But the medallist never returned to college. During the early falling twilight of the next Hint-o’-Hairst (or end of harvest), his father, Gawain Morrison, driving homeward from market all too mellow, brake neck-bone over the crags of the Witch’s pool.
So, his mother being a feeble woman, though still young and buxom, John Charles had perforce to bide at home and shoulder the responsibilities of a farm of two thousand pastoral acres and a rent of £800, payable twice a year in Cairn Edward town.
It was a sore burden for such young shoulders, but John Charles had grit in him, and, what made his heart glad, he could do most of his work, by lea rig and pasturage, within sight of a certain cottage where dwelt the maid with a ribbon of blue about her neck.
There was no possibility of any marriage, nor, indeed, talk of any between them, and that for two good reasons: Gawain Morrison had died in debt. He was "behindhand at the Bank," and his farm and stock were left to his widow at her own disposition, unless she should marry again, in which case they were willed to his son John Charles Morrison, presently student of arts in the University of Edinburgh. The will had been made during the one winter that son had spent away from home.
John Charles’ bitter hour in the bank at Cairn Edward was sweetened by the sympathy and kindliness of Henry Marchbanks, who, being one of the best judges of character in Scotland, saw cause to give this young man a chance to discharge his father’s liabilities.
At twenty-five John Charles was once more a free man, and there was a substantial balance to his mother’s credit in the bank of Cairn Edward. Penny of his own he had not received one for all his five years’ work.
But Mrs. Morrison was that most foolish of womankind—an old woman striving to appear young. She had taken a strong dislike to the girl mistress of the white cottage at her gates, and was never tired of railing at her pretensions to beauty, at her lightheadedness, and at the suitors who stayed their horses for a word or a flower from across the cropped yew hedge of Carnation Maybold’s cottage.
But John Charles, steadfast in all things, was particularly admirable in his silences. He let his mother rail on, and then, at the quiet hour of e’en stole down to the dyke-side for a "word." He never entered Carnation’s dwelling, nor did he even pass the girdling hedge of yew and privet. But there was one place where the defences were worn low. Behind the well curb occurred this breach of continuity in the dead engineer’s hedges, and to this place night after night through the years, that quiet steadfast lover, John Charles Morrison, came to touch the hand of his mistress.