CHAPTER V

"O, the land is fine, fine,
I could buy it a' for mine,
For ma gowd's as the stooks in Strathairlie."

_Scots Song._


When Peter Reid arrived at Priorsford Station from London he stood for a
few minutes looking about him in a lost way, almost as if after thirty
years he expected to see a "kent face" coming to meet him. He had no
-notion where to go; he had not written for rooms; he had simply obeyed
the impulse that sent him--the impulse that sends a hurt child to its
mother. It is said that an old horse near to death turns towards the
pastures where he was foaled. It is true of human beings. "Man wanders
back to the fields which bred him."

After a talk with a helpful porter he found rooms in a temperance hotel
in the Highgate--a comfortable quiet place.

The next day he was too tired to rise, and spent rather a dreary day in
his rooms with the _Scotsman_ for sole companion.

The landlord, a cheery little man, found time once or twice to talk for
a few minutes, but he had only been ten years in Priorsford and could