Risk cured me of my intention to hazard all on the flimsy chance of a Government's gratitude, and I made up my mind to seek safety and forgetfulness again in flight to another country.
I had seen yon remnant of a man in the Tolbooth cell, and an immediate death upon the gallows seemed less dreadful than the degradation and the doubt he must suffer waiting weary months behind bars. But gallows or cell was become impossible for the new poltroon of Dan Risk's making to contemplate with any equanimity, and I made up my mind that America was a country which would benefit greatly by my presence, if I could get a passage there by working for it.
Perhaps I would not have made so prompt a decision upon America had not America implied a Clyde ship, and the Clyde as naturally implied a flying visit to my home in Mearns. Since ever I had set foot on Scotland, and saw Scots reek rise from Scots lums, and blue bonnets on Scots heads, and heard the twang of the true North and kindly from the people about me, I had been wondering about my folk. It was plain they had never got the letter I had sent by Horn, or got it only recently, for he himself had only late got home.
To see the house among the trees, then, to get a reassuring sight of its smoke and learn about my parents, was actually of more importance in my mind than my projected trip to America, though I did not care to confess so much to myself.
I went to Glasgow on the following day; the snow was on the roofs; the students were noisily battling; the bells were cheerfully ringing as on the day with whose description I open this history. I put up at the “Saracen Head,” and next morning engaged a horse to ride to Mearns. In the night there had come a change in the weather; I splashed through slush of melted snow, and soaked in a constant rain, but objected none at all because it gave me an excuse to keep up the collar of my cloak, and pull the brim of my hat well forward on my face and so minimise the risk of identification.
There is the lichened root of an ancient fallen saugh tree by the side of Earn Water between Kirkillstane and Driepps that I cannot till this day look on without a deep emotion. Walter's bairns have seen me sitting there more than once, and unco solemn so that they have wondered, the cause beyond their comprehension. It was there I drew up my horse to see the house of Kirkillstane from the very spot where I had rambled with my shabby stanzas, and felt the first throb of passion for a woman.