"Some day I think you must visit Priorsford and get to know Miss
Bathgate.—Yours,
"PAM.
"I forgot to tell you that for some dark reason the Jardines call their cat Sir J.M. Barrie.
"I asked why, but got no satisfaction.
"'Well, you see, there's Peter,' Mhor said vaguely.
"Jock looked at the cat and observed obscurely, 'It's not a sentimental beast either'—while Jean asked if I would have preferred it called Sir Rabindranath Tagore!"
CHAPTER V
"O, the land is fine, fine,
I could buy it a' for mine,
For ma gowd's as the stooks in Strathairlie."
Scots Song.
When Peter Reid arrived at Priorsford Station from London he stood for a few minutes looking about him in a lost way, almost as if after thirty years he expected to see a "kent face" coming to meet him. He had no -notion where to go; he had not written for rooms; he had simply obeyed the impulse that sent him—the impulse that sends a hurt child to its mother. It is said that an old horse near to death turns towards the pastures where he was foaled. It is true of human beings. "Man wanders back to the fields which bred him."