John was a great favourite with his master; and his advice was asked in all matters connected with the game on the estate of Castle Bennock. His anecdotes and reminiscences of old sporting days which he had spent with three generations of the family, and with generations of their friends and relations, were inexhaustible. And when the great annual festival of "the 12th" came round, and the Castle was crowded, and the very dogs seemed to snuff the game in the air and became excited, then John’s cottage, with its kennels and all its belongings, was a constant scene of attraction to the sportsmen; and there he held a sort of court, with the dignity and gravity of an old Nimrod.
The cottage was beautifully situated in a retired nook at the entrance of a glen, beside a fresh mountain stream, and surrounded by a scattered wood of wild birches, mountain ash, and alder. The first ridge of Benturk rose beyond the tree tops, with an almost perpendicular ascent of loose stones, ribbed by wintry floods, and dotted by tufts of heather and dots of emerald-green pasture, up to the range of rocks which ramparted the higher peaks, around which in every direction descended and swept far away the endless moorland of hill and glen.
John had long been a widower, and now resided with his eldest son Hugh, whose hair was already mingled with white, like brown heather sprinkled with snow.
Although the distance which separated John Spence from Adam Mercer was only about thirty miles, there had been little intercourse between the cousins. A ridge of hills and a wild district intervened without any direct communication. The mail coach which passed through Drumsylie did not come within miles of Castle Bennock. Letters, except on business, were rare between the districts, and were very expensive at that time to all but M.P.’s, who could frank them for themselves or their friends. And so it was that while John and Adam occasionally heard of each other, and exchanged messages by mutual friends, or even met after intervals of years, they nevertheless lived as in different kingdoms.
It was late on the Tuesday after his flight that Jock Hall, for reasons known only to himself, entered the cottage of John Spence and walked up to the blazing fire, beside which the old keeper was seated alone.