Just What He Deserved

There is not in its own way a more distinctive and interesting bit of
Scotland than the bleak Lothian country, with its wide views, its brown
ploughed fields, and its dense swaying plantations of fir. The
Lammermoor Hills and the Pentlands and the veils of smoke that lie about
Edinburgh are on its horizon, and within that circle all the large
quietude of open grain fields, wide turnip lands, where sheep feed, and
far-stretching pastures where the red and white cows ruminate. The
patient processes of nature breed patient minds; the gray cold climate
can be read in the faces of the people, and in their hearts the seasons
take root and grow; so that they have a grave character, passive, yet
enduring; strong to feel and strong to act when the time is full ready
for action.

Of these natural peculiarities Jean Anderson had her share. She was a
Lothian lassie of many generations, usually undemonstrative, but with
large possibilities of storm beneath her placid face and gentle manner.
Her father was the minister of Lambrig and the manse stood in a very
sequestered corner of the big parish, facing the bleak east winds, and
the salt showers of the German ocean. It was sheltered by dark fir woods
on three sides, and in front a little walled-in garden separated it from
the long, dreary, straight line of turnpike road. But Jean had no
knowledge of any fairer land; she had read of flowery pastures and rose
gardens and vineyards, but these places were to her only in books, while
the fields and fells that filled her eyes were her home, and she loved
them.

She loved them all the more because the man she loved was going to leave
them, and if Gavin Burns did well, and was faithful to her, then it was
like to be that she also would go far away from the blue Lammermuirs,
and the wide still spaces of the Lothians. She stood at the open door of
the manse with her lover thinking of these things, but with no real
sense of what pain or deprivation the thought included. She was tall and
finely formed, a blooming girl, with warmly-colored cheeks, a mouth
rather large and a great deal of wavy brown hair. But the best of all
her beauty was the soul in her face; its vitality, its vivacity and
immediate response.

However, the time of love had come to her, and though her love had grown
as naturally as a sapling in a wood, who could tell what changes it
would make. For Gavin Burns had been educated in the minister's house
and Jean and he had studied and fished and rambled together all through
the years in which Jean had grown from childhood into womanhood. Now
Gavin was going to New York to make his fortune. They stepped through
the garden and into the long dim road, walking slowly in the calm night,
with thoughtful faces