I visited my friend, a few days after my arrival in Irvine, at the farm-house of Mossgiel, to which, on the death of his father, he had removed, with his brother Gilbert and his mother. I could not help observing that his manners were considerably changed: my welcome seemed less kind and hearty than I could have anticipated from the warm-hearted peasant of five years ago, and there was a stern and almost supercilious elevation in his bearing, which at first pained and offended me. I had met with him as he was returning from the fields after the labours of the day; the dusk of twilight had fallen; and, though I had calculated on passing the evening with him at the farm-house of Mossgiel, so displeased was I, that, after our first greeting, I had more than half changed my mind. The recollection of his former kindness to me, however, suspended the feeling, and I resolved on throwing myself on his hospitality for the night, however cold the welcome.
“I have come all the way from Irvine to see you, Mr. Burns,” I said. “For the last five years, I have thought more of my mother and you than of any other two persons in the country. May I not calculate, as of old, on my supper and a bed?”
There was an instantaneous change in his expression.
“Pardon me, my friend,” he said, grasping my hand; “I have, unwittingly, been doing you wrong; one may surely be the master of an Indiaman and in possession of a heart too honest to be spoiled by prosperity!”
The remark served to explain the haughty coldness of his manner which had so displeased me, and which was but the unwillingly assumed armour of a defensive pride.
“There, brother,” he said, throwing down some plough irons which he carried, “send wee Davoc with these to the smithy, and bid him tell Rankin I won’t be there to-night. The moon is rising, Mr. Lindsay—shall we not have a stroll together through the coppice?”
“That of all things,” I replied; and, parting from Gilbert, we struck into the wood.
The evening, considering the lateness of the season, for winter had set in, was mild and pleasant. The moon at full was rising over the Cumnock hills, and casting its faint light on the trees that rose around us, in their winding-sheets of brown and yellow, like so many spectres, or that, in the more exposed glares and openings of the wood, stretched their long naked arms to the sky. A light breeze went rustling through the withered grass; and I could see the faint twinkling of the falling leaves, as they came showering down on every side of us.
“We meet in the midst of death and desolation,” said my companion—“we parted when all around us was fresh and beautiful. My father was with me then, and—and Mary Campbell—and now”——
“Mary! your Mary!” I exclaimed—“the young—the beautiful—alas! is she also gone?”