“You, who are my countrymen, who should be my oldest and best friends, are become my enemies.  You who were companions of my childhood are revilers of my manhood; you have robbed me of my good name and my honour, of my ship, of my very means of livelihood, and you are not content; you would rob me of my country, which I hold dearer than all.  And I have never done you evil, nor spoken aught against you.  As for the man Maxwell, whose part you take, his child is starving in your very midst, and you have not lifted your hands.  ’Twas for her sake I shipped him, and none other.  May God forgive you!  He alone sees the bitterness in my heart this day.  He alone knows my love for Scotland, and what it costs me to renounce her.”

He had said so much with an infinite sadness, and I read a response in the eyes of more than one of his listeners, the guidwife weeping aloud.  But now his voice rose, and he ended with a fiery vigour.

“Renounce her I do,” he cried, “now and forevermore!  Henceforth I am no countryman of yours.  And if a day of repentance should come for this evil, remember well what I have said to you.”

They stood for a moment when he had finished, shifting uneasily, their tongues gone, like lads caught in a lie.  I think they felt his greatness then, and had any one of them possessed the nobility to come forward with an honest word, John Paul might yet have been saved to Scotland.  As it was, they slunk away in twos and threes, leaving at last only the good smith with us.  He was not a man of talk, and the tears had washed the soot from his face in two white furrows.

“Ye’ll hae a waught wi’ me afore ye gang, John,” he said clumsily, “for th’ morns we’ve paddl’ ‘t thegither i’ th’ Nith.”

The ale was brought by the guidwife, who paused, as she put it down, to wipe her eyes with her apron.  She gave John Paul one furtive glance and betook herself again to her knitting with a sigh, speech having failed her likewise.  The captain grasped up his mug.

“May God bless you, Jamie,” he said.

“Ye’ll be gaen noo to see the mither,” said Jamie, after a long space.

“Ay, for the last time.  An’, Jamie, ye’ll see that nae harm cams to her when I’m far awa’?”

The smith promised, and also agreed to have John Paul’s chests sent by wagon, that very day, to Dumfries.  And we left him at his forge, his honest breast torn with emotion, looking after us.

CHAPTER XXI

THE GARDENER’S COTTAGE

So we walked out of the village, with many a head craned after us and many an eye peeping from behind a shutter, and on into the open highway.  The day was heavenly bright, the wind humming around us and playing mad pranks with the white cotton clouds, and I forgot awhile the pity within me to wonder at the orderly look of the country, the hedges with never a stone out of place, and the bars always up.