So, as I say, this day she set to the baking early, and it went to my heart when I saw she was making the wheaten cakes raised with sour buttermilk that were my father's favourites.
She had not been at it long before in came Jock o' the Garpel, hot-foot from the hill.
"Maister Alexander!" he cried, panting and broken-winded with haste, "Maister Alexander is comin' ower the Brae!"
There was silence in the wide kitchen for a moment, only the sound of my mother's roller being heard, "dunt-dunting" on the dough.
"Is he by his lane?" asked my mother without raising her head from the bake-board.
"Ay," said Jock o' the Garpel, "a' by his lane. No a man rides ahint him."
And again there was silence in the wide house of Earlstoun.
My mother went to the girdle to turn the wheaten cakes that were my father's favourites, and as she bent over the fire, there was a sound as if rain-drops were falling and birsling upon the hot girdle. But it was only the water running down my mother's cheeks for the love of her youth, because now her last hope was fairly gone.
Then in the middle of her turning she drew the girdle off the fire, not hastily, but with care and composedness.
"I'll bake nae mair," she cried, "Sandy has come ower the hill his lane!"