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Updated: May 10, 2025
But she was a creature faithful to her prejudices, and could express by her silence and air of injured rectitude more than one less gifted could have put into a parliamentary oration. Her very heels on the stone floor of the wide kitchen at Heathknowes, where all the business of the house was transacted, fell with little raps of defiance, curt and dry.
In all truly Christian and charitable cities refuges should be built for temporarily dispossessed, homeless, and hungry heads of families. Never did I realize so clearly the difference between what interests the people in a great city and those inhabiting remote provinces as when, in mid-August, I took Irma and my firstborn son down to the wholesome breath and quiet pine shadows of Heathknowes.
I now think it had not even been fired at me. I pursued with the energy of a young stag. My mornings on the hills with Eben looking for the sheep now stood me in good stead that is, good or bad according as to whether the man in front of me had another loaded pistol ready or not. Behind me, but alas, too far to be any help, I could hear the shouting of men. Heathknowes was alarmed.
"Safer, too, here," approved my grandfather, nodding his head; "the tarry breeches will think twice before paying Heathknowes a visit with the lads about and the gate shut, and maybe the old dog not quite toothless yet!" This, indeed, was the very heart of the matter.
But as I passed back to my writing-den I could hear my brother-in-law moving restlessly about his room, and talking to himself, which was a recently-acquired habit of his. However, I took this as a good sign. Anything in the way of occupation was better than his former chill indifference to all that went forward about Heathknowes. It was, as it chanced, a busy day at the pirn-mill.
Sometimes he would ride off up a loaning to some farm-town where he had a job to be seen to, or rap with the butt of his loaded whip at the door of some roadside inn the Four Mile house or Crocketford, where he would call for a tankard and drain it off, as it were, with one toss of the head. It was easy to be seen that, for some reason of his own, he did not wish to get to Heathknowes before us.
As my grandmother and I went down the little loaning from Heathknowes Farm she had an eye for everything. She "shooed" into duty's path a youngling hen with vague maternal aspirations which was wandering off to found a family by laying an egg in the underbrush about the saw-mill.
Let me tell you that in the house of Heathknowes we harbour neither burrowing rats nor creepin' foumarts, nor any manner of unclean beasts and as for a lawvier, if lawvier ye be, ye are the first o' your breed to enter here, and if my sons hear ye talkin' o' harbourin' certes, ye stand a chance to gang oot the door wi' your feet foremost!"
Afterwards well, I had, as all men have, many things to reproach myself for this stupid jealousy being by no means the least or the lightest. Still, on the whole I had a great deal of peace and the composure of the quiet mind during these first days at Heathknowes.
Owing to the pirn-mill, our bridges were a little stronger than usual, though the roads were worn into deep ruts by the "jankers," or great two-wheeled wagons for the transport of trees out of the woods. The carriage drove right up to the outer gate of the yard of Heathknowes, half the idle laddies of Eden Valley running shouting after it.
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