"Then when he could no longer make resistance, and bullets were pattering around him like hail, and his cheek was bleeding with a deep wound, his spirit seemed to rise the higher. For, shouting out taunts to his opponents, he broke into a song, keeping time all the while with the thrusts of his sword. Then bowing gallantly, and saluting with his blade his ring of foes, he sheathed his weapon, and joining his hands above his head, dived sheer and straight into the river, and, swimming easily, reached the French lines. At the sight those of his own side cheered, and even our men, whom he had so tricked, could scarce keep from joining. "Touching the editions which you desired, I have given orders to the bookseller on the quay at Rotterdam to send them to you. I shall be glad, indeed, to give you my poor advice on the difficult matters you speak of, if you will do me the return favour of reading through my excursus to Longinus, and giving me your veracious opinion. Of this I send you a copy. "As regards the Scot I have already spoken of, I may mention for your satisfaction that in person he was tall and thin, with black hair, and the most bronzed skin I have ever seen on a man...." When I read this letter to Marjory, her eyes were filled with tears, and for myself I would speak to no one on that day. CHAPTER IX THE END OF ALL THINGS I am writing the last words of this tale in my house of Barns after many years have come and gone since the things I wrote of. I am now no more young, and my wife is no more a slim maid, but a comely woman. The years have been years of peace and some measure of prosperity. Here in Tweeddale life runs easily and calm. Our little country matters are all the care we know, and from the greater world beyond there comes only chance rumours of change and vexation. Yet the time has not been idle, for I have busied myself much with study and the care of the land. Many have sought to draw me out to politics and statecraft, but I have ever resisted them, for after all what are these things of such importance that for them a man should barter his leisure and piece of mind? So I have even stayed fast in this pleasant dale, and let the bustle and clamour go on without my aid. It is true that more than once I have made journeys even across the water, and many times to London, on matters of private concern. It was during one of these visits to Flanders that I first learned the importance of planting wood on land, and resolved to make trial on my own estate. Accordingly I set about planting on Barns, and now have clothed some of the barer spaces of the hills with most flourishing plantations of young trees, drawn in great part from the woods of Dawyck. I can never hope to reap the benefit of them myself, but haply my grandchildren will yet bless me, when they find covert and shade where before was only a barren hillside.