Nothing passed between them, and for weeks relations were very strained, but before the end Grimond knew that he had been forgiven for his superfluity of loyalty, and Dundee was thankful that, as the shadows settled upon his life blacker and deeper every day, one honest man was his companion, and would remain true when every fair-weather friend and false schemer had fled. One can make excuses for jealousy when it is another name for love; one may not quarrel with doggedness when it is another name for devotion. There are not too many people who have in them the heart to be faithful unto death, not too many who will place one's interest before their own life. When one's back is at the wall, and he is not sure even of his nearest, he will not despise or quarrel with the roughest or plainest man who will stand by his side and share his lot, either of life or death. So Jock was reinstated without pardon asked or given, and with no reference to the tragedy of Glenogilvie, and Dundee knew that he had beside him a faithful and fearless watchdog of the tough old Scottish breed. As Grimond busied himself with preparations for the evening meal--among other dark suspicions he had taken into his head that Dundee might be poisoned--his master's eye fell on him, and at the sight memory woke. John Graham recalled the days when Grimond received him from the charge of his nurse, and took him out upon the hills round Glenogilvie. How he taught him to catch trout with his own hands below the big stones of the burn, how he told him the names of the wild birds and their ways, how he gave him his first lesson in sport, how one day he saved his life, when he was about to be gored by an infuriated bull. All the kindness of this hard man and his thoughtfulness, all his faithfulness and unselfishness, touched Dundee's heart--a heart capable of affection for a few, though it could never be called tender, and capable of sentiment, though rather that which is bound up with a cause than with a person.
"Jock," said Graham, with a certain accent of former days and kindly doings. Now, a person's name may mean anything according to the way in which it is pronounced. It may be an accusation, a rebuke, an insult, a threat, or it may be an appeal, a thanksgiving, a benediction, a caress. And at the sound of the word, said more kindly than he had ever heard it, Grimond turned him round and looked at his master; his grim, lean, weather-beaten face relaxed and softened and grew almost gentle.