It was, I think, about three hours after midday when we were ready to start on our journey. A strange cavalcade we formed--Marjory on the roan, dressed plainly as for the hills, and with a basket slung across the saddlebow, for all the world like a tinker's pannier; I myself on Maisie, well-mounted and armed, and Nicol on foot, lean and ill-clad as ever. It was not without a pang that we set out, for it is hard to leave the fair and settled dwellings of home for haphazard lodging among rough morasses. Marjory in especial could scarce refrain from tears, while I own that as I looked down the vale and saw the woods of Barns and the green hills of Manor, I could have found it in me to be despondent.
But once we left the valley and began to ascend the slopes, our spirits returned. It was an afternoon among a thousand, one such as only April weather and the air of the Tweed valley can bring. The sky was cloudless and the wind sharp, and every hill and ridge in the great landscape stood out clear as steel. The grass was just greening beneath our feet, the saugh bushes were even now assuming the little white catkins, and the whole air was filled with a whistling and twittering of birds. We took our road straight through the pine wood which clothes the western slopes of Scrape. The ground was velvet-dry, and the deer fled swiftly as we neared their coverts. It was glorious to be abroad and feel the impulse of life stirring everywhere around. Yet I could not keep from the reflection that at this very time the day before I had been nearing the port of Leith in the Seamaw, expecting nothing save a pleasant homecoming, and thereafter a life of peace. Truly in one short day and night I had led a somewhat active life, and now was fleeing from the very place I had most longed to return to.
Soon we left the woods and came out on the heathery brow of Scrape, and crossing it, entered the deep glen where the burn of Scrape flows to join the Powsail. The heather had been burned, as is the custom here in the early spring, and great clouds of fine white dust rose beneath the hooves of our horses. A dry crackling of twigs and the strident creak of the larger roots as they grated on one another, filled our ears. Then once more we ascended, high and ever higher, over rocks and treacherous green well-eyes and great spaces of red fern, till we gained the brow of the hill which they call Glenstivon Dod, and looked down into the little glen of Powsail.