio reached the starting-place in high glee, an early coach had just arrived from one of the many village-towns in the vicinity of Edinburgh. Jacky’s quick eye discerned, among the little knot of bystanders, a tall lad of some nineteen or twenty years, engaged in superintending the collection of boxes belonging to an elderly woman, who stood with a slightly fluttered, agitated look upon the pavement below. The large Paisley shawl, the mighty leghorn bonnet—Jacky threw over them a glance of hasty recognition. Their owner turned her head. The thin, long upper lip was not quivering now—a glance of troubled joy was in the eye—Jacky hastily ran to speak to her. It was Jean Miller. Bessie drew near also. In Johnnie Halflin’s presence, Bessie would have had no objection to a slight flirtation with the young doctor, Jean Miller’s genteel nephew. The tall, slight lad drew himself up, however, with the slightest possible recognition. He had a soul above flirtation with maid-servants.
“Andrew’s maister, I’m meaning the doctor he’s serving his time wi’, has ta’en in a daft gentleman to board wi’ him,” said Jean Miller, aside to the sympathetic Jacky, “and so there wasna room for the callant, and it was needful he should get up-putting in a strange house. Sae it chanced, when I was in seeing him, that I saw some mair neighbors o’ his, collegianers, and ae young doctor, that was unco chief wi’ him; and it appears Andrew—he’s a kindly callant, and has been a’ his days—had been telling them o’ his auntie, and how I was anxious about him in the strange place, where he had nae mother’s e’e ower him, nor onybody to keep him right. Sae what did they do—the young doctor and the auldest o’ the students, but they said, that if Andrew would get his auntie to come in and take a house, they would a’ bide wi’ me, and that they would be mair comfortable a’thegither, and could help ane anither in their learning. Sae ye may think Andrew was blythe to come out to tell me, and seeing I’m wearing into years, and a’body likes to have a house o’ their ain, and in especial for the laddie’s sake, that he may be wiled to care mair for hame, than for the vanities that have ruined lads of promise by the hunder before him, as I ken ower weel, I didna swither; and the house is ta’en, and the plenishing’s bought, and I’m gaun hame the day. It’s a great change to me, but—Andrew, my man, yon blue box is mine too—it’ll be a great ease to my mind to hae my laddie aye in my ain e’e; and I hope the Lord will send a blessing on’t. It’s a’ for the lad’s guid I’m anxious. Guid kens, I would have little thought o’ mysel that am withered, and auld, and past my strength, if it werena for him.”
The journey was accomplished in safety. Little Alice was established again at the rounded window of that pretty bower of hers, looking over, through the golden air, to the quiet house of Merkland, with no phantom of grief or pain or sorrow, throwing its shadow now between; but everything around and before, throwing out that sunny light of hope and promise, beautiful to see.
The day after their arrival, Anne set out to visit Esther Fleming. Lewis had not thought of any anxiety of Esther’s; unfortunately, very much as his intercourse with the Aytouns had improved him Lewis was still by no means given to any great consideration of other people’s anxieties, and therefore he had suffered the paper which Anne sent specially for her, containing the first public notice of Norman’s innocence, to lie useless in his library without the least remembrance of Esther. He had not the same bond to her as Anne had, it is true, for Esther had never bestowed any great share of her patronage upon “the strange woman’s bairn.”
A little way from the gate of Merkland, Anne met Marjory Falconer. Marjory had the slightest possible air of timidity hanging upon her, with a singular grace. She was a little afraid of Anne’s reception of her intended marriage—whether she already knew—and if she would lecture, or rally her.
“Come with me to the Tower first,” said Marjory, drawing Anne’s arm within her own. “I want to see little Alice Aytoun—and I have a great deal to say to you.”