AN ADOPTED SON
It is needless to trace day by day the events of the next fortnight. Each morning found me with increasing strength. The good wife of the house was continually solicitous for my welfare, and had I been son of hers she could not have bestowed more care upon me. She took a pride in every sign of returning strength. Daily she brought me shreds of family gossip; news of the crops; news of the cattle; told me, with housewifely pride, how many chickens had come from her last sitting of eggs.
More than once, in our talk, I tried to turn the conversation to Mary; but never with much success. Shyness kept me from advances too direct. Sometimes she would tell me of the hill-men; and once she told me, with pride flashing in her eyes, of her son.
"He died," she said, "at Drumclog. It was a short, sharp fecht, and the dragoons reeled and fled before the Bonnets o' Blue. My laddie was sair wounded, and died in the arms o' guid Maister Main. His last words were: 'Tell my mither no' to greet. It's been a graun' fecht, and oor side's winnin'.'" There were no tears in her eyes as she told me the tale, but when she had finished she laid a hand upon my head and gently stroked my hair. "He was sic' anither as you, when he fell," and she turned and left me. Of an evening the farmer would sometimes come up, bringing with him a dambrod, and many a well-fought game we had together. He played skilfully and usually won, which gave him considerable satisfaction.
"Ye canna' beat Daldowie on the dambrod," he would say, with a twinkle in his eyes. "Scotland owes little enough to Mary Stuart, the Jezebel, but she or some o' her following brocht this game wi' them, and that is something they'll be able to say for themselves on the Judgment Day. They'll mak' a puir enough show that day, or I'm mistaken, but the dambrod will coont on their side."
When we had played for a week, and Saturday night came, he brought up a slate with a record of the score.
"It's like this, ye see," he said. "We've played a score and half o' games. I ha'e won a score and seven, and you won three--which ye shouldna' ha'e done ava' if I had opened richt and no foozled some o' the moves wi' my king. So ye're weel bate, and it's as weel for you that I dinna' believe in playin' for money, or it is a ruined lad ye'd be the nicht."
There was a gleam of satisfaction in his grey eyes, and I could see that to have beaten me so soundly had given him great pleasure.
"We'll no play the nicht; it's gettin' ower near the Sabbath," he continued, "but I'll bate ye even better next week."
I should have been lacking in gratitude if I had not begun to develop a warm affection for my friends. Simple folks, their joys were simple ones, but they were both filled with the zest of life; and in spite of the daily peril in which they lived, sunshine, rather than clouds, seemed to overhang their dwelling.