The stranger
laughed.
Weel, they rode on through the thickest of the wood, when, all of a
sudden, the horse stopped at the door of a great house; and, but that he
knew the place was ten miles off, my father would have thought he was
at Redgauntlet Castle. They rode into the outer courtyard, through the
muckle faulding yetts, and aneath the auld portcullis; and the whole
front of the house was lighted, and there were pipes and fiddles, and
as much dancing and deray within as used to be at Sir Robert's house at
Pace and Yule, and such high seasons. They lap off, and my gudesire, as
seemed to him, fastened his horse to the very ring he had tied him to
that morning when he gaed to wait on the young Sir John.
"God!" said my gudesire, "if Sir Robert's death be but a dream!"
He knocked at the ha' door just as he was wont, and his auld
acquaintance, Dougal MacCallum--just after his wont, too--came to open
the door, and said, "Piper Steenie, are ye there lad? Sir Robert has
been crying for you."
My gudesire was like a man in a dream--he looked for the stranger, but
he was gane for the time. At last he just tried to say, "Ha! Dougal
Driveower, are you living? I thought ye had been dead.
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