Even the lads’ homes were on the outside not so different as might have been expected. Drumsheugh had an avenue of crazy fir trees, and the dignity of a ruined tower about a bow-shot from the high, narrow, free-stone house which represented the modern mansion. Balcairnie was just such another house, a storey lower, without the avenue and the tower. It was not destitute of compensation for these deficiencies in the comfortable-looking stack-yard, which sheltered it from every wind that blew, and in the square of the farmyard which abutted on the house, and was alive and cheerful with domestic animals, and the constant work going on among them. Balcairnie was the livelier dwelling of the two. Both houses had long gardens very similar, prolific in hardy vegetables and primitive fruit, as well as in old-fashioned flowers. The gardens found room for umbrageous bowers and Dutch summer-houses, and included beech and holly hedges, which enclosed washing-greens. Inside, the best parlour of Balcairnie might have stood for the dining-room of Drumsheugh--furnished as they both were with Scotch carpets and oak, and adorned alike with silver cups, won in coursing matches, and great Chinese punch-bowls brought home by friendly sea captains. The chief difference lay in the fact that the dining-room at Drumsheugh was in constant use, while the _pièce de résistance_ among the apartments in Balcairnie was the ordinary parlour, given over to drugget and blue-and-white checked linen, with ornaments of no more costly material than cherry-wood pipes, pink-lipped shells, and peacocks’ feathers. Again, there was no drawing-room at Balcairnie, with spindle-legged chairs in painted satin-wood and white chintz covers, such as was the company room at Drumsheugh. But the boys’ bare little garret dormitories were much alike. On the rare occasions, when the lads went from home, unattended by their parents, they journeyed by one conveyance which served the whole neighbourhood, except on special occasions--Tam Fleemin’s carrier’s cart. True, on leaving school young Drumsheugh had gone to the Edinburgh University, as became his birth and rank, while young Balcairnie had entered on the apprenticeship implied in holding a plough and drawing a straight furrow under the critical eyes of his father and his father’s foreman, according to the standard for young men in his class; but on the return of the one lad from the college and the promotion of the other on the death of his father to the possession of all the pairs of horses on the farm, instead of the obligation to work one pair, the occupations and amusements of the old allies tallied once more at many points.