John Burnet of Barns by John Buchan — Read

I lay that night on the bare moors, with no company save the birds, and no covering save a dry bush of heather. The stars twinkled a myriad miles away, and the night airs blew soft, and I woke in the morning as fresh as if I had lain beneath the finest coverlet on the best of linen. Near me was a great pool in a burn, and there I bathed, splashing to my heart's content in the cold water. Then I ate my breakfast, which was no better than the remnants of the food I had brought away with me the day before from Smitwood; but I gulped it down heartily and hoped for something better. There will be so much complaining, I fear, in my tale ere it is done, that I think it well to put down all my praise of the place and the hours which passed pleasingly.

By this time I was on a little plateau, near the great black hill of Coomb Dod, a place whence three streams flow -- the Camps Water and the Coulter Water to the Clyde, and the burn of Kingledoors to Tweed. Now here had I been wise I should at once have gone down the last-named to the upper waters of Tweed near the village of Tweedsmuir, whence I might have come without danger to the wilder hills and the Cor Water hiding-place. But as I stayed there desire came violently upon me to go down to the fair green haughlands about the Holmes Water, which is a stream which rises not far off the Kingledoors burn, but which flows more to the north and enters Tweed in the strath of Drummelzier not above a few miles from Barns itself and almost at the door of Dawyck. There I knew was the greater danger, because it lay on the straight line between Abington and Peebles, a way my cousin Gilbert travelled often in those days. But I was not disposed at that moment to think of gradations of danger; and indeed, after my encounter on the previous afternoon, I was in a haphazard, roystering mood, and would have asked for nothing better than a chance of making holes in my cousin or his company.