We fell asunder on a common impulse, and the drunken wanderer was the first to speak.
“Katrine,” said he; “it's always the old tale with Andy, you see; they must be misunderstanding me,” and he bowed with a surprising gentlemanliness that could have made me almost think him not the man who had fouled our house with oaths and drawn a knife upon us in the darkness. The blade of the same, by a trick of legerdemain, had gone up the sleeve of his dripping coat. He seemed all at once sobered. He took my good mother by the hand as she stood trembling and never to know clearly upon what elements of murder she had come.
“It is you, Andrew,” said she, bravely smiling. “What a night to come home in after twenty years! I'm wae to see you in such a plight. And your horse?” said she again, lifting her candle and peering into the darkness of the night. “I must cry up Sandy to stable your horse.”
I'll give my uncle the credit of a confusion at his own forgetfulness.
“Good Lord! Katrine,” said he, “if I did not clean forget the brute, a fiddle-faced, spavined, spatter-dasher of a Gorbals mare, no' worth her corn; but there's my bit kistie on her hump.”
The servant was round soon at the stabling of the mare, and my mother was brewing something of what the gentleman had had too much already, though she could not guess that; and out of the dripping night he dragged in none of a rider's customary holsters but a little brass-bound chest.
“Yon night I set out for my fortune, Quentin,” said he, “I did not think I would come back with it a bulk so small as this; did you? It was the sight of the quiet house and the thought of all it contained that made me act like an idiot as I came in. Still, we must just take the world as we get it, Quentin; and I knew I was sure of a warm welcome in the old house, from one side of it if not from the other, for the sake of lang syne. And this is your son, is it?” he went on, looking at my six feet of indignation not yet dead “Split me if there's whey in that piece! You near jammed my hawze that time! Your Uncle Andrew's hawze, boy. Are you not ashamed of yourself?”
“Not a bit,” said I between my teeth; “I leave that to you.”
He smiled till his teeth shone white in his black beard, and “Lord!” cried he, “I'm that glad I came. It was but the toss of a bawbee, when I came to Leith last week, whether I should have a try at the old doocot, or up Blue Peter again and off to the Indies. I hate ceiled rooms—they mind me of the tomb; I'm out of practice at sitting doing nothing in a parlour and saying grace before meat, and—I give you warning, Quentin—I'll be damned if I drink milk for supper. It was the notion of milk for supper and all that means that kept me from calling on Katrine—and you—any sooner. But I'm glad I came to meet a lad of spirit like young Andy here.”
“Not Andy,” said my father. “Paul is his name.”