‘There is no use in pushing on to Fullarton,’ he said, laying his hand on Rob Roy’s mane, ‘we shall only break his heart, poor little brute. I am going to leave you here and get across country to the kirk on my own feet. Here is some money--go to the nearest farm and rest him; feed him when he’ll eat, and come on to Whanland when you can. Whatever may happen this morning, I shall be there in the afternoon.’ The boy nodded, measuring the miles silently that lay between them and the distant kirk. It would be a race, he considered, but it would take a deal to beat the Laird of Whanland. ‘Brides is aye late,’ he remarked briefly. ‘Who told you that?’ asked Gilbert, as he pulled off his overcoat and threw it into the cart. ‘Ma’ Grannie.’ Speid vaulted over the low wall beside them and began to descend the slope. Half-way down it he heard Jimmy’s voice crying luck to him and saw his cap lifted in the air. The rain of the previous day and night had made the ground heavy, and he soon found that the remaining time would just serve him and no more. He ran on at a steady pace, taking a straight line to the edge of the woods; most of the fields were divided by stone dykes and those obstacles gave him no trouble. Sometimes he slipped in wet places; once or twice he was hailed by a labourer who stopped in his work to watch the gentleman original enough to race over the open landscape for no apparent reason. But he took no heed, plodding on. When he came to where the corner of the woods protruded, a dark triangle, into the pasture land, he struck across it. The rain had made the pines aromatic, and the strong, clean smell refreshed him as he went over the elastic bed of pine-needles strewn underfoot. The undignified white bobtails of rabbits disappeared, right and left, among the stems at his approach, and once, a roe-deer fled in leaps into the labyrinth of trunks. Before emerging again into the open he paused to rest and look at his watch; walking and running, he had come well and more quickly than he had supposed; he thanked heaven for the sound body which he had never allowed idleness to make inactive. It wanted twenty-five minutes of eleven, and he had covered a couple of miles in the quarter of an hour since he had left Jimmy. He judged himself a little under two more from Morphie kirk. The boy’s unexpected knowledge of the habits of brides had amused him, even in his hurry, and he devoutly hoped it might prove true.