My mother at the door of her chamber cried, "Haste ye, William, or I must run mysel'!"
For my father had made her promise that she would not go out of her chamber to meet him at the return, being easily touched in her breast with the night air.
So I hasted and ran down as I was, with my points all untied, and set wide open the door.
"Faither!" I cried as I undid the bolt and pushed the leaves of the door abroad, "Faither, ye are welcome hame!" And I could hear my mother listening above, for his foot over the threshold. Yet he came not within, which was a wonder to me. So I went out upon the step of the nether door, but my father was not there. Only the same strange chill wind went round the house, soughing and moaning blindly as before, and a smoor of white fog blew like muirburn past the door.
Then my hair rose upon my head and the skin of my brow pricked, because I knew that strange portents were abroad that night.
"What for does your faither no come ben the hoose to me?" cried my mother impatiently from the stairhead. I could hear her clasping and unclasping her hands, for my ears are quick at taking sounds.
"I think he must be gone to the stable with Gay Garland, to stall him beside Philiphaugh," I answered, for so my father's old white horse was named, because in his young days my father had been at that place on the day when Montrose and his Highlandmen got their settling. This is what I said to my mother, but indeed my thought was far other.
I lifted a loaded pistol that lay ever in the aumrie by the door-cheek and went off in the direction of the stable. The door was shut, but I undid the pin and went within. My father was not there. The horses were moving restlessly and lifting their feet uneasily as they do on ice or other kittle footing. Then of a truth I knew there was something more than canny abroad about Earlstoun that night, and that we should hear ill news or the morning. And when a bundle of reins slipped from the shelf and fell on my shoulder like a man's hand clapping on me unaware, I cried out like a frighted fowl and dropped almost to the ground. Yet though I am delicate and not overly well grown in my body, I do not count myself a coward; even though my brother Sandy's courage be not mine. "Blind-eye, hard-head" was ever his sort, but I love to take my danger open-eyed and standing up—and as little of it as possible.
As I went back—which I did instantly, leaving the stable door swinging open—I heard my mother's voice again. She was calling aloud and the sound of her voice was yearning and full like that of a young woman.
"William!" she called, and again "William!"