*CHAPTER XLIII.* As time went on, and his fortune accumulated, there came to Archibald Herries that impulse which generally visits the laborious and land-loving Scot at some period of his career—the impulse to possess himself of territorial acres—the ancestral ones if possible. The family from which Herries sprang had owned land in the Galloway region, or near about Kirkcudbright. It occurred to him suddenly, in the summer of ’96, when town was empty, and the grass growing up between the cobbles of the Edinburgh streets, after its rural wont, that he would take a tour in the South and re-visit the country of his sires. He set out with a couple of good nags—one ridden by his servant, with a pack-saddle. It was a successful expedition (all worldly matters prospered with Herries in these days), and in more ways than in mere pleasure. Not only did he see the country to advantage in the fine summer weather, but he discovered that a small property, with its excellent mansion house, which had once been the ancient possession of a younger branch of his family, was for sale. There seemed no reason—certainly not want of funds—why he should not become the purchaser. It might have occurred to him to ask himself why he, unmarried and childless, should burden himself with acres never to become an inheritance. But no such consideration gave him pause. He was inwardly determined that, at the first moment he thought fit to do so, he should marry—ay, and beget sons to carry on his name and fame. True, that moment had never come; but it was not for love’s sake that it tarried—or so he was convinced. It was on his return journey that he stayed for a few nights at Dumfries. With his pleasure-trip he had combined a certain modicum of business, and the affairs of an important client detained him in the country-town longer than he meant. In the long, summer evenings he would stroll about the streets, losing himself in its little vennels and closes, and stopping every now and then to stare about him, as a man will in a place that is strange to him. That Dumfries was becoming famous as the last home of the man who had practically ruined his life, Herries may have known, but only vaguely. The fashionable world had dropped the poet Burns. The town roared over ’Tam o’ Shanter’ when it appeared, but forgot to pension the unlucky bard struggling with his poverty on the banks of Nith.