"Jean!" he cried, "Jean Gordon, here is your laddie come hame." He spoke just as he had done more than twenty years ago, when many a time he had fallen out with his mother, and betaken himself to the sanctuary of Jean's Wa's by the side of the Garpel Glen. For Jean Gordon it was, the recluse of the Holy Linn, his cousin Will's ancient nurse and kinswoman, and to them both the kindliest and most lovely old maid in the world. "Wi' laddie, laddie, what has gotten ye? Ye are a' white and shakin', dripping wet, too; come ben and get a change and let me put ye to your bed." "What day of the month is this?" cried Wat, eagerly, even before he had crossed the threshold. "Laddie, what should auld Jean Gordon ken aboot times and seasons? Nocht ava--ye couldna expect it. But there is a decent man in the kitchen that mayhap can tell ye--Peter McCaskill, the Curate o' Dalry, puir body. He was sorely in fear of being rabbled by the Hill Folk, so he cam' his ways here, silly body. There's no' a man in the country-side wad hae laid hand on him--if he would just say his prayer withoot the book, gie his bit sermon, and stop havering aboot King Jamie--at least, till he comes to his ain again." Thus gossiping to keep up Wat Gordon's spirits, the ancient dame led the way down the passages, with a foot that was yet light upon the heather, though seventy years scarcely counted up all her mortal span. "Clerk McCaskill," cried Jean, "ye'll mind Maister Walter? Rise up and welcome him! For it is in his hoose that ye are sheltered, and, indeed, his very ale that ye are drinkin' at this moment." Peter McCaskill rose to his feet and held out his hand to Wat. He was dressed apparently in the same ancient green surtout he had worn in the year of Bothwell--a garment which seemed never to get any worse, nor yet to drop piecemeal from his shoulders with age, but to renew itself from decade to decade in a decrepit but evergreen youth. "I am rejoiced to see you in your ain castle, my lord," said the curate, ceremoniously. Then, catching sight of the pale, desperate face, he exclaimed, in a different tone, "Preserve us, laddie, what has ta'en ye? Hae ye slain a man to his wounding--a young man to his hurt? Are the dead-runners on your track?" For, indeed, Wat stood like a wild thing, hard beset by the hunters, which at the last has turned to bay in its lair. But Wat put aside all questionings with a wave of his hand, a movement which had something of his old, swift recklessness in it, as of the days when they named him the Wildcat of Lochinvar. "Tell me the day of the month," he gasped, as he stood there in the midst of the floor before the fire of logs which burned on the irons of the house-place, swaying a little on his feet, and ever checking himself like a man drunken with wine. The curate took a little calendar from his pocket--a record of saints' days and services, but interspersed with the reckonings of ale-houses and the scores of cock-fightings.