My first thought was that the place was tenantless, till I caught sight
of a thin spire of smoke struggling against the downpour. I hoped to
come on some gardener or groom from whom I could seek direction, so I
skirted the pleasance to find the kitchen door. A glow of fire in one
of the rooms cried welcome to my shivering bones, and on the far side
of the house I found signs of better care. The rank grasses had been
mown to make a walk, and in a corner flourished a little group of
pot-herbs. But there was no man to be seen, and I was about to retreat
and try the farm-town, when out of the doorway stepped a girl.
She was maybe sixteen years old, tall and well-grown, but of her face I
could see little, since she was all muffled in a great horseman's
cloak. The hood of it covered her hair, and the wide flaps were folded
over her bosom. She sniffed the chill wind, and held her head up to the
rain, and all the while, in a clear childish voice, she was singing.
It was a song I had heard, one made by the great Montrose, who had
suffered shameful death in Edinburgh thirty years before. It was a
man's song, full of pride and daring, and not for the lips of a young
maid. But that hooded girl in the wild weather sang it with a challenge
and a fire that no cavalier could have bettered.
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