“But it’s an ill custom,” said Mrs. Douglas. “However, as you’re here ye may just get me my stocking, Kirsteen, and take up a stitch or two that I let fall. Na, na, no strangers ever come here. And now that my Robbie’s going, there will be fewer than ever. I wish that your father would not keep that laddie out of his bed, and him starting so early. And, eh, me, to think that I’m his mother, and most likely will never see him in this world again!” CHAPTER IV. Robbie went away next morning very early, before the October day was fairly afloat in the skies. They had no carriage at Drumcarro except “the gig,” and it was perched up in this high conveyance, looking very red with tears and blue with cold, that the household, all standing round the door, saw the last of the boy mounted beside his father, with a large portmanteau standing uncomfortably between them. His other baggage had been sent off in the cart in the middle of the night, Jock as a great favour accompanying the carter, to the great envy and wrath of Jamie, who thought it hard that he should miss such a “ploy,” and could see no reason why his brother should be preferred because he was two years older. Jamie stood at the horse’s head looking as like a groom as he could make himself, while his father made believe to hold in the steady honest mare who knew the way as well as he did, and was as little troubled by any superfluous fun or friskiness. Mrs. Douglas had remained in bed dissolved in tears, and her boy had taken his leave of her in those congenial circumstances. “Be a good lad, Robbie, and sometimes think upon your poor mother, that will never live to see you again.” “Oh, mother, but I’ll be back long before that,” he cried vaguely, doing his best to behave like a man, but breaking out in a great burst of a sob, as she fell back weeping upon her pillows. The girls at the door were in different developments of sorrow, Mary using her handkerchief with demonstration, Kirsteen with her eyes lucid and large with unshed tears, through which everything took an enlarged, uncertain outline, and little Jeanie by turns crying and laughing as her attention was distracted from Robbie going away to Jamie standing with his little legs wide apart at the mare’s respectable head. Robbie was not at all sorry to go away, his heart was throbbing with excitement and anticipation of all the novelties before him; but he was only eighteen, and it was also full for the moment of softer emotions. Marg’ret stood behind the girls, taller than any of them, with her apron to her eyes. She was the last person upon whom his look rested as his father called out, “Stand away from her head,” as if honest Mally had been a hunter, and with a friendly touch of the whip stirred the mare into motion. Robbie looked back at the gray house, the yellow birches waving in the winds, the hillside beyond, and the group round the door, and waved his hand and could not speak. But he was not sorry to go away.