There was one thing more to wait for, and that was the
reappearance of the coach upon Cartmore. It seems they must have
pulled up upon the summit, looked back for a last time, and seen
our lantern not yet moved away from the place of separation. For a
lamp was taken from a carriage, and waved three times up and down
by way of a farewell. And then they were gone indeed, having
looked their last on the kind roof of Durrisdeer, their faces
toward a barbarous country. I never knew before, the greatness of
that vault of night in which we two poor serving-men - the one old,
and the one elderly - stood for the first time deserted; I had
never felt before my own dependency upon the countenance of others.
The sense of isolation burned in my bowels like a fire. It seemed
that we who remained at home were the true exiles, and that
Durrisdeer and Solwayside, and all that made my country native, its
air good to me, and its language welcome, had gone forth and was
far over the sea with my old masters.
The remainder of that night I paced to and fro on the smooth
highway, reflecting on the future and the past. My thoughts, which
at first dwelled tenderly on those who were just gone, took a more
manly temper as I considered what remained for me to do. Day came
upon the inland mountain-tops, and the fowls began to cry, and the
smoke of homesteads to arise in the brown bosom of the moors,
before I turned my face homeward, and went down the path to where
the roof of Durrisdeer shone in the morning by the sea.
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