Strickland went down the old, winding Glenfernie stair, and came at last to the laird’s room.  Tibbie Ross opened the door to him, and he saw it all in low firelight and made ready for the night.  The laird lay propped as before in the great bed, but seemed asleep.  Alexander sat before the fire, elbows upon knees and chin in hand, brooding over the red coals.  Tibbie murmured a direction or two and showed wine and bread set in the deep window.  Then with a courtesy and a breathed, “Gie ye gude night, sirs!” she was forth to her own rest.  The door closed softly behind her.  Strickland stepped as softly to the chair beyond Alexander.  The couch was spread for the watchers’ alternate use, if so they chose; on a table burned shaded candles.  Strickland had a book in his pocket.  Sitting down, he produced this, for he would not seem to watch the man by the fire.

Alexander Jardine, large and strong of frame, with a countenance massive and thoughtful for so young a man, bronzed, with well-turned features, gazed steadily into the red hollows where the light played, withdrew and played again.  Strickland tried to read, but the sense of the other’s presence affected him, came between his mind and the page.  Involuntarily he began to occupy himself with Alexander and to picture his life away from Glenfernie, away, too, from Edinburgh and Scotland.  It was now six years since, definitely, he had given up the law, throwing himself, as it were, on the laird’s mercy both for long and wide travel, and for life among books other than those indicated for advocates.  The laird had let him go his gait—­the laird with Mrs. Jardine a little before him.  The Jardine fortune was not a great one, but there was enough for an heir who showed no inclination to live and to travel en prince, who in certain ways was nearer the ascetic than the spendthrift....  Before Strickland’s mind, strolling dreamily, came pictures of far back, of years ago, of long since.  A by-wind had brought to the tutor then certain curious bits of knowledge.  Alexander, a student in Edinburgh, had lived for some time upon half of his allowance in order to accommodate Ian Rullock with the other half, the latter being in a crisis of quarrel with his uncle, who, when he quarreled, used always, where he could, the money screw.  Strickland had listened to his Edinburgh informant, but had never divulged the news given.  No more had he told another bit, floated to him again by that ancient Edinburgh friend and gossip, who had young cousins at college and listened to their talk.  It pertained to a time a little before that of the shared income.  This time it had been shared blood.  Strickland, sitting with his book in the quiet room, saw in imagination the students’ chambers in Edinburgh, and the little throng of very young men, flushed with wine and with youth, making friendships, and talking of friendships made, and dubbing Alexander Damon and Ian Pythias.  Then more wine and a bravura passage.  Damon and Pythias opening each a vein with some convenient dagger, smearing into the wound some drops of the other’s blood, and going home each with a tourniquet above the right wrist....  Well, that was years ago—­and youth loved such passages!