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Updated: June 9, 2025
Howard pushed on, walking lightly and rapidly, and found himself at last at Barton, one of those entirely delightful pastoral villages that push up so close to Cambridge on every side; a vague collection of quaint irregular cottages, whitewashed and thatched, with bits of green common interspersed, an old manorial farm with its byres and ricks, surrounded by a moat fringed with little pollarded elms.
They had also a pony and two cows, and two pigs and a couple of dozen hens and a cock quite enough to keep Nance busy; and to them also fell an adequate share of the byres and barns, and the free use of the well. Tom, however, still looked upon them as interlopers, and grudged them every stick and stone, and hoof and claw. If they had never come into the family all would have been his.
Immediately everyone with any claim to nobility in the rival camp accepted the challenge; and as the honour was given to the bravest, Kirkcaldy of Grange, Murray of Tullibardine, and Lord Lindsay of Byres defied him successively. Then Mary, perceiving the fatal humour of men's minds, decided not to run the risk of a battle.
There was no sign of Mrs. Biggs, but about the place there was a vague stir made up of the small movements and breathings of the horses in the stable, the hens shut up for the night, the cows in their distant byres. Branches of trees fretted against each other and the stream sang, out of sight.
And then, before more could be said, the curtains were torn away and half a score of men, whose approach had passed unnoticed, poured into the room. First came Morton, the Chancellor, who was to be dispossessed of the great seal in Rizzio's favour. After him followed the brutal Lindsay of the Byres, Kerr of Faudonside, black-browed Brunston, red-headed Douglas, and a half-dozen others.
The schoolmaster, as usual, offered to assist the pedlar in helping Rushbrook to his cottage; but Byres replied that he was busy, and that he need not wait for Rushbrook; the friend he had with him would assist him in taking home the drunken man. The schoolmaster reeled home, leaving the two together.
They knew, also, the feud between him and the house of Elibank, and as well did they know that the Murrays were a resolute and a sturdy race. Morn had not dawned when they arrived at the scene where their booty lay. Not a Murray was abroad; and to the extreme they carried the threat of the young laird into execution, of making "toom byres."
On Monks Barton thatches the pigeons cooed and bowed and gurgled to their ladies, cows lowed from the byres, cocks crew, and the mill-wheel, already launched upon the business of the day, panted from its dark habitation of dripping moss and fern. Billy sniffed the morning, then proceeded to a pig's sty, opened a door within it, and chuckled at the spectacle that greeted him.
"Will you have a drop of small beer, Mr Furness?" "Yes, if you please, and so will Mr Byres, too. What a pity it is your good man will not keep to small beer." "Yes, indeed," replied the wife, who went into the back premises, and soon returned with a quart mug of beer. The schoolmaster emptied half the mug, and then handed it to the pedlar. "And my little friend Joey, fast asleep, I'll warrant!"
Along it came a wain or two laden high with the first rye that was harvested that year, and a herd or two of lazy kine finding their way to the byres for the evening milking.
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