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For weeks he had tracked the Killer; for weeks he had followed him as he crossed Kenmuir, bound on his bloody errands; yet always had lost him on the Marches. Now, at last, he had run him to ground. Yet his heart went out to his enemy in his distress. "I thowt t'had been yo', lad," the Master whispered, his hand on the dark head at his knee "I thowt t'had bin yo'!"
The Master of Kenmuir it was at whom he was aiming when he remarked one day at the Arms: "Masel', I aye prefaire the good man who does no go to church, to the bad man who does. But then, as ye say, Mr. Burton, I'm peculiar."
While Tammas, Rob Saunderson, Tupper, Hoppin, Londesley, and the rest joined hands and went raving round like so many giddy girls. Of them all, however, none was so uproarious in the mad heat of his enthusiasm as David M'Adam. He stood in the Kenmuir wagon beside Maggie, a conspicuous figure above the crowd, as he roared in hoarse ecstasy: "Weel done, oor Bob! Weel done, Mr. Moore!
From the Highlands they came; from the far Campbell country; from the Peak; from the county of many acres; from all along the silver fringes of the Solway; assembling in that quiet corner of the earth to see the famous Gray Dog of Kenmuir fight his last great battle for the Shepherds' Trophy. By noon the gaunt Scaur looked down on such a gathering as it had never seen.
Perfectly compact, utterly lithe, inimitably graceful with his airy-fairy action; a gentleman every inch, you could not help but stare at him Owd Bob o' Kenmuir. At the foot of the ladder the two stopped. And the young dog, placing his forepaws on a lower rung, looked up, slowly waving his silvery brush. "A proper Gray Dog!" mused Tammas, gazing down into the dark face beneath him.
"Tis a shame Mr. M'Adam should lead him such a life," the woman continued indignantly. She laid a hand on her husband's arm, and looked up at him coaxingly. "Could yo' not say summat to un, Master, think 'ee? Happen he'd 'tend to you," she pleaded. For Mrs. Moore imagined that there could be no one but would gladly heed what James Moore, Master of Kenmuir, might say to him.
The toasts duly honoured, James Moore, by prescriptive right as Master of Kenmuir, rose to answer. He began by saying that he spoke "as representing all the tenants," but he was interrupted. "Na," came a shrill voice from half-way down the table. "Yell except me, James Moore. I'd as lief be represented by Judas!"
She went no longer blithely singing about her work; and all the springiness had fled from her gait. The people of Kenmuir vied with one another in their attempts to console their young mistress. Maggie was not the only one in whose life David's absence had created a void. Last as he would have been to own it, M'Adam felt acutely the boy's loss.
And on Sundays and holidays for of these latter he took, unasking, what he knew to be his due all day long, from cock-crowing to the going down of the sun, he would pass at Kenmuir. In this one matter the boy was invincibly stubborn. Nothing his father could say or do sufficed to break him of the habit. He endured everything with white-lipped, silent doggedness, and still held on his way.
He had come back to the Grange during his father's absence, and, taking the Cup from its grimy bed, had marched it away to its rightful home. For that evening at Kenmuir, James Moore had said to him: "David, your father's not sent the Cup. I shall come and fetch it to-morrow." And David knew he meant it.
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