For all that hour I had lived for nothing but the fight.  My cap had been whisked away by the wind, but I had never given it a thought.  Now with my heart full I turned upon my Cousin Edie, and the sight of her took me back six years.  There was the vacant staring eye and the parted lips, just as I had seen them in her girlhood, and her little hands were clenched until the knuckles gleamed like ivory.

“Ah, that captain!” said she, talking to the heath and the whin-bushes.  “There is a man so strong, so resolute!  What woman would not be proud of a man like that?”

“Aye, he did well!” I cried with enthusiasm.

She looked at me as if she had forgotten my existence.

“I would give a year of my life to meet such a man,” said she.  “But that is what living in the country means.  One never sees anybody but just those who are fit for nothing better.”

I do not know that she meant to hurt me, though she was never very backward at that; but whatever her intention, her words seemed to strike straight upon a naked nerve.

“Very well, Cousin Edie,” I said, trying to speak calmly, “that puts the cap on it.  I’ll take the bounty in Berwick to-night.”

“What, Jack! you be a soldier!”

“Yes, if you think that every man that bides in the country must be a coward.”

“Oh, you’d look so handsome in a red coat, Jack, and it improves you vastly when you are in a temper.  I wish your eyes would always flash like that, for it looks so nice and manly.  But I am sure that you are joking about the soldiering.”

“I’ll let you see if I am joking.”

Then and there I set off running over the moor, until I burst into the kitchen where my mother and father were sitting on either side of the ingle.

“Mother,” I cried, “I’m off for a soldier!”

Had I said I was off for a burglar they could not have looked worse over it, for in those days among the decent canny country folks it was mostly the black sheep that were herded by the sergeant.  But, my word, those same black sheep did their country some rare service too.  My mother put up her mittens to her eyes, and my father looked as black as a peat hole.

“Hoots, Jock, you’re daft,” says he.

“Daft or no, I’m going.”

“Then you’ll have no blessing from me.”

“Then I’ll go without.”

At this my mother gives a screech and throws her arms about my neck.  I saw her hand, all hard and worn and knuckly with the work she had done for my up-bringing, and it pleaded with me as words could not have done.  My heart was soft for her, but my will was as hard as a flint-edge.  I put her back in her chair with a kiss, and then ran to my room to pack my bundle.  It was already growing dark, and I had a long walk before me, so I thrust a few things together and hastened out.  As I came through the side door someone touched my shoulder, and there was Edie in the gloaming.