“I am glad of it—I am heartily glad to hear it, Archie,” said Mrs. Catherine. “That you should leave your lawful labor is no desire of mine; but I have that to tell that concerns you more than even this. Have you heard any tidings yet, of the cattle you left in Strathoran?”
Archibald changed color, and said “No.”
“Then it has not been told you that your father’s house is within your reach again; that Strathoran is to be sold.”
“To be sold!” Archibald started to his feet; his temples began to throb, his heart to beat—within his reach and yet how very far removed, for where could he find means to redeem his inheritance. “To be sold!”
“Yes. Archie Sutherland, to be sold—what say you to that?” He did not say anything to it; he pressed his hand to his brow and groaned.
“What ails you? sit down upon your seat this moment, and hearken to me; what say you to that?”
“I have nothing to say, Mrs. Catherine; it takes from me my great hope. There is no possibility of recovering it now, and what chance is there of any opportunity again. It is not likely to change hands thrice in one life-time.”
“Archie,” said Mrs. Catherine, “you are but a silly heart, after all. I thought not to have seen the beads on your brow for this matter. Sit down upon your seat I bid you, and hearken to me. I am not without siller as you know, seeing it is no such great space of time since a Laird of Strathoran made petition to me, to serve him in this Mammon; that you should have forgotten. I was slow then, for you were in the way of evil, Archie; but ill as you were, you know I was nearly tempted to cast away my siller, into the self-same mire in which you lost Strathoran, for the sake of Isabel Balfour and him that was her trysted bridegroom.—Now, Archie Sutherland, it is my hope that your eyes are opened to see the right course of man; which is not idleset and the mean pleasures of it, but honorable work and labor that the sun may shine upon, and God and your fellows see. Think not that I mean the making of siller; I mean a just work, whatsoever, is appointed you, to be done in honor and bravery, and in the fear of God. So as it is my hope you perceive this at last, you shall have your lands again, Archie. Not, that I desire you to return to Strathoran, as if you had never done ill. Go your ways and labor: you will return a better and a blyther man, that you have redeemed your inheritance with the work of your own hands. In the meantime, I myself will redeem it for you; I give you back the name your fathers have borne for ages. See that it descends to your bairns for their inheritance, Strathoran. And now I see Norman Rutherford at the door; go and take counsel with him for your further travail and leave me to my meditations.”
And with kindly violence Mrs. Catherine shut the door of her sanctuary upon the bewildered Archibald—then she seated herself opposite the portrait of her brother, and gazed upon it long and earnestly. “Ay, Sholto Douglas, he is Isabel’s son, and what would you have left undone for the bairn of Isabel?—and if he had been yours also, what is there within the compass of mortal might, that I would have halted at for him? He is Isabel’s son—and it had not been ordered in a darker way, he would have been your first-born, Sholto Douglas; the shadow of your tenderness is upon the youth—he has none in this earth so near to him as me.”
That day, there were various visitors at Merkland—Mrs. Catherine, the Aytouns, Marjory Falconer; they met together at night in the Tower, all joyous, hopeful, and at peace.