bathed in it as it wound, clear and shining, among the green meadows
outside the town, and run "skirl-naked" to dry himself, in full sight of
scandalised passengers in the Edinburgh train; he had slid on it in
winter. The memory of the little stream had always lain in the back of
his mind as something precious--and now to find it spanned by a staring
new stone bridge. Those Town Councils with their improvements!

Even Tweed Bridge had not been left alone. It had been widened, as an
inscription in the middle told the world at large. He leant on it and
looked up the river. Peel Tower was the same, anyway. No one had dared
to add one cubit to its grey stature. It was a satisfaction to look at
something so unchanging.

The sun had still something of its summer heat, and it was pleasant to
stand there and listen to the sound of the river over the pebbles and
see the flaming trees reflected in the blue water all the way up
Tweedside till the river took a wide curve before the green slope on
which the castle stood. A wonderfully pretty place, Priorsford, he told
himself: a home-like place--if one had anyone to come home to.

He turned slowly away. He would go and look at The Rigs. His mother had
come to it as a bride. He had been born there. Though occupied by
strangers, it was the nearest he had to a home. The house in Prince's
Gate was well furnished, comfortable, smoothly run by efficient
servants, but only a house when all was said. He felt he would like to
creep into The Rigs, into the sitting-room where his mother had always
sat (the other larger rooms, the "good room" as it was called, was kept
for visitors and high days), and lay his tired body on the horsehair
arm-chair by the fireside. He could rest there, he thought. It was
impossible, of course. There would be no horsehair arm-chair, for
everything had been sold--and there was no mother.

But, anyway, he would go and look at it. There used to be primroses--but
this was autumn. Primroses come in the spring.

Thirty years--but The Rigs was not changed, at least not outwardly. Old
Mrs. Reid had loved the garden, and Great-aunt Alison, and Jean after
her, had carried on her work.

The little house looked just as Peter Reid remembered it.

He would go in and ask to see it, he told himself.

He would tell these Jardines that the house was his and he meant to live
in it himself. They wouldn't like it, but he couldn't help that.
Perhaps he would be able to persuad