‘Where does he want to take me, Kirsty? Is it far?’ he asked. ‘Ay, it’s a gey bitty; it’s nearhan’ at the tap o’ the Horn, a wee ayont it.’ ‘Then I think I shall not go,’ returned Francis. ‘I will come another day.’ ‘Steenie! Steenie!’ cried Kirsty, ‘he’ll no gang the day. He maun gang hame. He says he’ll come anither time. Haud ye awa on to yer hoose; I s’ be wi’ ye by and by.’ Steenie went up the hill, and Kirsty and Francis walked toward Corbyknowe. ‘Has no young man appeared yet to put Steenie’s nose out of joint, Kirsty?’ asked Gordon. Kirsty thought the question rude, but answered, with quiet dignity, ‘No ane. I never had muckle opinion o’ _yoong_ men, and dinna care aboot their company.--But what are ye thinkin o’ duin yersel--I mean, whan ye’re throu wi’ the college?’ she continued. ‘Ye’ll surely be comin hame to tak things intil yer ain han’? My father says whiles he’s some feart they’re no bein made the maist o’.’ ‘The property must look after itself, Kirsty. I will be a soldier like my father. If it could do without him when he was in India, it may just as well do without me. As long as my mother lives, she shall do what she likes with it.’ Thus talking, and growing more friendly as they went, they walked slowly back to the house. There Francis mounted his horse and rode away, and for more than two years they saw nothing of him. CHAPTER XIV STEENIE’S HOUSE Steenie seemed always to experience a strange sort of terror while waiting for anyone to come out of the weem, into which he never entered; and it was his repugnance to the place that chiefly moved him to build a house of his own. He may have also calculated on being able, with such a refuge at hand, to be on the hill in all weathers. They still made use of their little hut as before, and Kirsty still kept her library in it, but it was at the root of the Horn, and Steenie loved the peak of it more than any other spot in his narrow world. I have already said that when, on the occasion of its discovery, Steenie, for the first and the last time, came out of the weem, he fled to the Horn. There he roamed for hours, possessed with the feeling that he had all but lost Kirsty who had taken possession of a house into which he could never accompany her. For himself he would like a house on the very top of the Horn, not one inside it!