John Buchan

The Three Hostages John Buchan

That evening, I remember, as I came up through the Mill Meadow, I was feeling peculiarlyhappy and contented. It was still mid- March, one of those spring days when noon is likeMay, and only the cold pearly haze at sunset warns a man that he is not done with winter. The season was absurdly early, for the blackthorn was in flower and the hedge roots werefull of primroses. The partridges were paired, the rooks were well on with their nests, andthe meadows were full of shimmering grey flocks of fieldfares on their way north. I put uphalf a dozen snipe on the boggy edge of the stream, and in the bracken in Sturn Wood Ithought I saw a woodcock, and hoped that the birds might nest with us this year, as theyused to do long ago. It was jolly to see the world coming to life again, and to remember thatthis patch of England was my own, and all these wild things, so to speak, members of mylittle household. As I say, I was in a very contented mood, for I had found something I had longed for all mydays. I had bought Fosse Manor just after the War as a wedding present for Mary, and fortwo and a half years we had been settled there. My son, Peter John, was rising fifteenmonths, a thoughtful infant, as healthy as a young colt and as comic as a terrier puppy. EvenMary's anxious eye could scarcely detect in him any symptoms of decline. But the placewanted a lot of looking to, for it had run wild during the War, and the woods had to bethinned, gates and fences repaired, new drains laid, a ram put in to supplement the wells, aheap of thatching to be done, and the garden borders to be brought back to cultivation. Ihad got through the worst of it, and as I came out of the Home Wood on to the lower lawnsand saw the old stone gables that the monks had built, I felt that I was anchored at last inthe pleasantest kind of harbour.