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Taylor were already far on the road to the Swintons', James Westfall whipped up his horses and grew almost as thirsty for revenge as was his wife. Where the steer had been roasted, the powdered ashes were now cold white, and Mr. McLean, feeling through his dreams the change of dawn come over the air, sat up cautiously among the outdoor slumberers and waked his neighbor.
Before the Taylors' knocking had brought the Swintons to their door, other wheels sounded, and here were Mr. and Mrs. Carmody, and Uncle Hughey with his wife, and close after them Mr. Dow, alone, who told how his wife had gone into one of her fits she upon whom Dr. Barker at Drybone had enjoined total abstinence from all excitement.
Sir Thomas had married in 1819 a daughter of Sir Henry Hay Makdougall of Makerstoun, Bart. Sir Thomas died at Brisbane House, Ayrshire, in January 1860, in the eighty-seventh year of his age. For an account of this family see The Swintons of that Ilk and their Cadets, 4to, 1883, a privately printed volume by A.C. Swinton of Kimmerghame.
"The Swintons have moved up from Drybone," said Mr. Taylor, always seriously. "They found it no place for young children. And there's Uncle Carmody with six, and Ben Dow. And Westfall has become a family man, and " "Jim Westfall!" exclaimed the Virginian. "Him a fam'ly man! Well, if this hyeh Territory is goin' to get full o' fam'ly men and empty o' game, I believe I'll "
He married Anne Rutherford, who, through her mother, brought the blood of the Swintons of Swinton to enrich the joint strain; and from her father, a member of a family distinguished in the annals of the University of Edinburgh, may have transmitted some of the love for books which was not the most prominent feature of the other ingredients.
Thus, tall and loose in the saddle, did he jog along the sixty miles which still lay between him and the dance. Two camps in the open, and the Virginian's Monte horse, untired, brought him to the Swintons' in good time for the barbecue. The horse received good food at length, while his rider was welcomed with good whiskey. GOOD whiskey for had not steers jumped to seventy-five?
Their line extended to a remote period of antiquity, and they had intermarried with the Douglasses, Humes, Swintons, Hays, and other families of power and distinction in the same country. Their history was frequently involved in that of Scotland itself, in whose annals their feats are recorded.
There was in Edinburgh at this time a certain John Macfarlane, w.s., whose pretty wife, in 1716, shot dead an English captain, nobody ever knew why. She fled to the Swintons of Swinton, who concealed her in their house. One day Sir Walter Scott's aunt Margaret, then a child of eight, residing at Swinton, stayed at home when the family went to church.
Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie's, but of the Keiths, through the Swintons; and like Marjorie, he stayed much at Ravelstone in his early days, with his grand-aunt Mrs. Keith....
He made his way back to the gate and leaned against it for some time; then, having at last made up his mind, he turned his back on the town and walked toward Varley, moving more slowly and wearily than if he was at the end of a long and fatiguing day's walk. Slowly he climbed the hill and made his way through the village till he reached the Swintons' cottage.
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