Gibbie, who did not believe he had been seen, stood laughing on the floor, when suddenly he heard the key entering the lock.He bolted through the cat-hole--but again just one moment too late, leaving behind him on Fergus's retina the light from the soles of two bare feet.The key of the door to the rick-yard was inside, and Fergus was after him in a moment, but the ricks came close to the barn-door, and the next he saw of him was the fluttering of his rags in the wind, and the flashing of his white skin in the sun, as he fled across the clover field; and before Fergus was over the wall, Gibbie was a good way ahead towards the Lorrie.Gibbie was a better runner for his size than Fergus, and in better training too; but, alas! Fergus's legs were nearly twice as long as Gibbie's.The little one reached the Lorrie, first, and dashing across it, ran up the side of the Glashburn, with a vague idea of Glashgar in his head.Fergus behind him was growing more and more angry as he gained upon him but felt his breath failing him.Just at the bridge to the iron gate to Glashruach, he caught him at last, and sunk on the parapet exhausted.The smile with which Gibbie, too much out of breath to laugh, confessed himself vanquished, would have disarmed one harder-hearted than Fergus, had he not lost his temper in the dread of losing his labour; and the answer Gibbie received to his smile was a box on the ear that bewildered him.He looked pitifully in his captor's face, the smile not yet faded from his, only to receive a box on the other ear, which, though a contrary and similar both at once, was not a cure, and the water gathered in his eyes.
Fergus, a little eased in his temper by the infliction, and in his breath by the wall of the bridge, began to ply him with questions;but no answer following, his wrath rose again, and again he boxed both his ears--without better result.
Then came the question what was he to do with the redoubted brownie, now that he had him.He was ashamed to show himself as the captor of such a miserable culprit, but the little rascal deserved punishment, and the laird would require him at his hands.He turned upon his prisoner and told him he was an impudent rascal.Gibbie had recovered again, and was able once more to smile a little.He had been guilty of burglary, said Fergus; and Gibbie smiled.He could be sent to prison for it, said Fergus; and Gibbie smiled--but this time a very grave smile.Fergus took him by the collar, which amounted to nearly a third part of the jacket, and shook him till he had half torn that third from the other two; then opened the gate, and, holding him by the back of the neck, walked him up the drive, every now and then giving him a fierce shake that jarred his teeth.
Thus, over the old gravel, mossy and damp and grassy, and cool to his little bare feet, between rowan and birk and pine and larch, like a malefactor, and looking every inch the outcast he was, did Sir Gilbert Galbraith approach the house of his ancestors for the first time.Individually, wee Gibbie was anything but a prodigal;it had never been possible to him to be one; but none the less was he the type and result and representative of his prodigal race, in him now once more looking upon the house they had lost by their vices and weaknesses, and in him now beginning to reap the benefits of punishment.But of vice and loss, of house and fathers and punishment, Gibbie had no smallest cognition.His history was about him and in him, yet of it all he suspected nothing.It would have made little difference to him if he had known it all; he would none the less have accepted everything that came, just as part of the story in which he found himself.