The words were scarce out of her mouth when with a leap so quick that the collies had not even time to rise, I was over the dyke and striding across the moss and whinstone-crag towards the house by the waterside, where my brother’s light had long been burning over his books.
I did not so much as look about me till I was on the crest of the hill. Then for a single moment I stood looking back into the clear grey bath of night behind me, where the lass I loved was keeping her watch in the lonely sheepfold.
Yet I was pleased with myself too. For though my dismissal had been so swift and unexpected, I felt that I had not done by any means badly for myself.
At least I could call Alexander-Jonita my friend. And there was never a lad upon all the hills of heather that could do so much.
CHAPTER XX.
MUTTERINGS OF STORM.
(The Narrative of Quintin MacClellan resumed.)
It was a day of high summer when the anger of mine enemies drew finally to a head, and that within mine own land of Balmaghie. The Presbytery were in the habit of meeting at a place a little way from the centre of the parish, called Cullenoch—or, as one would say in English, “The Woodlands.”
In twos or threes they came, riding side by side on their ponies, or appearing singly out of some pass among the hills. So, as I say, the Presbytery assembled at Cullenoch, and the master of it, Andrew Cameron of Kirkcudbright, was there, with his orders from wily Carstaires, the pope of the restored Kirk of Scotland.
To this day I can see his aspect as he rose up among the brethren with a great roll in his hand—solemn, portentous, full of suave, easy words and empty, sonorous utterances.
“Fathers and brethren,” he said, looking on us with a comprehending pity for our feebleness of capacity, “there hath come that from Her Most Noble and Christian Majesty the Queen Anna, which it behooves us to treat with all the respect due to one who is at once the Anointed of God, and also as the fountain of all authority, in some sense also the Head of the Church!”
As he finished he laid upon the table a great parchment, and tapped it impressively with his finger.