Foes | Page 4

the moor and been belated. Bran is with him."
"Yes.... He's a solitary one, with a thousand in himself!"
"You're the second woman," remarked Strickland, "who's said that
to-day," and told her of Mother Binning.
Mrs. Jardine pushed back a fallen ember with the toe of her shoe. "I
don't know whether she sees or only thinks she sees. Some do the tane
and some do the tither. Here's the laird."
Two men entered together--a large man and a small man. The first,
great of height and girth, was plainly dressed; the last, seeming slighter
by contrast than he actually was, wore fine cloth, silken hose, gold
buckles to his shoes, and a full wig. The first had a massive, somewhat
saturnine countenance, the last a shrewd, narrow one. The first had a
long stride and a wide reach from thumb to little finger, the last a short

step and a cupped hand. William Jardine, laird of Glenfernie, led the
way to the fire.
"The ford was swollen. Mr. Touris got a little wet and chilled."
"Ah, the fire is good!" said Mr. Touris. "They do not burn wood like
this in London!"
"You will burn it at Black Hill. I hope that you like it better and
better?"
"It has possibilities, ma'am. Undoubtedly," said Mr. Touris, the Scots
adventurer for fortune, set up as merchant-trader in London, making his
fortune by "interloping" voyages to India, but now shareholder and part
and lot of the East India Company--"undoubtedly the place has
possibilities." He warmed his hands. "Well, it would taste good to come
back to Scotland--!" His words might have been finished out, "and laird
it, rich and influential, where once I went forth, cadet of a good family,
but poorer than a church mouse!"
Mrs. Jardine made a murmur of hope that he would come back to
Scotland. But the laird looked with a kind of large gloom at the
reflection of fire and candle in battered breastplate and morion and
crossed pikes.
Supper was brought in by two maids, Eppie and Phemie, and with them
came old Lauchlinson, the butler. Mrs. Jardine placed herself behind
the silver urn, and Mr. Touris was given the seat nearest the fire. The
boy James appeared, and with him the daughter of the house, Alice, a
girl of twelve, bonny and merry.
"Where is Alexander?" asked the laird.
Strickland answered. "He is not in yet, sir. I fancy that he walked to the
far moor. Bran is with him."
"He's a wanderer!" said the laird. "But he ought to keep hours."

"That's a fine youth!" quoth Mr. Touris, drinking tea. "I marked him
yesterday, casting the bar. Very strong--a powerful frame like yours,
Glenfernie! When is he going to college?"
"This coming year. I have kept him by me late," said the laird,
broodingly. "I like my bairns at home."
"Aye, but the young will not stay as they used to! They will be
voyaging," said the guest. "They build outlandish craft and forthfare, no
matter what you cry to them!" His voice had a mordant note. "I know.
I've got one myself--a nephew, not a son. But I am his guardian and
he's in my house, and it is the same. If I buy Black Hill, Glenfernie, I
hope that your son and my nephew may be friends. They're about of an
age."
The listening Jamie spoke from beyond Strickland. "What's your
nephew's name, sir?"
"Ian. Ian Rullock. His father's mother was a Highland lady, near
kinswoman to Gordon of Huntley." Mr. Touris was again speaking to
his host. "As a laddie, before his father's death (his mother, my sister,
died at his birth), he was much with those troublous northern kin. His
father took him, too, in England, here and there among the Tory crowd.
But I've had him since he was twelve and am carrying him on in the
straight Whig path."
"And in the true Presbyterian religion?"
"Why, as to that," said Mr. Touris, "his father was of the Church
Episcopal in Scotland. I trust that we are all Christians, Glenfernie!"
The laird made a dissenting sound. "I kenned," he said, and his voice
held a grating gibe, "that you had left the Kirk."
Mr. Archibald Touris sipped his tea. "I did not leave it so far,
Glenfernie, that I cannot return! In England, for business reasons, I
found it wiser to live as lived the most that I served. Naaman was
permitted to bow himself in the house of Rimmon."

"You are not Naaman," answered the laird. "Moreover, I hold that
Naaman sinned!"
Mrs. Jardine would make a diversion. "Mr. Jardine, will you have sugar
to your tea? Mr. Strickland says the great pine is blown down, this side
the glen. The Mercury brings us news of the great world,