The House of Glenfernie and the House of Touris became friends. A round of country festivities, capped by a great party at Black Hill, wrought bonds of acquaintanceship for and with the Scots family returned after long abode in England. Archibald Touris spent money with a cautious freedom. He set a table and poured a wine better by half than might be found elsewhere. He kept good horses and good dogs. Laborers who worked for him praised him; he proved a not ungenerous landlord. Where he recognized obligations he met them punctually. He had large merchant virtues, no less than the accompanying limitations. He returned to the Church of Scotland.
The laird of Glenfernie and the laird of Black Hill found constitutional impediments to their being more friendly than need be. Each was polite to the other to a certain point, then the one glowered and the other scoffed. It ended in a painstaking keeping of distance between them, a task which, when they were in company, fell often to Mrs. Jardine. She did it with tact, with a twist of her large, humorous mouth toward Strickland if he were by. Admirable as she was, it was curious to see the difference between her method, if method there were, and that of Mrs. Alison. The latter showed noeffort, but where she was there fell harmony. William Jardine liked her, liked to be in the room with her. His great frame and her slight one, his rough, massive, somewhat unshaped personality and her exquisite clearness contrasted finely enough. Her brother, who understood her very little, yet had for her an odd, appealing affection, strange in one who had so positively settled what was life and the needs of life. It was his habit to speak of her as though she were more helplessly dependent even than other women. But at times there might be seen who was more truly the dependent.
August passed into September, September into brown October. Alexander and Ian were almost continually in company. The attraction between them was so great that it appeared as though it must stretch backward into some unknown seam of time. If they had differences, these apparently only served in themselves to keep them revolving the one about the other. They might almost quarrel, but never enough to drag their two orbs apart, breaking and rending from the common center. The sun might go down upon a kind of wrath, but it rose on hearts with the difference forgotten. Their very unlikenesses pricked each on to seek himself in the other.
They were going to Edinburgh after Christmas, to be students there, to grow to be men. Here at home, upon the eve of their going, rein upon them was slackened. They would so soon be independent of home discipline that that independence was to a degree already allowed. Black Hill did not often question Ian's comings and goings, nor GlenfernieAlexander's. The school-room saw the latter some part of each morning. For the rest of the day he might be almost anywhere with Ian, at Glenfernie, or at Black Hill, or on the road between, or in the country roundabout.
William Jardine, chancing to be one day at Black Hill, watched from Mrs. Alison's parlor the two going down the avenue, the dogs at their heels. "It's a fair David and Jonathan business!"
"David needed Jonathan, and Jonathan David."
"Had Jonathan lived, ma'am, and the two come to conflict about the kingdom, what then, and where would have flown the friendship?"
"It would have flown on high, I suppose, and waited for them until they had grown wings to mount to it."
"Oh," said the laird, "you're one I can follow only a little way!"
Ian and Alexander felt only that the earth about them was bright and warm.
On a brown-and-gold day the two found themselves in the village of Glenfernie. Ian had spent the night with Alexander—for some reason there was school holiday—the two were now abroad early in the day. The village sent its one street, its few poor lanes, up a bare hillside to the church atop. Poor and rude enough, it had yet to-day its cheerful air. High voices called, flaxen-haired children pottered about, a mill-wheel creaked at the foot of the hill, iron clanged in the smithy a little higher, the drovers' rough laughter burst from the tavern midway, and at the height the kirk was seeing a wedding. The air had a tang of cooled wine, the sky was blue.
Ian and Alexander, coming over the hill, reached the kirk in time to see emerge the married pair with their kin and friends. The two stood with a rabble of children and boys beneath the yew-trees by the gate. The yellow-haired bride in her finery, the yellow-haired groom in his, the dressed and festive following, stepped from the kirkyard to some waiting carts and horses. The most mounted and took place, the procession put itself into motion with clatter and laughter. The children and boys ran after to where the road dipped over the hill. A cluster of village folk turned the long, descending street. In passing they spoke to Alexander and Ian.
"Who was married?—Jock Wilson and Janet Macraw, o' Langmuir."
The two lounged against the kirkyard wall, beneath the yews.
"Marry!That's a strange, terrible, useless word to me!"
"I don't know...."
"Yes, it is!... Ian, do you ever think that you've lived before?"
"I don't know. I'm living now!"
"Well, I think that we all lived before. I think that the same things happen again—"
"Well, let them—some of them!" said Ian. "Come along, if we're going through the glen."
They left the kirkyard for the village street. Here they sauntered, friends with the whole. They looked in at the tavern upon the drovers, they watched the blacksmith and his helper. The red iron rang, the sparks flew. At the foot of the hill flowed the stream and stood the mill. The wheel turned, the waterdiamonds dropped in sheets. Their busy, idle day took them on; they were now in bare, heathy country with the breathing, winey air. Presently White Farm could be seen among aspens, and beyond it the wooded mouth of the glen. Some one, whistling, turned an elbow of the hill and caught up with the two. It proved to be one several years their senior, a young man in the holiday dress of a prosperous farmer. He whistled clearly an old border air and walked without dragging or clumsiness. Coming up, he ceased his whistling.
"Good day, the both of ye!"
"It's Robin Greenlaw," said Alexander, "from Littlefarm.—You've been to the wedding, Robin?"
"Aye. Janet's some kind of a cousin. It's a braw day for a wedding! You've got with you the new laird's nephew?—And how are you liking Black Hill?"
"I like it."
"I suppose you miss grandeurs abune what ye've got there. I have a liking myself," said Greenlaw, "for grandeurs, though we've none at all at Littlefarm! That is to say, none that's just obvious. Are you going to White Farm?"
Alexander answered: "I've a message from my father for Mr. Barrow. But after that we're going through the glen. Will you come along?"
"I would," said Greenlaw, seriously, "if I had not on my best. But I know how you, Alexander Jardine, take the devil's counsel about setting foot in places bad for good clothes! So I'll give myself the pleasure some other time. And so good day!" He turned into a path that took him presently out of sight and sound.
"He's a fine one!" said Alexander. "I like him."
"Who is he?"
"White Farm's great-nephew. Littlefarm was parted from White Farm. It's over yonder where you see the water shining."
"He's free-mannered enough!"
"That's you and England! He's got as good a pedigree as any, and a notion of what's a man, besides. He's been to Glasgow to school, too. I like folk like that."
"I like them as well as you!" said Ian. "That is, with reservations of them I cannot like. I'm Scots, too."
Alexander laughed. They came down to the water and the stepping-stones before White Farm. The house faced them, long and low, white among trees from which the leaves were falling. Alexander and Ian crossed upon the stones, and beyond the fringing hazels the dogs came to meet them.
Jarvis Barrow had all the appearance of a figure from that Old Testament in which he was learned. He might have been a prophet's right-hand man, he might have been the prophet himself. He stood, at sixty-five, lean and strong, gray-haired, but with decrepitude far away. Elder of the kirk, sternly religious, able at his own affairs, he read his Bible and prospered in his earthly living. Now he listened to the laird's message, nodding his head, but saying little. His staff was in his hand; he was on his way to kirk session; tell the laird that the account was correct. He stood without his door as though he waited for the youths to give good day and depart. Alexander had made a movement inthis direction when from beyond Jarvis Barrow came a woman's voice. It belonged to Jenny Barrow, the farmer's unmarried daughter, who kept house for him.
"Father, do you gae on, and let the young gentlemen bide a wee and rest their banes and tell a puir woman wha never gaes onywhere the news!"
"Then do ye sit awhile, laddies, with the womenfolk," said Jarvis Barrow. "But give me pardon if I go, for I canna keep the kirk waiting."
He was gone, staff and gray plaid and a collie with him. Jenny, his daughter, appeared in the door.
"Come in, Mr. Alexander, and you, too, sir, and have a crack with us! We're in the dairy-room, Elspeth and Gilian and me."
She was a woman of forty, raw-boned but not unhandsome, good-natured, capable, too, but with more heart than head. It was a saying with her that she had brains enough for kirk on the Sabbath and a warm house the week round. Everybody knew Jenny Barrow and liked well enough bread of her baking.
The room to which she led Ian and Alexander had its floor level with the turf without the open door. The sun flooded it. There came from within the sound, up and down, of a churn, and a voice singing:
"O laddie, will ye gie to meA ribbon for my fairing?"
"O laddie, will ye gie to meA ribbon for my fairing?"
It grew that Ian was telling stories of cities—of London and of Paris, for he had been there, and of Rome, for he had been there. He had seen kings and queens, he had seen the Pope—
"Lord save us!" ejaculated Jenny Barrow.
He leaned against the dairy wall and the sun fell over him, and he looked something finer and more golden than often came that way. Young Gilian at the churn stood with parted lips, the long dasher still in her hands. This was as good as stories of elves, pixies, fays, men of peace and all! Elspeth let the milk-pans be and sat beside them on the long bench, and, with hands folded in her lap, looked with brown eyes many a league away. Neither Elspeth nor Gilian was without book learning. Behind them and before them were long visits to scholar kindred in a city in the north and fit schooling there. London and Paris and Rome.... Foreign lands and the great world. And this was a glittering young eagle that had sailed and seen!
Alexander gazed with delight upon Ian spreading triumphant wings. This was his friend. There was nothing finer than continuously to come upon praiseworthiness in your friend!
"And a beautiful lady came by who was the king's favorite—"
"Gude guide us! The limmer!"
"And she was walking on rose-colored velvet and her slippers had diamonds worked in them. Snow was on the ground outside and poor folk were freezing, but she carried over each arm a garland of roses as though it were June—"
Jenny Barrow raised her hands. "She'll sit yet in the cauld blast, in the sinner's shift!"
"And after a time there walked in the king, and the courtiers behind him like the tail of a peacock—"
They had a happy hour in the White Farm dairy. At last Jenny and the girls set for the two cold meat and bannocks and ale. And still at table Ian was the shining one. The sun was at noon and so was his mood.
"You're fey!" said Alexander, at last.
"Na, na!" spoke Jenny. "But, oh, he's the bonny lad!"
The dinner was eaten. It was time to be going.
"Shut your book of stories!" said Alexander. "We're for the Kelpie's Pool, and that's not just a step from here!"
Elspeth raised her brown eyes. "Why will you go to the Kelpie's Pool? That's a drear water!"
"I want to show it to him. He's never seen it."
"It's drear!" said Elspeth. "A drear, wanrestfu' place!"
But Ian and Alexander must go. The aunt and nieces accompanied them to the door, stood and watched them forth, down the bank and into thepath that ran to the glen. Looking back, the youths saw them there—Elspeth and Gilian and their aunt Jenny. Then the aspens came between and hid them and the white house and all.
"They're bonny lasses!" said Ian.
"Aye. They're so."
"But, oh, man! you should see Miss Delafield of Tower Place in Surrey!"
"Is she so bonny?"
"She's more than bonny. She's beautiful and high-born and an heiress. When I'm a colonel of dragoons—"
"Are you going to be a colonel of dragoons?"
"Something like that. You talk of thinking that you were this and that in the past. Well, I was a fighting-man!"
"We're all fighting-men. It's only what we fight and how."
"Well, say that I had been a chief, and they lifted me on their shields and called me king, the very next day I should have made her queen!"
"You think like a ballad. And, oh, man, you talk mickle of the lasses!"
Ian looked at him with long, narrow, dark-gold eyes. "They're found in ballads," he said.
Alexander just paused in his stride. "Humph! that's true!..."
They entered the glen. The stream began to brawl; on either hand the hills closed in, towering high. Some of the trees were bare, but to most yet clung the red-brown or the gold-brown dress. The pines showed hard, green, and dead in the shadow; in the sunlight, fine, green-gold, and alive. Thefallen leaves, moved by foot or by breeze, made a light, dry, talking sound. The white birch stems clustered and leaned; patches of bright-green moss ran between the drifts of leaves. The sides of the hills came close together, grew fearfully steep. Crags appeared, and fern-crowded fissures and roots of trees like knots of frozen serpents. The glen narrowed and deepened; the water sang with a loud, rough voice.
Alexander loved this place. He had known it in childhood, often straying this way with the laird, or with Sandy the shepherd, or Davie from the house. When he was older he began to come alone. Soon he came often alone, learned every stick and stone and contour, effect of light and streak of gloom. As idle or as purposeful as the wind, he knew the glen from top to bottom. He knew the voice of the stream and the straining clutch of the roots over the broken crag. He had lain on all the beds of leaf and moss, and talked with every creeping or flying or running thing. Sometimes he read a book here, sometimes he pictured the world, or built fantastic stages, and among fantastic others acted himself a fantastic part. Sometimes with a blind turning within he looked for himself. He had his own thoughts of God here, of God and the Kirk and the devil. Often, too, he neither read, dreamed, nor thought. He might lie an hour, still, passive, receptive. The trees and the clouds, crag life, bird life, and flower life, life of water, earth, and air, came inside. He was so used to his own silence in the glen that when he walked through it with others he kept it still. Slightly taciturn everywhere, he was actively so here. The pathnarrowing, he and Ian must go in single file. Leading, Alexander traveled in silence, and Ian, behind, not familiar with the place, must mind his steps, and so fell silent, too. Here and there, now and then, Alexander halted. These were recesses, or it might be projecting platforms of rock, that he liked. Below, the stream made still pools, or moved in eddies, or leaped with an innumerable hurrying noise from level to level. Or again there held a reach of quiet water, and the glen-sides were soft with weeping birch, and there showed a wider arch of still blue sky. Alexander stood and looked. Ian, behind him, was glad of the pause. The place dizzied him who for years had been away from hill and mountain, pass and torrent. Yet he would by no means tell Alexander so. He would keep up with him.
There was a mile of this glen, and now the going was worse and now it was better. Three-fourths of the way through they came to an opening in the rock, over which, from a shelf above, fell a curtain of brier.
"See!" said Alexander, and, parting the stems, showed a veritable cavern. "Come in—sit down! The Kelpie's Pool is out of the glen, but they say that there's a bogle wons here, too."
They sat down upon the rocky floor strewn with dead leaves. Through the dropped curtain they saw the world brokenly; the light in the cave was sunken and dim, the air cold. Ian drew his shoulders together.
"Here's a grand place for robbers, wraiths, or dragons!"
"Robbers, wraiths, or dragons, or just quiet deadleaves and ourselves. Look here—!" He showed a heap of short fagots in a corner. "I put these here the last time I came." Dragging them into the middle of the rock chamber, he swept up with them the dead leaves, then took from a great pouch that he carried on his rambles a box with flint and steel. He struck a spark upon dry moss and in a moment had a fire. "Is not that beautiful?"
The smoke mounted to the top of the cavern, curled there or passed out into the glen through the briers that dropped like a portcullis. The fagots crackled in the flame, the light danced, the warmth was pleasant. So was the sense of adventure and ofsolitude à deux. They stretched themselves beside the flame. Alexander produced from his pouch four small red-cheeked apples. They ate and talked, with between their words silences of deep content. They were two comrade hunters of long ago, cavemen who had dispossessed bear or wolf, who might presently with a sharpened bone and some red pigment draw bison and deer in procession upon the cave wall.—They were skin-clad hillmen, shag-haired, with strange, rude weapons, in hiding here after hard fighting with a disciplined, conquering foe who had swords and shining breastplates and crested helmets.—They were fellow-soldiers of that conquering tide, Romans of a band that kept the Wall, proud, with talk of camps and Cæsars.—They were knights of Arthur's table sent by Merlin on some magic quest.—They were Crusaders, and this cavern an Eastern, desert cave.—They were men who rose with Wallace, must hide in caves from EdwardLongshanks.—They were outlaws.—They were wizards—good wizards who caused flowers to bloom in winter for the unhappy, and made gold here for those who must be ransomed, and fed themselves with secret bread. The fire roared—they were happy, Ian and Alexander.
At last the fagots were burned out. The half-murk that at first was mystery and enchantment began to put on somberness and melancholy. They rose from the rocky floor and extinguished the brands with their feet. But now they had this cavern in common and must arrange it for their next coming. Going outside, they gathered dead and fallen wood, broke it into right lengths, and, carrying it within, heaped it in the corner. With a bough of pine they swept the floor, then, leaving the treasure hold, dropped the curtain of brier in place. They were not so old but that there was yet the young boy in them; he hugged himself over this cave of Robin Hood and swart magician. But now they left it and went on whistling through the glen:
Gie ye give ane, then I'll give twa,For sae the store increases!
Gie ye give ane, then I'll give twa,For sae the store increases!
The sides of the glen fell back, grew lower. The leap of the water was not so marked; there were long pools of quiet. Their path had been a mounting one; they were now on higher earth, near the plateau or watershed that marked the top of the glen. The bright sky arched overhead, the sun shone strongly, the air moved in currents without violence.
"You see where that smoke comes up between trees? That's Mother Binning's cot."
"Who's she?"
"She's a wise auld wife. She's a scryer. That's her ash-tree."
Their path brought them by the hut and its bit of garden. Jock Binning, that was Mother Binning's crippled son, sat fishing in the stream. Mother Binning had been working in the garden, but when she saw the figures on the path below she took her distaff and sat on the bench in the sun. When they came by she raised her voice.
"Mr. Alexander, how are the laird and the leddy?"
"They're very well, Mother."
"Ye'll be gaeing sune to Edinburgh? Wha may be this laddie?"
"It is Ian Rullock, of Black Hill."
"Sae the baith o' ye are gaeing to Edinburgh? Will ye be friends there?"
"That we will!"
"Hech, sirs!" Mother Binning drew a thread from her distaff. The two were about to travel on when she stopped them again with a gesture. "Dinna mak sic haste! There's time enough behind us, and time enough before us. And it's a strange warld, and a large, and an auld! Sit ye and crack a bit with an auld wife by the road."
But they had dallied at White Farm and in the cave, and Alexander was in haste.
"We cannot stop now, Mother. We're bound for the Kelpie's Pool."
"And why do ye gae there? That's a drear, wanrestfu' place!" said Mother Binning.
"Ian has not seen it yet. I want to show it to him."
Mother Binning turned her distaff slowly. "Eh, then, if ye maun gae, gae!... We're a' ane! There's the kelpie pool for a'."
"We'll stop a bit on the way back," said Alexander. He spoke in a wheedling, kindly voice, for he and Mother Binning were good friends.
"Do that then," she said. "I hae a hansel o' coffee by me. I'll mak twa cups, for I'll warrant that ye'll baith need it!"
The air was indeed growing colder when the two came at last upon the moor that ran down to the Kelpie's Pool. Furze and moss and ling, a wild country stretched around without trees or house or moving form. The bare sunshine took on a remote, a cool and foreign, aspect. The small singing of the wind in whin and heather came from a thin, eery world. Down below them they saw the dark little tarn, the Kelpie's Pool. It was very clear, but dark, with a bottom of peat. Around it grew rushes and a few low willows. The two sat upon an outcropping of stone and gazed down upon it.
"It's a gey lonely place," said Alexander. "Now I like it as well or better than I do the cave, and now I would leave it far behind me!"
"I like the cave best. This is a creepy place."
"Once I let myself out at Glenfernie without any knowing and came here by night."
Ian felt emulation. "Oh, I would do that, too, if there was any need! Did you see anything?"
"Do you mean the kelpie?"
"Yes."
"No. I saw something—once. But that time I wanted to see how the stars looked in the water."
Ian looked at the water, that lay like a round mirror, and then to the vast shell of the sky above. He, too, had love of beauty—a more sensuous love than Alexander's, but love. This shared perception made one of the bonds between them.
"It was as still—much stiller than it is to-day! The air was clear and the night dark and grand. I looked down, and there was the Northern Crown, clasp and all."
Ian in imagination saw it, too. They sat, chin on knees, upon the moorside above the Kelpie's Pool. The water was faintly crisped, the reeds and willow boughs just stirred.
"But the kelpie—did you ever see that?"
"Sometimes it is seen as a water-horse, sometimes as a demon. I never saw anything like that but once. I never told any one about it. It may have been just one of those willows, after all. But I thought I saw a woman."
"Go on!"
"There was a great mist that day and it was hard to see. Sometimes you could not see—it was just rolling waves of gray. So I stumbled down, and I was in the rushes before I knew that I had come to them. It was spring and the pool was full, and the water plashed and came over my foot. It was like something holding my ankles.... And then I saw her—if it was not the willow. She was like a fair woman with dark hair unsnooded. She looked at me as though she would mock me, and I thought she laughed—and then the mist rolled down andover, and I could not see the hills nor the water nor scarce the reeds I was in. So I lifted my feet from the sucking water and got away.... I do not know if it was the kelpie's daughter or the willow—but if it was the willow it could look like a human—or an unhuman—body!"
Ian gazed at the pool. He had many advantages over Alexander, he knew, but the latter had this curious daring. He did more things with himself and of himself than did he, Ian. There was that in Ian that did not like this, that was jealous of being surpassed. And there was that in Ian that would not directly display this feeling, that would provide it, indeed, with all kinds of masks, but would, with certainty, act from that spurring, though intricate enough might be the path between the stimulus and the act.
"It is deep?"
"Aye. Almost bottomless, you would think, and cold as winter."
"Let us go swimming."
"The day's getting late and it's growing cold. However, if you want to—"
Ian did not greatly want to. But if Alexander could be so indifferent, he could be determined and ardent. "What's a little mirk and cold? I want to say I've swum in it." He began to unbutton his waistcoat.
They stripped, left their clothes in the stone's keeping, and ran down the moorside. The light played over their bodies, unblemished, smooth, and healthfully colored, clean-lined and rightly spare. They had beautiful postures and movements whenthey stood, when they ran; a youthful and austere grace as of Spartan youth plunging down to the icy Eurotas. The earth around lay as stripped as they; the naked, ineffable blue ether held them as it did all things; the wandering air broke against them in invisible surf. They ran down the long slope of the moor, parted the reeds, and dived to meet their own reflections. The water was most truly deep and cold. They struck out, they swam to the middle of the pool, they turned upon their backs and looked up to the blue zenith, then, turning again, with strong arm strokes they sent the wave over each other. They rounded the pool under the twisted willows, beside the shaking reeds; they swam across and across.
Alexander looked at the sun that was deep in the western quarter. "Time to be out and going!" He swam to the edge of the pool, but before he should draw himself out stopped to look up at a willow above him, the one that he thought he might, in the mist, have taken for the kelpie's daughter. It was of a height that, seen at a little distance, might even a tall woman. It put out two broken, shortened branches like arms.... He lost himself in the study of possibilities, balanced among the reeds that sighed around. He could not decide, so at last he shook himself from that consideration, and, pushing into shallow water, stepped from the pool. He had taken a few steps up the moor ere with suddenness he felt that Ian was not with him. He turned. Ian was yet out in the middle ring of the tarn. The light struck upon his head. Then he dived under—or seemed to dive under. He was long in coming up; and when hedid so it was in the same place and his backward-drawn face had a strangeness.
"Ian!"
Ian sank again.
"He's crampit!" Alexander flashed like a thrown brand down the way he had mounted and across the strip of weeds, and in again to the steel-dark water. "I'm coming!" He gained to his fellow, caught him ere he sank the third time.
Dragged from the Kelpie's Pool, Ian lay upon the moor. Alexander, bringing with haste the clothes from the stone above, knelt beside him, rubbed and kneaded the life into him. He opened his eyes.
"Alexander—!"
Alexander rubbed with vigor. "I'm here. Eh, lad, but you gave me a fright!"
In another five minutes he sat up. "I'm—I'm all right now. Let's get our things on and go."
They dressed, Alexander helping Ian. The blood came slowly back into the latter's cheek; he walked, but he shivered yet.
"Let's go get Mother Binning's coffee!" said Alexander. "Come, I'll put my arm about you so." They went thus up the moor and across, and then down to the trees, the stream, and the glen. "There's the smoke from her chimney! You may have both cups and lie by the fire till you're warm. Mercy me! how lonely the cave would have been if you had drowned!"
They got down to the flowing water.
"I'm all right now!" said Ian. He released himself, but before he did so he turned in Alexander's arm, put his own arm around the other's neck, andkissed him. "You saved my life. Let's be friends forever!"
"That's what we are," said Alexander, "friends forever."
"You've proved it to me; one day I'll prove it to you!"
"We don't need proofs. We just know that we like each other, and that's all there is about it!"
"Yes, it's that way," said Ian, and so they came to Mother Binning's cot, the fire, and the coffee.
Upon a quiet, gray December afternoon, nine years and more from the June day when he had fished in the glen and Mother Binning had told him of her vision of the Jacobite gathering at Braemar, English Strickland, walking for exercise to the village and back, found himself overtaken by Mr. M'Nab, the minister who in his white manse dwelt by the white kirk on the top of the windy hill. This was, by every earthly canon, a good man, but a stern and unsupple. He had not been long in this parish, and he was sweeping with a strong, new besom. The old minister, to his mind, had been Erastian and lax, weak in doctrine and in discipline of the fold. Mr. M'Nab meant not to be weak. He loathed sin and would compel the sinner also to loathe it. Now he came up, tall and darkly clad, and in his Calvinistic hand his Bible.
"Gude day, sir!"
"Good day, Mr. M'Nab!" The two went on side by side. The day was very still, the sky an even gray, snow being prepared. "You saw the laird?"
"Aye. He's verra low."
"He'll not recover I think. It's been a slow failing for two years—ever since Mrs. Jardine's death."
"She was dead before I came to this kirk. But once, when I was a young man, I stayed awhile in these parts. I remember her."
"She was the best of women."
"So they said. But she had not that grip upon religion that the laird has!"
"Maybe not."
Mr. M'Nab directed his glance upon the Glenfernie tutor. He did not think that this Englishman, either, had much grip upon religion. He determined, at the first opportunity, to call his attention to that fact and to strive to teach his fingers how to clasp. He had a craving thirst for the saving of souls, and to draw one whole from Laodicea was next best to lifting from Babylon. But to-day the laird and his spiritual concerns had the field.
"He comes, by the mother's side, at least, of godly stock. His mother's father was martyred for the faith in the auld persecuting time. His grandmother wearied her mind away in prison. His mother suffered much when she was a lassie."
"It's small wonder that he has nursed bitterness," said Strickland. "He must have drunk in terror and hate with her milk.... He conquered the terror."
"'Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.'—What else should his heart do but burn with a righteous wrath?"
Strickland sighed, looking at the quiet gray hills and the vast, still web of cloud above. "It's cometo be a withering fire, hunting fuel everywhere! I remember when he held it in bounds, even when for a time it seemed to die out. But of late years it has got the better of him. At last, I think, it is devouring himself."
M'Nab made a dissenting sound. "He has got the implicit belief in God that I see sair lack of elsewhere! He holds fast to God."
"Aye. The God who slays the Amalekites."
M'Nab turned his wintry glance upon him. "And is not that God?"
The other looked at the hill and at the vast, quiet, gray field of cloud. "Perhaps!... Let's talk of something else. I am too tired to argue. I sat up with him last night."
The minister would have preferred to continue to discuss the character of Deity. He turned heavily. "I was in company, not long ago, with some gentlemen who were wondering why you stayed on at Glenfernie House. They said that you had good offers elsewhere—much better than with a Scots laird."
"I promised Mrs. Jardine that I would stay."
"While the laird lived?"
"No, not just that—though I think that she would have liked me to do so. But so long as the laird would keep Jamie with him at home."
"What will he do now—Jamie?"
"He has set his heart on the army. He's strong of body, with a kind of big, happy-go-luckiness—"
A horseman came up behind them. It proved to be Robin Greenlaw, of Littlefarm. He checked his gray and exchanged greetings with the ministerand the tutor. "How does the laird find himself the day?" he asked Strickland.
"No better, I think, Mr. Greenlaw."
"I'm sorry. It's the end, I jalouse! Is Mr. Alexander come?"
"We look for him to-morrow."
"The land and the folk'll be blithe to see him—if it was not for the occasion of his coming! If there's aught a body can do for any at Glenfernie—?"
"Every one has been as good as gold, Greenlaw. But you know there's not much at the last that can be done—"
"No. We all pass, and they that bide can but make the dirge. But I'll be obliged if you'll say to Mr. Alexander that if thereisaught—" He gathered up the reins. "It will be snowing presently. I always thought that I'd like to part on a day like this, gray and quiet, with all the color and the shouting lifted elsewhere." He was gone, trotting before them on his big horse.
Strickland and the minister looked after him. "There's one to be liked no little!" said Strickland.
But Mr. M'Nab's answering tone was wintry yet. "He makes mair songs than he listens to sermons! Jarvis Barrow, that's a strong witness, should have had another sort of great-nephew! And so he that will be laird comes home to-morrow? It's little that he has been at home of late years."
"Yes, little."
The manse with the kirk beyond rose before them, drawn against the pallid sky. "A wanderer to and fro in the earth, and I doubt not—though we do nothear much of it—an eater of husks!—Will you not come in, Mr. Strickland?"
"Another time, Mr. M'Nab. I've an errand in the village.—Touching Alexander Jardine. I suppose that the whole sense-bound world might be called by a world farther on an eater of husks. But I know naught to justify any especial application of the phrase to him. I know, indeed, a good deal quite to the contrary. You are, it seems to me, something less than charitable—"
M'Nab regarded him with an earnest, narrow, wintry look. "I would not wish to deserve that epithet, Mr. Strickland. But the world is evil, and Satan stands close at the ear of the young, both the poor and them of place and world's gear! So I doubt not that he eats the husks. I doubt not, either, that the Lord has a rod for him, as for us all, that will drive him, willy-nilly, home. So I'll say good day, sir. To-morrow I'll go again to the laird, and so every day until his summons comes."
They parted at the manse door. The world was gray, the snow swiftening its approach. Strickland, passing the kirk, kept on down the one village street. All and any who were out of doors spoke to him, asking how did the laird. Some asked if "the young laird" had come.
In the shop where he made his purchase the woman who sold would have kept him talking an hour: "Wad the laird last the week? Wad he make friends before he died with Mr. Touris of Black Hill with whom he had the great quarrel three years since? Eh, sirs! and he never set foot again in Touris House, nor Mr. Touris in his!—Wad Mr. Jamie gae now toEdinburgh or on his travels, that had been at home sae lang because the laird wadna part with him?—Wad Miss Alice, that was as bonny as a rose and mair friendly than the gowans on a June lea, just bide on at the house with her aunt, Mrs. Grizel, that came when the leddy died? Wad—"
Strickland smiled. "You must just come up to the house, Mrs. Macmurdo, and have a talk with Mrs. Grizel.—I hope the laird may last the week."
"You're a close ane!" thought the disappointed Mrs. Macmurdo. Aloud she said, "Aweel, sir, Mr. Alexander that will be laird is coming hame frae foreign parts?"
"Yes."
"Sic a wanderer as he has been! But there!" said Mrs. Macmurdo, "ony that saw him when he was a laddie gaeing here and gaeing there by his lane-some, glen and brae and muir, might ha' said, 'Ye're a wanderer—and as sune as ye may ye'll wander farther!'"
"You're quite right, Mrs. Macmurdo," said Strickland, and took his parcel from her.
"A wanderer and a seeker!" Mrs. Macmurdo was loth to let him go. "And his great friend is still Captain Ian Rullock?"
"Yes, still."
Mrs. Macmurdo reluctantly opened the shop door. "Aweel, sir, if ye maun gae.—There'll be snaw the night, I'm thinking! Do ye stop at the inn? There's twa-three sogers in town."
Strickland had not meant to stop. But, coming to the Jardine Arms and glancing through the window, he saw by the light of the fire in the common roomfour men in red coats sitting at table, drinking. He felt jaded and depressed, needing distraction from the gray chill day and the laird's dying. Curiosity faintly stretched herself. He turned into the inn, took a seat by a corner table, and called for a bottle of wine. In addition to the soldiers the room had a handful of others—farmers, a lawyer's clerk from Stirling, a petty officer of the excise, and two or three village nondescripts. From this group there now disengaged himself Robin Greenlaw, who came across to Strickland's table.
"Sit down and have a glass with me," said the latter. "Who are they?"
"A recruiting party," answered Greenlaw, accepting the invitation. "I like to hear their talk! I'll listen, drinking your wine and thanking you, sir! and riding home I'll make a song about them."
He sat with his arm over the chair-back, his right hand now lifting and now lowering the wine-glass. He had a look of strength and inner pleasure that rested and refreshed.
"What are they saying now?" asked Strickland.
The soldiers made the center of attention. More or less all in the room harkened to their talk, disconnected, obscure, idle, and boisterous as much of it was. The revenue officer, by virtue of being also the king's paid man, had claimed comrade's right and was drinking with them and putting questions. He was so obliging as to ask these in a round tone of voice and to repeat on the same note the information gathered.
"Recruits for the King's army, fighting King Louis on the river Main.—Where's that?—It's in Germany.Our King and the Hanoverians and the King of Prussia and the Queen of Austria are fighting the King of France.—Aye, of course ye know that, neighbors, being intelligent Scots folk, but recapitulation is na out of order!"
"Ask them what's thought of the Hanoverians." It was the lawyer's clerk's question. Thereupon rose some noisy difference of opinion among the drinking redcoats. The excise man finally reported. "They're na English, nor Scots, nor even Irish. But they're liked weel enough! They're good fighters. Oh, aye, when ye march and fight alangside them, they're good enough! They're his Majesty's cousins. God save King George!"
The recruiting party banged with tankards upon the table. One of the number put a question of his own. He had a look half pedant, half bully, and he spoke with a one-quarter-drunken, owllike solemnity.
"I may take it from the look of things that there are none hereabouts but good Whigs and upholders of government? No Tories—no damned black Jacobites?"
The excise man hemmed. "Why, ye see we're no sae muckle far from Hielands and Hielandmen, and it's known what they are, chief, chieftain, and clan—saving always the duke and every Campbell! And I wadna say that there are not, here and there, this side the Hielands, an auld family with leanings the auld way, and even a few gentlemen who wereoutin the 'fifteen. But the maist of us, gentle and simple, are up and down Whig and Kirk and reigning House.—Na, na! when we drink to the King we dinna pass the glass over the water!"
A dark, thin soldier put in his word, well garnished with oaths. "Now that there's war up and down and so many of us are going out of the country, there's a saying that the Pretender may e'en sail across from France and beat a drum and give a shout! Then there'll be a sorting—"
"Them that would rise wouldn't be enough to make a graveyard ghost to frighten with!"
"You're mistaken there. They'll frighten ye all right when they answer the drum! I'm thinking there's some in the army would answer it!"
"Then they'll be hanged, drawn, and quartered!" averred the corporal. "Who are ye thinking would do that?"
"I'm not precisely knowing. But there are some with King George were brought up on the hope of King James!"
More liquor appeared upon the table, was poured and drunk. The talk grew professional. The King's shilling, and the advantage of taking it, came solely upon the board, and who might or might not 'list from this dale and the bordering hills. Strickland and Robin Greenlaw left their corner.
"I must get back to the house."
"And I to Littlefarm."
They went out together. There were few in the street. The snow was beginning to fall. Greenlaw untied his horse.
"I hope that we're not facing another 'fifteen!'Scotland's ain Stewarts, and Break the Union!'It sounds well, but it's not in the line of progression. What does Captain Ian Rullock think about it?"
"I don't know. He hasn't been here, you know, for a long while."
"That's true. He and Mr. Alexander are still like brothers?"
"Like brothers."
Greenlaw mounted his horse. "Well, he's a bonny man, but he's got a piece of the demon in him! So have I, I ken very well, and so, doubtless, has he who will be Glenfernie, and all the rest of us—"
"I sit down to supper with mine very often," said Strickland.
"Oh yes, he's common—the demon! But somehow I could find him in Ian Rullock, though all covered up with gold. But doubtless," said Greenlaw, debonairly, "it would be the much of the fellow in me that would recognize much in another!" He put his gray into motion. "Good day, sir!" He was gone, disappearing down the long street, into the snow that was now falling like a veil.
Strickland turned homeward. The snow fell fast and thick in large white flakes. Glenfernie House rose before him, crowning the craggy hill, the modern building and the remnant of the old castle, not a great place, but an ancient, settled, and rooted, part of a land poor but not without grandeur, not without a rhythm attained between grandeur and homeliness. The road swept around and up between leafless trees and green cone-bearing ones. The snow was whitening the branches, the snow wrapped house and landscape in its veil. It broke, in part it obliterated, line and modeling; the whole seemed on the point of dissolving into a vast and silent unity. "Like a dying man," thought Strickland. He came upon thenarrow level space about the house, passed the great cedar planted by a pilgrim laird the year of Flodden Field, and entered by a door in the southern face.
Davie met him. "Eh, sir, Mr. Alexander's come!"
"Come!"
"Aye, just! An hour past, riding Black Alan, with Tam Dickson behind on Whitefoot, and weary enough thae horses looked! Mr. Alexander wad ha' gane without bite or sup to the laird's room, but he's lying asleep. So now he's gane to his ain auld room for a bit of rest. Haith, sir," said Davie, "but he's like the auld laird when he was twenty-eight!"
Strickland went, to the hall, where he found Alice.
"Come to the fire! I've been watching the snow, but it is so white and thick and still it fair frightens me! Davie told you that Alexander has come?"
"Yes. From Edinburgh to-day."
"Yes. He left London as soon as he had our letters."
She stood opposite him, a bright and bonny lass, with a look of her mother, but with more beauty. The light from the burning logs deepened the gold in her hair, as the warmth made more vivid the rose of her cheek. She owned a warm and laughing heart, a natural goodness. Strickland, who had watched and taught her since she was a slip of a child, had for her a great fondness.
Jamie entered the hall. "Father's awake now, but Aunt Grizel and Tibbie Ross will not tell him Alexander's come until they've given him something to eat." He came to the fire and stood, his blue eyes glinting light. "It's fine to see Alexander! The whole place feels different!"
"You've got a fine love for Alexander," said Strickland. So long had he lived with the Jardines of Glenfernie that they had grown like own folkto him, and he to them. He looked very kindly at the young man, handsome, big, flushed with feeling. He did not say, "Now you'll be going, Jamie, and he'll be staying," but the thought was in mind, and presently Alice gave it voice.
"He says that he has seen his earth, and that now he means to be a long time at home."
Davie appeared. "Mr. Alexander has gone to the laird's room. Mrs. Grizel wad have ye all come, too, sae be ye move saftly and sit dumb."
The three went. The laird's room was large and somewhat grimly bare. When his wife died he would have taken out every luxury. But a great fire burned on the hearth and gave a touch of redemption. A couch, too, had been brought in for the watcher at night, and a great flowered chair. In this now sat Mrs. Grizel Kerr, a pleasant, elderly, comely body, noted for her housewifery and her garden of herbs. Behind her, out of a shadowy corner, gleamed the white mutch of Tibbie Ross, the best nurse in that countryside. Jamie and Alice took two chairs that had been set for them near the bed. Strickland moved to the recess of a window. Outside the snow fell in very large flakes, large and many, straight and steady, there being no wind.
In a chair drawn close to the great bed, on a line with the sick man's hand lying on the coverlet, sat the heir of Glenfernie. He sat leaning forward, with one hand near the hand of his father. The laird's eyes were closed. He had been given a stimulant and he now lay gathering his powers that were not far from this life's frontier. The curtains of the bed had been drawn quite back; propped by pillows intoa half-sitting posture, he was plain to all in the room, in the ruddy light of the fire. A clock upon the wall ticked, ticked. Those in the room sat very still.
The laird drew a determined breath and opened his eyes. "Alexander!"
"Father!"
"You look like myself sitting there, and yet not myself. I am going to die."
"If that's your will, father."
"Aye, it's my will, for I've made it mine. I can't talk much. We'll talk at times and sit still between. Are you going to stay with me to-night?"
"Indeed I am, father. Right here beside you."
"Well, I've missed you. But you had to have your wanderings and your life of men. I understood that."
"You've been most good to me. It is in my heart and in the tears of my eyes."
"I did not grudge the siller. And I've had a pride in you, Alexander. Now you'll be the laird. Now let's sit quiet a bit."
The snow fell, the fire burned, the clock ticked. He spoke again. "It's before an eye inside that you'll be a wanderer and a goer about yet—within and without, my laddie, within and without! Do not forget, though, to hold the old place together that so many Jardines have been born in, and to care for the tenant bodies and the old folk—and there's your brother and sister."
"I will forget nothing that you say, father."
"I have kept that to say on top of my mind.... The old place and the tenant bodies and old folk, and your brother and sister. I have your word,and so," said the laird, "that's done and may drift by.—Grizel, I wad sleep a bit. Let him go and come again."
His eyes closed. Alexander rose from the chair beside him. Coming to Alice, he put his arm around her, and with Jamie at his other hand the three went from the room. Strickland tarried a moment to consult with Mrs. Grizel.
"The doctor comes to-morrow?"
"Aye. Tibbie thinks him a bit stronger."
"I will watch to-night with Alexander."
"Hoot, man! ye maun be weary enough yourself!" said Mrs. Grizel.
"No, I am not. I will sleep awhile after supper, and come in about ten. So you and Tibbie may get one good night."
Some hours later, in the room that had been his since his first coming to Glenfernie, he gazed out of window before turning to go down-stairs. The snow had ceased to fall, and out of a great streaming floe of clouds looked a half-moon. Under it lay wan hill and plain. The clouds were all of a size and vast in number, a herd of the upper air. The wind drove them, not like a shepherd, but like a wolf at their heels. The moon seemed the shepherd, laboring for control. Then the clouds themselves seemed the wolves, and the moon a traveler against whom they leaped, who was thrown among them, and rose again.... Then the moon was a soul, struggling with the wrack and wave of things.
Strickland went down the old, winding Glenfernie stair, and came at last to the laird's room. Tibbie Ross opened the door to him, and he saw it all inlow firelight and made ready for the night. The laird lay propped as before in the great bed, but seemed asleep. Alexander sat before the fire, elbows upon knees and chin in hand, brooding over the red coals. Tibbie murmured a direction or two and showed wine and bread set in the deep window. Then with a courtesy and a breathed, "Gie ye gude night, sirs!" she was forth to her own rest. The door closed softly behind her. Strickland stepped as softly to the chair beyond Alexander. The couch was spread for the watchers' alternate use, if so they chose; on a table burned shaded candles. Strickland had a book in his pocket. Sitting down, he produced this, for he would not seem to watch the man by the fire.
Alexander Jardine, large and strong of frame, with a countenance massive and thoughtful for so young a man, bronzed, with well-turned features, gazed steadily into the red hollows where the light played, withdrew and played again. Strickland tried to read, but the sense of the other's presence affected him, came between his mind and the page. Involuntarily he began to occupy himself with Alexander and to picture his life away from Glenfernie, away, too, from Edinburgh and Scotland. It was now six years since, definitely, he had given up the law, throwing himself, as it were, on the laird's mercy both for long and wide travel, and for life among books other than those indicated for advocates. The laird had let him go his gait—the laird with Mrs. Jardine a little before him. The Jardine fortune was not a great one, but there was enough for an heir who showed no inclination to live andto travelen prince, who in certain ways was nearer the ascetic than the spendthrift.... Before Strickland's mind, strolling dreamily, came pictures of far back, of years ago, of long since. A by-wind had brought to the tutor then certain curious bits of knowledge. Alexander, a student in Edinburgh, had lived for some time upon half of his allowance in order to accommodate Ian Rullock with the other half, the latter being in a crisis of quarrel with his uncle, who, when he quarreled, used always, where he could, the money screw. Strickland had listened to his Edinburgh informant, but had never divulged the news given. No more had he told another bit, floated to him again by that ancient Edinburgh friend and gossip, who had young cousins at college and listened to their talk. It pertained to a time a little before that of the shared income. This time it had been shared blood. Strickland, sitting with his book in the quiet room, saw in imagination the students' chambers in Edinburgh, and the little throng of very young men, flushed with wine and with youth, making friendships, and talking of friendships made, and dubbing Alexander Damon and Ian Pythias. Then more wine and a bravura passage. Damon and Pythias opening each a vein with some convenient dagger, smearing into the wound some drops of the other's blood, and going home each with a tourniquet above the right wrist.... Well, that was years ago—and youth loved such passages!
Alexander, by the fire, stooped to put back a coal that had fallen upon the oak boards, then sank again into his reverie. Strickland read a paragraphwithout any especial comprehension, after which he found himself again by the stream of Alexander's life. That friendship with Ian Rullock utterly held, he believed. Well, Ian Rullock, too, seemed somehow a great personage. Very different from Alexander, and yet somehow large to match.... Where had Alexander been after Edinburgh—where had he not been? Very often Ian was with him, but sometimes and for months he would seem to have been alone. Glenfernie might receive letters from Germany, from Italy or Egypt, or from further yet to the east. He had been alone this year, for Ian was now the King's man and with his regiment, Strickland supposed, wherever that might be. Alexander had written from Buda-Pesth, from Erfurt, from Amsterdam, from London. Now he sat here at Glenfernie, looking into the fire. Strickland, who liked books of travel, wondered what he saw of old cities, grave or gay, of ruined temples, sphinxes, monuments, grass-grown battle-fields, and ships at sea, storied lands, peoples, individual men and women. He had wayfared long; he must have had many an adventure. He had been from childhood a learner. His touch upon a book spoke of adeptship in that world.... Well, here he was, and what would he do now, when he was laird? Strickland lost himself in speculation. Little or naught had ever been in Alexander's letters about women.
The white ash fell, the clock ticked, the wind went around the house with a faint, banshee crying. The figure by the fire rested there, silent, still, and brooding. Strickland observed with some wonder its power of long, concentrated thinking. It satthere, not visibly tense, seemingly relaxed, yet as evidently looking into some place of inner motion, wider and swifter than that of the night world about it. Strickland tried to read. The clock hand moved toward midnight.
The laird spoke from the great bed. "Alexander—"
"I am here, father." Alexander rose and went to the sick man's side. "You slept finely! And here we have food for you, and drops to give you strength—"
The laird swallowed the drops and a spoonful or two of broth. "There. Now I want to talk. Aye, I am strong enough. I feel stronger. I am strong. It hurts me more to check me. Is that the wind blowing?"
"Yes. It is a wild night."
"It is singing. I could almost pick out the words. Alexander, there's a quarrel I have with Touris of Black Hill. I have no wish to make it up. He did me a wrong and is a sinner in many ways. But his sister is different. If you see her tell her that I aye liked her."
"Would it make you happier to be reconciled to Mr. Touris?"
"No, it would not! You were never a canting one, Alexander! Let that be. Anger is anger, and it's weakness to gainsay it! That is," said the laird, "when it's just—and this is just. Alexander, my bonny man—"
"I'm here, father."
"I've been lying here, gaeing up and down in my thoughts, a bairn again with my grandmither, gaeingup and down the braes and by the glen. I want to say somewhat to you. When you see an adder set your heel upon it! When a wolf goes by take your firelock and after him! When a denier and a cheat is near you tell the world as much and help to set the snare! Where there are betrayers and persecutors hunt the wild plant shall make a cup like their ain!" He fell to coughing, coughing more and more violently.
Strickland rose and came to the bedside, and the two watchers gave him water and wine to drink, and would have had him, when the fit was over, cease from all speech. He shook them off.
"Alexander, ye're like me. Ye're mair like me than any think! Where ye find your Grierson of Lagg, clench with him—clench—Alexander!"
He coughed, lifting himself in their arms. A blood-vessel broke. Tibbie Ross, answering the calling, hurried in. "Gude with us! it's the end!" Mrs. Grizel came, wrapped in a great flowered bed-gown. In a few minutes all was over. Strickland and Alexander laid him straight that had been the laird.
The month was May. The laird of Glenfernie, who had walked to the Kelpie's Pool, now came down the glen. Mother Binning was yet in her cot, though an older woman now and somewhat broken.
"Oh aye, my bonny man! All things die and all things live. To and fro gaes the shuttle!"
Glenfernie sat on the door-stone. She took all the news he could bring, and had her own questions to put.
"How's the house and all in it?"
"Well."
"Ye've got a bonny sister! Whom will she marry? There's Abercrombie and Fleming and Ferguson."
"I do not know. The one she likes the best."
"And when will ye be marrying yourself?"
"I am not going to marry, Mother. I would marry Wisdom, if I could!"
"Hoot! she stays single! Do ye love the hunt of Wisdom so?"
"Aye, I do. But it's a long, long chase—and to tell you the truth, at times I think she's just a wraith! And at times I am lazy and would just sit in the sun and be a fool."
"Like to-day?"
"Like to-day. And so," said Alexander, rising, "as I feel that way, I'll e'en be going on!"
"I'm thinking that maist of the wise have inner tokens by which they ken the fule. I was ne'er afraid of folly," said Mother Binning. "It's good growing stuff!"
Glenfernie laughed and left her and the drone of her wheel. A clucking hen and her brood, the cot and its ash-tree, sank from sight. A little longer and he reached the middle glen where the banks approached and the full stream rushed with a manifold sound. Here was the curtain of brier masking the cave that he had shared with Ian. He drew it aside and entered. So much smaller was the place than it had seemed in boyhood! Twice since they came to be men had he been here with Ian, and they had smiled over their cavern, but felt for it a tenderness. In a corner lay the fagots that, the last time, they had gathered with laughter and left here against outlaws' needs. Ian! He pictured Ian with his soldiers.
Outside the cavern, the air came about him like a cloud of fragrance. As he went down the glen, into its softer sweeps, this increased, as did the song of birds. The primrose was strewn about in disks of pale gold, the white thorn lifted great bouquets, the bluebell touched the heart. A lark sang in the sky, linnet and cuckoo at hand, in the wood at the top of the glen cooed the doves. The water rippled by the leaning birches, the wild bees went from flower to flower. The sky was all sapphire, the air a perfumed ocean. So beautiful rang the spring that it was like a bell in the heart, in theblood. The laird of Glenfernie, coming to a great natural chair of sun-warmed rock, sat down to listen. All was of a sweetness, poignant, intense. But in the very act of recognizing this, there came upon him an old mood of melancholy, an inner mist and chill, a gray languor and wanting. The very bourgeoning and blossoming about him seemed to draw light from him, not give light. "I brought the Kelpie's Pool back with me," he thought. He shut his eyes, leaning his head against the stone, at last with a sideward movement burying it in his folded arms. "More life—more! What was a great current goes sluggish and landbound. Where again is the open sea—the more—the boundless? Where again—where again?"
He sat for an hour by the wild, singing stream. It drenched him, the loved place and the sweet season, with its thousand store of beauties. Its infinite number of touches brought at last response. The vague crying and longing of nature hushed before a present lullaby. At last he rose and went on with the calling stream.
The narrow path, set about with living green, with the spangly flowers, and between the branches fragments of the blue lift as clear as glass, led down the glen, widening now to hill and dale. Softening and widening, the world laughed in May. The stream grew broad and tranquil, with grassy shores overhung by green boughs. Here and there the bank extended into the flood a little grassy cape edged with violets. Alexander, following the spiral of the path, came upon the view of such a spot as this. It lay just before him, a little below his road. The streamwashed its fairy beach. From the new grass rose a blooming thorn-tree; beneath this knelt a girl and, resting upon her hands, looked at her face in the water.
The laird of Glenfernie stood still. A drooping birch hid him; his step had been upon moss and was not heard. The face and form upon the bank, the face in the water, showed no consciousness of any human neighbor. The face was that of a woman of perhaps twenty-four. The hair was brown, the eyes brown. The head was beautifully placed on a round, smooth throat. With a wide forehead, with great width between the eyes, the face tapered to a small round chin. The mouth and under the eyes smiled in a thousand different ways. The beauty that was there was subtle, not discoverable by every one.—The girl settled back upon the grass beneath the thorn-tree. She was very near Glenfernie; he could see the rise and fall of her bosom beneath her blue print gown. It was Elspeth Barrow—he knew her now, though he had not seen her for a long time. She sat still, her brown eyes raised to building birds in the thorn-tree. Then she began herself to sing, clear and sweet.