I wish that I could dwell longer on these sweet, peaceful days in Galloway, but the spring went on apace, and Sir Thomas was summoned back to Culzean. His nephew the Earl urgently needed his advice, and wrote to him to say so. ’The Earl makes you many compliments,’ said the Lady Lochnaw. ’Ay, ay,’ said Culzean, ’Earl John was aye a great spender with his tongue, even as was the daddy of him.’ So we were bound to ride away from this kindly and merry house of Lochnaw, and much did I desire to return thither. Never once did we speak of wars and stratagems while we remained under that roof, but all of friendship, of lusty daffing, and of leasome love. But when we mounted I bade farewell to all with a wae heart. I envied the Sheriff greatly, for he had a wife whom he loved in age as in youth, and yet whom he knew wherein to be the master of—a thing, I take it, which makes home happier than all besides. I thought within me that Patrick, his son, had set himself a harder field to plough in his Marget. Yea, already methought he had let the reins slip from his hands—which, after all, is no strange thing, considering that she was own sister to Marjorie and Nell Kennedy, of whose stiff necks I had oft had experience. Ere we went, the Sheriff said a word that amused us all. ’When I came to be Sheriff,’ he said, ’I found my father at the horn, outlaw and rebel, for refusing to pay teinds to cover the back of a bishop’s lady with silks and satins. And when I die it looks like that I shall see my son at the horn for cleading of his wife according to the degree of a queen.’ For young Patrick Agnew liked better than all to be for ever gadding about after the merchants of France and the Low Countries, who knew his weakness so well that they would come from far to sell him stuff for the decking of his lady—who, when all was said and done, was nothing to compare to Nell or even to Marjorie, her younger sisters. So we departed, almost heart-broken to leave the sweet place of Lochnaw. And the Sheriff rode with us to the village of Stranrawer—a long, clarty, Irish-looking street with pigs and bairns running about it, set on the shore of a fine loch. Here Sir Andrew and his retinue bade us farewell, and so turned them and rode away back to the homely steading of Lochnaw. Now, upon our homeward journey it was the great good pleasure of the knight, my master, that we should ride up the Minnoch Glen to visit my father and mother, whom I had not seen for long. Sir Thomas put it, that it would be well that we rode not directly by Ardstinchar and near to Bargany along the shore road, for the folk of Bargany were cruelly set against us. Nevertheless, I knew that the real reason was that he wished me to see my mother. So we struck across the moorland country of Wigtonshire to the head of the Loch of Cree, which is a vast, wild, swampy place where many waterfowl congregate, and where duck and seagull build their nests.