"My ring!" she cried. "The ring you gave me! Did you fin' it there? Oh, laddie!" and she nestled against me so tenderly that, in that happy moment, the weary months of pain through which I had lived seemed as nothing.
Then she told me what had befallen her. She had gone to the hiding-place, but found no trace of her father; and after seeking for him far and wide, but without avail, she had decided to return home. On her way back she discovered troopers out upon the moor between herself and home, and she had been compelled to hide for the night among the heather. It was not until late on the following afternoon that she had ventured to steal back to Daldowie, only to find her home in ashes. As I had done, when I returned upon the day following, she had found three skeletons among the ruins, and, with horror of heart, she had counted that one of them was mine.
"I leaped," she said, "among the ashes, and though they burned me cruelly, I brushed them aside frae the face that I thought was yours to see your smile again. But a' I saw was red embers and fleshless bones. Oh, sweetheart--how I cried!" And she buried her head upon my shoulder and sobbed for a moment. Then she raised her face and smiled.
"You maun think me silly. I'm greetin' noo for joy, I cried then for sorrow. As mither used to say--'Women are kittle cattle'--aren't we?" and she smiled, until the light in her sweet eyes dried the tears as the sun dries the dew from the heather bells. "And I suppose," she added, "that's when I lost my ring--though I didna miss it till I had left Daldowie far behin' me."
"And where have you been," I asked, "since then? Both Hector and I searched the length and breadth of Galloway for you, but without avail."
"Oh, fie," she said. "Ha'e you no' been tellin' me that you thocht I was in the Kingdom of Heaven--and you looked for me in the Kingdom o' Galloway," and in the playful notes of her voice I heard the echo of her mother's.
"Where was I?" she continued. "Weel, I was within three miles o' Dumfries a' the time. Ye see, when I left Daldowie, I didna ken where tae go. I ran for miles and miles ower the hills, till I could run nae langer; and then the dark fell, and I lay doon among the heather and cried mysel' to sleep. But when the mornin' cam' I sat up and said to mysel', 'Mary Paterson--you maunna be a fool.' I spoke it oot lood--and it sounded sae like mither's voice that I began to greet again, and I went on greetin' till I could greet nae mair, and then I felt better." She looked at me roguishly. "And after that," she went on, "I set oot for Dumfries. I thocht if I could reach the Solway I micht wade across it to England, but--I'm thinkin' noo that I've seen it, I would ha'e been drooned in the attempt." She laughed, and the gull above us, with its yellow legs apart, and its tail stretched tensely fan-wise, dropped down and touched the sea with its beak, and having seized its prey, wheeled round on wide wings and floated above us again.
"Food I got frae kindly cotters, and when at last I reached Dumfries I set oot to mak' for Glencaple. But when half-way there I sat doon by the road and began to think, and then for the first time I missed my ring, and thinkin' o' the day when you put it on my finger and o' a' the love you bore me, I fair broke doon and cried like a bairn. I was greetin' sae sair that I didna notice a lady dressed in black until she was standing beside me. Very gently she asked me what ailed me, and the look in her face made me feel that she had kent sorrow herse?--so I tellt her everything. Before I was finished she was greetin' as sair as mysel', and then she slipped her airm through mine and drew me to my feet and kissed me. 'I am but a poor widow,' she said, 'whose husband and sons have died for the Covenant: but the widow's cruse never runs dry, and you are welcome to a share of whatever the Lord sends me.' She led me to her bonnie wee hoose, set in a plantin' o' beech trees on the Glencaple road, and she has been a mother to me, and I a daughter to her ever since. Sometimes we would shelter fugitive hill-men--and often I ha'e ta'en them food--and it was for that, for I was caught red-handed, that I was made prisoner and thrown into the Tolbooth."
"And that," I said, taking up the tale, "is how you come now to be sitting, my wife, beside me." I kissed her beneath her little shell-like ear.
"Behave yoursel'," she said with mock sternness. "The captain will see you!"