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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Foes, by Mary Johnston
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Foes
+
+
+Author: Mary Johnston
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 20, 2005  [eBook #16554]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Diane Monico, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+
+      Books by
+
+      Mary Johnston
+
+      Foes
+      Sir Mortimer
+
+      Harper & Brothers, New York
+      [Established 1817]
+
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+
+FOES
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+MARY JOHNSTON
+
+Author of
+"To Have and to Hold" "Audrey" "Lewis Rand"
+"Sir Mortimer" "The Long Roll"
+
+Harper & Brothers Publishers
+New York and London
+
+1918
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Said Mother Binning: "Whiles I spin and whiles I dream. A bonny day
+like this I look."
+
+English Strickland, tutor at Glenfernie House, looked, too, at the
+feathery glen, vivid in June sunshine. The ash-tree before Mother
+Binning's cot overhung a pool of the little river. Below, the water
+brawled and leaped from ledge to ledge, but here at the head of the
+glen it ran smooth and still. A rose-bush grew by the door and a hen
+and her chicks crossed in the sun. English Strickland, who had been
+fishing, sat on the door-stone and talked to Mother Binning, sitting
+within with her wheel beside her.
+
+"What is it, Mother, to have the second sight?"
+
+"It's to see behind the here and now. Why're ye asking?"
+
+"I wish I could buy it or slave for it!" said Strickland. "Over and
+over again I really need to see behind the here and now!"
+
+"Aye. It's needed mair really than folk think. It's no' to be had by
+buying nor slaving. How are the laird and the leddy?"
+
+"Why, well. Tell me," said Strickland, "some of the things you've
+seen with second sight."
+
+"It taks inner ears for inner things."
+
+"How do you know I haven't them?"
+
+"Maybe 'tis so. Ye're liked well enough."
+
+Mother Binning looked at the dappling water and the June trees and the
+bright blue sky. It was a day to loosen tongue.
+
+"I'll tell you ane thing I saw. It's mair than twenty years since
+James Stewart, that was son of him who fled, wad get Scotland and
+England again intil his hand. So the laddie came frae overseas, and
+made stir and trouble enough, I tell ye!... Now I'll show you what I
+saw, I that was a young woman then, and washing my wean's claes in the
+water there. The month was September, and the year seventeen fifteen.
+Mind you, nane hereabouts knew yet of thae goings-on!... I sat back on
+my heels, with Jock's sark in my hand, and a lav'rock was singing, and
+whiles I listened the pool grew still. And first it was blue glass
+under blue sky, and I sat caught. And then it was curled cloud or
+milk, and then it was nae color at all. And then I _saw_, and 'twas as
+though what I saw was around me. There was a town nane like
+Glenfernie, and a country of mountains, and a water no' like this one.
+There pressed a thrang of folk, and they were Hieland men and Lowland
+men, but mair Hieland than Lowland, and there were chiefs and
+chieftains and Lowland lords, and there were pipers. I heard naught,
+but it was as though bright shadows were around me. There was a height
+like a Good People's mount, and a braw fine-clad lord speaking and
+reading frae a paper, and by him a surpliced man to gie a prayer, and
+there was a banner pole, and it went up high, and it had a gowd ball
+atop. The braw lord stopped speaking, and all the Hielandmen and
+Lowlandmen drew and held up and brandished their claymores and swords.
+The flash ran around like the levin. I kenned that they shouted, all
+thae gay shadows! I saw the pipers' cheeks fill with wind, and the
+bags of the pipes fill. Then ane drew on a fine silken rope, and up
+the pole there went a braw silken banner, and it sailed out in the
+wind. And there was mair shouting and brandishing. But what think ye
+might next befall? That gowden ball, gowden like the sun before it
+drops, that topped the pole, it fell! I marked it fall, and the heads
+dodge, and it rolled upon the ground.... And then all went out like a
+candle that you blaw upon. I was kneeling by the water, and Jock's
+sark in my hand, and the lav'rock singing, and that was all."
+
+"I have heard tell of that," said Strickland. "It was near Braemar."
+
+"And that's mony a lang league frae here! Sax days, and we had news of
+the rising, with the gathering at Braemar. And said he wha told us,
+'The gilt ball fell frae the standard pole, and there's nane to think
+that a good omen!' But I _saw_ it," said Mother Binning. She turned
+her wheel, a woman not yet old and with a large, tranquil comeliness.
+"What I see makes fine company!"
+
+Strickland plucked a rose and smelled it. "This country is fuller of
+such things than is England that I come from."
+
+"Aye. It's a grand country." She continued to spin. The tutor looked
+at the sun. It was time to be going if he wished another hour with the
+stream. He took up his rod and book and rose from the door-step.
+Mother Binning glanced aside from her wheel.
+
+"How gaes things with the lad at the House?"
+
+"Alexander or James?"
+
+"The one ye call Alexander."
+
+"That is his name."
+
+"I think that he's had ithers. That's a lad of mony lives!"
+
+Strickland, halting by the rose-bush, looked at Mother Binning. "I
+suppose we call it 'wisdom' when two feel alike. Now that's just what
+I feel about Alexander Jardine! It's just feeling without
+rationality."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"There isn't any reason in it."
+
+"I dinna know about 'reason.' There's _being_ in it."
+
+The tutor made as if to speak further, then, with a shake of his head,
+thought better of it. Thirty-five years old, he had been a tutor since
+he was twenty, dwelling, in all, in four or five more or less
+considerable houses and families. Experience, adding itself to innate
+good sense, had made him slow to discuss idiosyncrasies of patrons or
+pupils. Strong perplexity or strong feeling might sometimes drive him,
+but ordinarily he kept a rein on speech. Now he looked around him.
+
+"What high summer, lovely weather!"
+
+"Oh aye! It's bonny. Will ye be gaeing, since ye have na mair to say?"
+
+English Strickland laughed and said good-by to Mother Binning and
+went. The ash-tree, the hazels that fringed the water, a point of
+mossy rock, hid the cot. The drone of the wheel no longer reached his
+ears. It was as though all that had sunk into the earth. Here was only
+the deep, the green, and lonely glen. He found a pool that invited,
+cast, and awaited the speckled victim. In the morning he had had fair
+luck, but now nothing.... The water showed no more diamonds, the lower
+slopes of the converging hills grew a deep and slumbrous green. Above
+was the gold, shoulder and crest powdered with it, unearthly,
+uplifted. Strickland ceased his fishing. The light moved slowly
+upward; the trees, the crag-heads, melted into heaven; while the lower
+glen lay in lengths of shadow, in jade and amethyst. A whispering
+breeze sprang up, cool as the water sliding by. Strickland put up his
+fisherman's gear and moved homeward, down the stream.
+
+He had a very considerable way to go. The glen path, narrow and rough,
+went up and down, still following the water. Hazel and birch, oak and
+pine, overhung and darkened it. Bosses of rock thrust themselves
+forward, patched with lichen and moss, seamed and fringed with fern
+and heath. Roots of trees, huge and twisted, spread and clutched like
+guardian serpents. In places where rock had fallen the earth seemed to
+gape. In the shadow it looked a gnome world--a gnome or a dragon
+world. Then upon ledge or bank showed bells or disks or petaled suns
+of June flowers, rose and golden, white and azure, while overhead was
+heard the evening song of birds alike calm and merry, and through a
+cleft in the hills poured the ruddy, comfortable sun.
+
+The walls declined in height, sloped farther back. The path grew
+broader; the water no longer fell roaring, but ran sedately between
+pebbled beaches. The scene grew wider, the mouth of the glen was
+reached. He came out into a sunset world of dale and moor and
+mountain-heads afar. There were fields of grain, and blue waving
+feathers from chimneys of cottage and farm-house. In the distance
+showed a village, one street climbing a hill, and atop a church with a
+spire piercing the clear east. The stream widened, flowing thin over a
+pebbly bed. The sun was not yet down. It painted a glory in the west
+and set lanes and streets of gold over the hills and made the little
+river like Pactolus. Strickland approached a farm-house, prosperous
+and venerable, mended and neat. Thatched, long, white, and low, behind
+it barns and outbuildings, it stood tree-guarded, amid fields of young
+corn. Beyond it swelled a long moorside; in front slipped the still
+stream.
+
+There were stepping-stones across the stream. Two young girls, coming
+toward the house, had set foot upon these. Strickland, halting in the
+shadow of hazels and young aspens, watched them as they crossed. Their
+step was free and light; they came with a kind of hardy grace,
+elastic, poised, and very young, homeward from some visit on this
+holiday. The tutor knew them to be Elspeth and Gilian Barrow,
+granddaughters of Jarvis Barrow of White Farm. The elder might have
+been fifteen, the younger thirteen years. They wore their holiday
+dresses. Elspeth had a green silken snood, and Gilian a blue. Elspeth
+sang as she stepped from stone to stone:
+
+    "But I will get a bonny boat,
+      And I will sail the sea,
+    For I maun gang to Love Gregor,
+      Since he canna come hame to me--"
+
+They did not see Strickland where he stood by the hazels. He let them
+go by, watching them with a quiet pleasure. They took the
+upward-running lane. Hawthorns in bloom hid them; they were gone like
+young deer. Strickland, crossing the stream, went his own way.
+
+The country became more open, with, at this hour, a dreamlike depth
+and hush. Down went the sun, but a glow held and wrapped the earth in
+hues of faery. When he had walked a mile and more he saw before him
+Glenfernie House. In the modern and used moiety seventy years old, in
+the ancient keep and ruin of a tower three hundred, it crowned--the
+ancient and the latter-day--a craggy hill set with dark woods, and
+behind it came up like a wonder lantern, like a bubble of pearl, the
+full moon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The tutor, in his own room, put down his fisherman's rod and bag. The
+chamber was a small one, set high up, with two deep windows tying the
+interior to the yet rosy west and the clearer, paler south. Strickland
+stood a moment, then went out at door and down three steps and along a
+passageway to two doors, one closed, the other open. He tapped upon
+the latter.
+
+"James!"
+
+A boy of fourteen, tall and fair, with a flushed, merry face, crossed
+the room and opened the door more widely. "Oh, aye, Mr. Strickland,
+I'm in!"
+
+"Is Alexander?"
+
+"Not yet. I haven't seen him. I was at the village with Dandie
+Saunderson."
+
+"Do you know what he did with himself?"
+
+"Not precisely."
+
+"I see. Well, it's nearly supper-time."
+
+Back in his own quarters, the tutor made such changes as were needed,
+and finally stood forth in a comely suit of brown, with silver-buckled
+shoes, stock and cravat of fine cambric, and a tie-wig. Midway in his
+toilet he stopped to light two candles. These showed, in the smallest
+of mirrors, set of wig and cravat, and between the two a thoughtful,
+cheerful, rather handsome countenance.
+
+He had left the door ajar so that he might hear, if he presently
+returned, his eldest pupil. But he heard only James go clattering down
+the passage and the stair. Strickland, blowing out his candles, left
+his room to the prolonged June twilight and the climbing moon.
+
+The stairway down, from landing to landing, lay in shadow, but as he
+approached the hall he caught the firelight. The laird had a London
+guest who might find a chill in June nights so near the north. The
+blazing wood showed forth the chief Glenfernie gathering-place, wide
+and deep, with a great chimneypiece and walls of black oak, and hung
+thereon some old pieces of armor and old weapons. There was a table
+spread for supper, and a servant went about with a long
+candle-lighter, lighting candles. A collie and a hound lay upon the
+hearth. Between them stood Mrs. Jardine, a tall, fair woman of forty
+and more, with gray eyes, strong nose, and humorous mouth.
+
+"Light them all, Davie! It'll be dark then by London houses."
+
+Davie showed an old servant's familiarity. "He wasna sae grand when he
+left auld Scotland thirty years since! I'm thinking he might remember
+when he had nae candles ava in his auld hoose."
+
+"Well, he'll have candles enough in his new hall."
+
+Davie lit the last candle. "They say that he is sinfu' rich!"
+
+"Rich enough to buy Black Hill," said Mrs. Jardine, and turned to the
+fire. The tutor joined her there. He had for her liking and
+admiration, and she for him almost a motherly affection. Now she
+smiled as he came up.
+
+"Did you have good fishing?"
+
+"Only fair."
+
+"Mr. Jardine and Mr. Touris have just returned. They rode to Black
+Hill. Have you seen Alexander?"
+
+"No. I asked Jamie--"
+
+"So did I. But he could not tell."
+
+"He may have gone over the moor and been belated. Bran is with him."
+
+"Yes.... He's a solitary one, with a thousand in himself!"
+
+"You're the second woman," remarked Strickland, "who's said that
+to-day," and told her of Mother Binning.
+
+Mrs. Jardine pushed back a fallen ember with the toe of her shoe. "I
+don't know whether she sees or only thinks she sees. Some do the tane
+and some do the tither. Here's the laird."
+
+Two men entered together--a large man and a small man. The first,
+great of height and girth, was plainly dressed; the last, seeming
+slighter by contrast than he actually was, wore fine cloth, silken
+hose, gold buckles to his shoes, and a full wig. The first had a
+massive, somewhat saturnine countenance, the last a shrewd, narrow
+one. The first had a long stride and a wide reach from thumb to little
+finger, the last a short step and a cupped hand. William Jardine,
+laird of Glenfernie, led the way to the fire.
+
+"The ford was swollen. Mr. Touris got a little wet and chilled."
+
+"Ah, the fire is good!" said Mr. Touris. "They do not burn wood like
+this in London!"
+
+"You will burn it at Black Hill. I hope that you like it better and
+better?"
+
+"It has possibilities, ma'am. Undoubtedly," said Mr. Touris, the Scots
+adventurer for fortune, set up as merchant-trader in London, making
+his fortune by "interloping" voyages to India, but now shareholder and
+part and lot of the East India Company--"undoubtedly the place has
+possibilities." He warmed his hands. "Well, it would taste good to
+come back to Scotland--!" His words might have been finished out, "and
+laird it, rich and influential, where once I went forth, cadet of a
+good family, but poorer than a church mouse!"
+
+Mrs. Jardine made a murmur of hope that he _would_ come back to
+Scotland. But the laird looked with a kind of large gloom at the
+reflection of fire and candle in battered breastplate and morion and
+crossed pikes.
+
+Supper was brought in by two maids, Eppie and Phemie, and with them
+came old Lauchlinson, the butler. Mrs. Jardine placed herself behind
+the silver urn, and Mr. Touris was given the seat nearest the fire.
+The boy James appeared, and with him the daughter of the house, Alice,
+a girl of twelve, bonny and merry.
+
+"Where is Alexander?" asked the laird.
+
+Strickland answered. "He is not in yet, sir. I fancy that he walked to
+the far moor. Bran is with him."
+
+"He's a wanderer!" said the laird. "But he ought to keep hours."
+
+"That's a fine youth!" quoth Mr. Touris, drinking tea. "I marked him
+yesterday, casting the bar. Very strong--a powerful frame like yours,
+Glenfernie! When is he going to college?"
+
+"This coming year. I have kept him by me late," said the laird,
+broodingly. "I like my bairns at home."
+
+"Aye, but the young will not stay as they used to! They will be
+voyaging," said the guest. "They build outlandish craft and forthfare,
+no matter what you cry to them!" His voice had a mordant note. "I
+know. I've got one myself--a nephew, not a son. But I am his guardian
+and he's in my house, and it is the same. If I buy Black Hill,
+Glenfernie, I hope that your son and my nephew may be friends. They're
+about of an age."
+
+The listening Jamie spoke from beyond Strickland. "What's your
+nephew's name, sir?"
+
+"Ian. Ian Rullock. His father's mother was a Highland lady, near
+kinswoman to Gordon of Huntley." Mr. Touris was again speaking to his
+host. "As a laddie, before his father's death (his mother, my sister,
+died at his birth), he was much with those troublous northern kin. His
+father took him, too, in England, here and there among the Tory crowd.
+But I've had him since he was twelve and am carrying him on in the
+straight Whig path."
+
+"And in the true Presbyterian religion?"
+
+"Why, as to that," said Mr. Touris, "his father was of the Church
+Episcopal in Scotland. I trust that we are all Christians,
+Glenfernie!"
+
+The laird made a dissenting sound. "I kenned," he said, and his voice
+held a grating gibe, "that you had left the Kirk."
+
+Mr. Archibald Touris sipped his tea. "I did not leave it so far,
+Glenfernie, that I cannot return! In England, for business reasons, I
+found it wiser to live as lived the most that I served. Naaman was
+permitted to bow himself in the house of Rimmon."
+
+"You are not Naaman," answered the laird. "Moreover, I hold that
+Naaman sinned!"
+
+Mrs. Jardine would make a diversion. "Mr. Jardine, will you have sugar
+to your tea? Mr. Strickland says the great pine is blown down, this
+side the glen. The _Mercury_ brings us news of the great world, Mr.
+Touris, but I dare say you can give us more?"
+
+"The chief news, ma'am, is that we want war with Spain and Walpole
+won't give it to us. But we'll have it--British trade must have it or
+lower her colors to the Dons! France, too--"
+
+Supper went on, with abundant and good food and drink. The laird sat
+silent. Strickland gave Mrs. Jardine yeoman aid. Jamie and Alice now
+listened to the elders, now in an undertone discoursed their own
+affairs. Mr. Touris talked, large trader talk, sprinkled with terms of
+commerce and Indian policy. Supper over, all rose. The table was
+cleared, wine and glasses brought and set upon it, between the
+candles. The young folk vanished. Bright as was the night, the air
+carried an edge. Mr. Touris, standing by the fire, warmed himself and
+took snuff. Strickland, who had left the hall, returned and placed her
+embroidery frame for Mrs. Jardine.
+
+"Is Alexander in yet?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+She began to work in cross-stitch upon a wreath of tulips and roses.
+The tutor took his book and withdrew to the table and the candles
+thereon. The laird came and dropped his great form upon the settle. He
+held silence a few moments, then began to speak.
+
+"I am fifty years old. I was a bairn just talking and toddling about
+the year the Stewart fled and King William came to England. My father
+had Campbell blood in him and was a friend of Argyle's. The estate of
+Glenfernie was not to him then, but his uncle held it and had an heir
+of his body. My father was poor save in stanchness to the liberties of
+Kirk and kingdom. My mother was a minister's daughter, and she and her
+father and mother were among the persecuted for the sake of the true
+Reformed and Covenanted Church of Scotland. My mother had a burn in
+her cheek. It was put there, when she was a young lass, by order of
+Grierson of Lagg. She was set among those to be sold into the
+plantations in America. A kinsman who had power lifted her from that
+bog, but much she suffered before she was freed.... When I was little
+and sat upon her knee I would put my forefinger in that mark. 'It's a
+seal, laddie,' she would say. 'Sealed to Christ and His true Kirk!'
+But when I was bigger I only wanted to meet Grierson of Lagg, and
+grieved that he was dead and gone and that Satan, not I, had the
+handling of him. My grandfather and mother.... My grandfather was
+among the outed ministers in Galloway. Thrust from his church and his
+parish, he preached upon the moors--yea, to juniper and whin-bush and
+the whaups that flew and nested! Then the persecuted men, women and
+bairns, gathered there, and he preached to them. Aye, and he was at
+Bothwell Bridge. Claverhouse's men took him, and he lay for some
+months in the Edinburgh tolbooth, and then by Council and justiciary
+was condemned to be hanged. And so he was hanged at the cross of
+Edinburgh. And what he said before he died was '_With what measure ye
+mete, it shall be measured to you_' ... My grandmother, for hearing
+preaching in the fields and for sheltering the distressed for the
+Covenant's sake, was sent with other godly women to the Bass Rock.
+There in cold and heat, in hunger and sickness, she bided for two
+years. When at last they let her body forth her mind was found to be
+broken.... My father and mother married and lived, until Glenfernie
+came to him, at Windygarth. I was born at Windygarth. My grandmother
+lived with us. I was twelve years old before she went from earth. It
+was all her pleasure to be forth from the house--any house, for she
+called them all prisons. So I was sent to ramble with her. Out of
+doors, with the harmless things of earth, she was wise enough--and
+good company. The old of this countryside remember us, going here and
+there.... I used to think, 'If I had been living then, I would not
+have let those things happen!' And I dreamed of taking coin, and of
+dropping the same coin into the hands that gave.... And so, the other
+having served your turn, Touris, you will change back to the true
+Kirk?"
+
+Mr. Touris handled his snuff-box, considered the chasing upon the
+gold lid. "Those were sore happenings, Glenfernie, but they're past! I
+make no wonder that, being you, you feel as you do. But the world's in
+a mood, if I may say it, not to take so hardly religious differences.
+I trust that I am as religious as another--but my family was always
+moderate there. In matters political the world's as hot as ever--but
+there, too, it is my instinct to ca' canny. But if you talk of
+trade"--he tapped his snuff-box--"I will match you, Glenfernie! If
+there's wrong, pay it back! Hold to your principles! But do it
+cannily. Smile when there's smart, and get your own again by being
+supple. In the end you'll demand--and get--a higher interest. Prosper
+at your enemy's cost, and take repayment for your hurt sugared and
+spiced!"
+
+"I'll not do it so!" said Glenfernie. "But I would take my stand at
+the crag's edge and cry to Grierson of Lagg, 'You or I go down!'"
+
+Mr. Touris brushed the snuff from his ruffles. "It's a great century!
+We're growing enlightened."
+
+With a movement of her fingers Mrs. Jardine helped to roll from her
+lap a ball of rosy wool. "Mr. Jardine, will you give me that? Had you
+heard that Abercrombie's cows were lifted?"
+
+"Aye, I heard. What is it, Holdfast?"
+
+Both dogs had raised their heads.
+
+"Bran is outside," said Strickland.
+
+As he spoke the door opened and there came in a youth of seventeen,
+tall and well-built, with clothing that testified to an encounter
+alike with brier and bog. The hound Bran followed him. He blinked at
+the lights and the fire, then with a gesture of deprecation crossed
+the hall to the stairway. His mother spoke after him.
+
+"Davie will set you something to eat."
+
+He answered, "I do not want anything," then, five steps up, paused and
+turned his head. "I stopped at White Farm, and they gave me supper."
+He was gone, running up the stairs, and Bran with him.
+
+The laird of Glenfernie shaded his eyes and looked at the fire. Mrs.
+Jardine, working upon the gold streak in a tulip, held her needle
+suspended and sat for a moment with unseeing gaze, then resumed the
+bright wreath. The tutor began to think again of Mother Binning, and,
+following this, of the stepping-stones at White Farm, and Elspeth and
+Gilian Barrow balanced above the stream of gold. Mr. Touris put up his
+snuff-box.
+
+"That's a fine youth! I should say that he took after you, Glenfernie.
+But it's hard to tell whom the young take after!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The school-room at Glenfernie gave upon the hill's steepest, most
+craglike face. A door opened on a hand's-breadth of level turf across
+from which rose the broken and ruined wall that once had surrounded
+the keep. Ivy overgrew this; below a wide and ragged breach a pine had
+set its roots in the hillside. Its top rose bushy above the stones.
+Beyond the opening, one saw from the school-room, as through a window,
+field and stream and moor, hill and dale. The school-room had been
+some old storehouse or office. It was stone walled and floored, with
+three small windows and a fireplace. Now it contained a long table
+with a bench and three or four chairs, a desk and shelves for books.
+One door opened upon the little green and the wall; a second gave
+access to a courtyard and the rear of the new house.
+
+Here on a sunny, still August forenoon Strickland and the three
+Jardines went through the educational routine. The ages of the pupils
+were not sufficiently near together to allow of a massed instruction.
+The three made three classes. Jamie and Alice worked in the
+school-room, under Strickland's eye. But Alexander had or took a wider
+freedom. It was his wont to prepare his task much where he pleased,
+coming to the room for recitation or for colloquy upon this or that
+aspect of knowledge and the attainment thereof. The irregularity
+mattered the less as the eldest Jardine combined with a passion for
+personal liberty and out of doors a passion for knowledge. Moreover,
+he liked and trusted Strickland. He would go far, but not far enough
+to strain the tutor's patience. His father and mother and all about
+Glenfernie knew his way and in a measure acquiesced. He had managed to
+obtain for himself range. Young as he was, his indrawing, outpushing
+force was considerable, and was on the way, Strickland thought, to
+increase in power. The tutor had for this pupil a mixed feeling. The
+one constant in it was interest. He was to him like a deep lake, clear
+enough to see that there was something at the bottom that cast
+conflicting lights and hints of shape. It might be a lump of gold, or
+a coil of roots which would send up a water-lily, or it might be
+something different. He had a feeling that the depths themselves
+hardly knew. Or there might be two things of two natures down there in
+the lake....
+
+Strickland set Alice to translating a French fable, and Jamie to
+reconsidering a neglected page of ancient history. Looking through the
+west window, he saw that Alexander had taken his geometry out through
+the great rent in the wall. Book and student perched beneath the
+pine-tree, in a crook made by rock and brown root, overhanging the
+autumn world. Strickland at his own desk dipped quill into ink-well
+and continued a letter to a friend in England. The minutes went by.
+From the courtyard came a subdued, cheerful household clack and
+murmur, voices of men and maids, with once Mrs. Jardine's genial,
+vigorous tones, and once the laird's deep bell note, calling to his
+dogs. On the western side fell only the sough of the breeze in the
+pine.
+
+Jamie ceased the clocklike motion of his body to and fro over the
+difficult lesson. "I never understood just what were the Erinnys,
+sir?"
+
+"The Erinnys?" Strickland laid down the pen and turned in his chair.
+"I'll have to think a moment, to get it straight for you, Jamie....
+The Erinnys are the Fates as avengers. They are the vengeance-demanding
+part of ourselves objectified, supernaturalized, and named. Of old,
+where injury was done, the Erinnys were at hand to pull the roof down
+upon the head of the injurer. Their office was to provide unerringly
+sword for sword, bitter cup for bitter cup. They never forgot, they
+always avenged, though sometimes they took years to do it. They
+esteemed themselves, and were esteemed, essential to the moral order.
+They are the dark and bitter extreme of justice, given power by the
+imagination.... Do you think that you know the chapter now?"
+
+Jamie achieved his recitation, and then was set to mathematics. The
+tutor's quill drove on across the page. He looked up.
+
+"Mr. Touris has come to Black Hill?"
+
+Jamie and Alice worshiped interruptions.
+
+"He has twenty carriers bringing fine things all the time--"
+
+"Mother is going to take me when she goes to see Mrs. Alison, his
+sister--"
+
+"He is going to spend money and make friends--"
+
+"Mother says Mrs. Alison was most bonny when she was young, but
+England may have spoiled her--"
+
+"The minister told the laird that Mr. Touris put fifty pounds in the
+plate--"
+
+Strickland held up his hand, and the scholars, sighing, returned to
+work. _Buzz, buzz!_ went the bees outside the window. The sun climbed
+high. Alexander shut his geometry and came through the break in the
+wall and across the span of green to the school-room.
+
+"That's done, Mr. Strickland."
+
+Strickland looked at the paper that his eldest pupil put before him.
+"Yes, that is correct. Do you want, this morning, to take up the
+reading?"
+
+"I had as well, I suppose."
+
+"If you go to Edinburgh--if you do as your father wishes and apply
+yourself to the law--you will need to read well and to speak well. You
+do not do badly, but not well enough. So, let's begin!" He put out his
+hand and drew from the bookshelf a volume bearing the title, _The
+Treasury of Orators_. "Try what you please."
+
+Alexander took the book and moved to the unoccupied window. Here he
+half sat, half stood, the morning light flowing in upon him. He opened
+the volume and read, with a questioning inflection, the title beneath
+his eyes, "'The Cranes of Ibycus'?"
+
+"Yes," assented Strickland. "That is a short, graphic thing."
+
+Alexander read:
+
+     "Ibycus, who sang of love, material and divine, in Rhegium
+     and in Samos, would wander forth in the world and make his
+     lyre sound now by the sea and now in the mountain.
+     Wheresoever he went he was clad in the favor of all who
+     loved song. He became a wandering minstrel-poet. The
+     shepherd loved him, and the fisher; the trader and the
+     mechanic sighed when he sang; the soldier and the king felt
+     him at their hearts. The old returned in their thoughts to
+     youth, young men and maidens trembled in heavenly sound and
+     light. You would think that all the world loved Ibycus.
+
+     "Corinth, the jeweled city, planned her chariot-races and
+     her festival of song. The strong, the star-eyed young men,
+     traveled to Corinth from mainland and from island, and those
+     inner athletes and starry ones, the poets, traveled. Great
+     feasting was to be in Corinth, and contests of strength and
+     flights of song, and in the theater, representation of gods
+     and men. Ibycus, the wandering poet, would go to Corinth,
+     there perhaps to receive a crown.
+
+     "Ibycus, loved of all who love song, traveled alone, but not
+     alone. Yet shepherds, or women with their pitchers at the
+     spring, saw but a poet with a staff and a lyre. Now he was
+     found upon the highroad, and now the country paths drew him,
+     and the solemn woods where men most easily find God. And so
+     he approached Corinth.
+
+     "The day was calm and bright, with a lofty, blue, and
+     stainless sky. The heart of Ibycus grew warm, and there
+     seemed a brighter light within the light cast by the sun.
+     Flower and plant and tree and all living things seemed to
+     him to be glistening and singing, and to have for him, as he
+     for them, a loving friendship. And, looking up to the sky,
+     he saw, drawn out stringwise, a flight of cranes, addressed
+     to Egypt. And between his heart and them ran, like a
+     rippling path that the sun sends across the sea, a stream of
+     good-will and understanding. They seemed a part of himself,
+     winged in the blue heaven, and aware of the part of him that
+     trod earth, that was entering the grave and shadowy wood
+     that neighbored Corinth.
+
+     "The cranes vanished from overhead, the sky arched without
+     stain. Ibycus, the sacred poet, with his staff and his lyre,
+     went on into the wood. Now the light faded and there was
+     green gloom, like the depths of Father Sea.
+
+     "Now robbers lay masked in the wood--"
+
+Jamie and Alice sat very still, listening. Strickland kept his eyes
+on the reading youth.
+
+     "Now robbers lay masked in the wood--violent men and
+     treacherous, watching for the unwary, to take from them
+     goods and, if they resisted, life. In a dark place they lay
+     in wait, and from thence they sprang upon Ibycus. 'What hast
+     thou? Part it from thyself and leave it with us!'
+
+     "Ibycus, who could sing of the wars of the Greeks and the
+     Trojans no less well than of the joys of young love, made
+     stand, held close to him his lyre, but raised on high his
+     staff of oak. Then from behind one struck him with a keen
+     knife, and he sank, and lay in his blood. The place was the
+     edge of a glade, where the trees thinned away and the sky
+     might be seen overhead. And now, across the blue heaven,
+     came a second line of the south-ward-going cranes. They flew
+     low, they flapped their wings, and the wood heard their
+     crying. Then Ibycus the poet raised his arms to his brothers
+     the birds. 'Ye cranes, flying between earth and heaven,
+     avenge shed blood, as is right!'
+
+     "Hoarse screamed the cranes flying overhead. Ibycus the poet
+     closed his eyes, pressed his lips to Mother Earth, and died.
+     The cranes screamed again, circling the wood, then in a long
+     line sailed southward through the blue air until they might
+     neither be heard nor seen. The robbers stared after them.
+     They laughed, but without mirth. Then, stooping to the body
+     of Ibycus, they would have rifled it when, hearing a sudden
+     sound of men's voices entering the wood, they took violent
+     fright and fled."
+
+Strickland looked still at the reader. Alexander had straightened
+himself. He was speaking rather than reading. His voice had
+intensities and shadows. His brows had drawn together, his eyes
+glowed, and he stood with nostrils somewhat distended. The emotion
+that he plainly showed seemed to gather about the injury done and the
+appeal of Ibycus. The earlier Ibycus had not seemed greatly to
+interest him. Strickland was used to stormy youth, to its passional
+moments, sudden glows, burnings, sympathies, defiances, lurid shows of
+effects with the causes largely unapparent. It was his trade to know
+youth, and he had a psychologist's interest. He said now to himself,
+"There is something in his character that connects itself with, that
+responds to, the idea of vengeance." There came into his memory the
+laird's talk, the evening of Mr. Touris's visit, in June. Glenfernie,
+who would have wrestled with Grierson of Lagg at the edge of the pit;
+Glenfernie's mother and father, who might have had much the same
+feeling; their forebears beyond them with like sensations toward the
+Griersons of their day.... The long line of them--the long line of
+mankind--injured and injurers....
+
+     "Travelers through the wood, whose voices the robbers heard,
+     found Ibycus the poet lying upon the ground, ravished of
+     life. It chanced that he had been known of them, known and
+     loved. Great mourning arose, and vain search for them who
+     had done this wrong. But those strong, wicked ones were
+     gone, fled from their haunts, fled from the wood afar to
+     Corinth, for the god Pan had thrown against them a pine
+     cone. So the travelers took the body of Ibycus and bore it
+     with them to Corinth.
+
+     "A poet had been slain upon the threshold of the house of
+     song. Sacred blood had spattered the white robes of a queen
+     dressed for jubilee. Evil unreturned to its doers must
+     darken the sunshine of the famous days. Corinth uttered a
+     cry of lamentation and wrath. 'Where are the ill-doers, the
+     spillers of blood, that we may spill their blood and avenge
+     Ibycus, showing the gods that we are their helpers?' But
+     those robbers and murderers might not be found. And the body
+     of Ibycus was consumed upon a funeral pyre.
+
+     "The festival hours went by in Corinth. And now began to
+     fill the amphitheater where might find room a host for
+     number like the acorns of Dodona. The throng was huge, the
+     sound that it made like the shock of ocean. Around, tier
+     above tier, swept the rows, and for roof there was the blue
+     and sunny air. Then the voice of the sea hushed, for now
+     entered the many-numbered chorus. Slow-circling, it sang of
+     mighty Fate: '_For every word shall have its echo, and every
+     deed shall see its face. The word shall say, "Is it my
+     echo?" and the deed shall say, "Is it my face?"_'--
+
+     "The chorus passes, singing. The voices die, there falls a
+     silence, sent as it were from inner space. The open sky is
+     above the amphitheater. And now there comes, from north to
+     south, sailing that sea above, high, but not so high that
+     their shape is indistinguishable, a long flight of cranes.
+     Heads move, eyes are raised, but none know why that interest
+     is so keen, so still. Then from out the throng rises, struck
+     with forgetfulness of gathered Corinth and of its own
+     reasons for being dumb as is the stone, a man's voice, and
+     the fear that Pan gives ran yet around in that voice. 'See,
+     brother, see! The cranes of Ibycus!'
+
+     "'Ibycus!' The crowd about those men pressed in upon them.
+     'What do you know of Ibycus?' And great Pan drove them to
+     show in their faces what they knew. So Corinth took--"
+
+Alexander Jardine shut the book and, leaving the window, dropped it
+upon the table. His hand shook, his face was convulsed. "I've read as
+far as needs be. Those things strike me like hammers!" With suddenness
+he turned and was gone.
+
+Strickland was aware that he might not return that day to the
+school-room, perhaps not to the house. He went out of the west door
+and across the grassy space to the gap in the wall, through which he
+disappeared. Beyond was the rough descent to wood and stream.
+
+Jamie spoke: "He's a queer body! He says he thinks that he lived a
+long time ago, and then a shorter time ago, and then now. He says that
+some days he sees it all come up in a kind of dark desert."
+
+Alice put in her word, "Mother says he's many in one, and that the
+many and one don't yet recognize each other."
+
+"Your mother is a wise woman," said the tutor. "Let me see how the
+work goes."
+
+The pine-tree, outside the wall, overhung a rude natural stairway of
+stony ledge and outcropping root with patches of moss and heath. Down
+this went Alexander into a cool dimness of fir and oak and birch,
+watered by a little stream. He kneeled by this, he cooled face and
+hands in the water, then flung himself beneath a tree and, burying his
+head in his arms, lay still. The waves within subsided, sank to a
+long, deep swell, then from that to quiet. The door that wind and tide
+had beaten open shut again. Alexander lay without thinking, without
+overmuch feeling. At last, turning, he opened his eyes upon the
+tree-tops and the August sky. The door was shut upon tales of injury
+and revenge. Between boy and man, he lay in a yearning stillness,
+colors and sounds and dim poetic strains his ministers of grace. This
+lasted for a time, then he rose, first to a sitting posture, then to
+his feet. Crows flew through the wood; he had a glimpse of yellow
+fields and purple heath. He set forth upon one of the long rambles
+which were a prized part of life.
+
+An hour or so later he stopped at a cotter's, some miles from home. An
+old man and a woman gave him an oat cake and a drink of home-brewed.
+He was fond of folk like these--at home with them and they with him.
+There was no need to make talk, but he sat and looked at the marigolds
+while the woman moved about and the old man wove rushes into mats.
+From here he took to the hills and walked awhile with a shepherd
+numbering his sheep. Finally, in mid-afternoon, he found himself upon
+a heath, bare of trees, lifted and purple.
+
+He sat down amid the warm bloom; he lay down. Within was youth's blind
+tumult and longing, a passioning for he knew not what. "I wish that
+there were great things in my life. I wish that I were a discoverer,
+sailing like Columbus. I wish that I had a friend--"
+
+He fell into a day-dream, lapped there in warm purple waves, hearing
+the bees' interminable murmur. He faced, across a narrow vale, an
+abrupt, curiously shaped hill, dark with outstanding granite and with
+fir-trees. Where at the eastern end it broke away, where at its base
+the vale widened, shone among the lively green of elms turrets and
+chimneys of a large house. "Black Hill--Black Hill--Black Hill...."
+
+A youth of about his own age came up the path from the vale.
+Alexander, lying amid the heath, caught at some distance the whole
+figure, but as he approached lost him. Then, near at hand, the head
+rose above the brow of the ridge. It was a handsome head, with a cap
+and feather, with gold-brown hair lightly clustering, and a
+countenance of spirit and daring with something subtle rubbed in.
+Head, shoulders, a supple figure, not so tall nor so largely made as
+was Glenfernie's heir, all came upon the purple hilltop.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Alexander raised himself from his couch in the heather.
+
+"Good day!" said the new-comer.
+
+"Good day!"
+
+The youth stood beside him. "I am Ian Rullock."
+
+"I am Alexander Jardine."
+
+"Of Glenfernie?"
+
+"Aye, you've got it."
+
+"Then we're the neighbors that are to be friends."
+
+"If we are to be we are to be.... I want a friend.... I don't know if
+you're the one that is to answer."
+
+The other dropped beside him upon the heath. "I saw you walking along
+the hilltop. So when you did not come on I thought I'd climb and meet
+you. This is a lonely, miserable country!"
+
+Alexander was moved to defend. "There are more miserable! It's got its
+points."
+
+"I don't see them. I want London!"
+
+"That's Babylon.--It's your own country. You're evening it with
+England!"
+
+"No, I'm not. But you can't deny that it's poor."
+
+"There's one of its sons, named Touris, that is not poor!"
+
+Rullock rose upon one knee. "The wise man gets rich and the fool
+stays poor. Do you want to be friends or do you want to fight?"
+
+Alexander clasped his hands behind his head and lay back upon the
+earth. "No, I do not want to fight--not now! I wouldn't fight you,
+anyhow, for standing up for one to whom you're beholden."
+
+Silence fell between them, each having eyes upon the other. Something
+drew each to each, something repelled each from each. It was a
+question, between those forces, which would gain. Alexander did not
+feel strange with Ian, nor Ian with Alexander. It was as though they
+had met before. But how they had met and why, and where and when, and
+what that meeting had entailed and meant, was hidden from their gaze.
+The attractive increased over the repellent. Ian spoke.
+
+"There's none down there but my uncle and his sister, my aunt. Come on
+down and let me show you the place."
+
+"I do not care if I do." He rose, and the two went along the hilltop
+and down the path.
+
+Ian was the readier in talk. "I am going soon to Edinburgh--to
+college."
+
+"I'm going, too. The first of the year. I am going to try if I can
+stand the law."
+
+"I want to be a soldier."
+
+"I don't know what I want.... I want to journey--and journey--and
+journey ... with a book along."
+
+"Do you like books?"
+
+"Aye, fine!"
+
+"I like them right well. Are there any pretty girls around here?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't like girls."
+
+"I like them at times, in their places. You must wrestle bravely,
+you're so strong in the shoulder and long in the arm!"
+
+"You're not so big, but you look strong yourself."
+
+Each measured the other with his eyes. Friendship was already here. It
+was as though hand had fitted into glove.
+
+"What is your dog named?"
+
+"Hector."
+
+"Mine's Bran. You come to Glenfernie to-morrow and I'll show you a
+place that's all mine. It's the room in the old keep. I've books there
+and apples and nuts and curiosities. There's a big fireplace, and my
+father's let me build a furnace besides, and I've kettles and
+crucibles and pans and vials--"
+
+"What for?"
+
+Alexander paused and gazed at Ian, then gave into his keeping the
+great secret. "Alchemy. I'm trying to change lead into gold."
+
+Ian thrilled. "I'll come! I'll ride over. I've a beautiful mare."
+
+"It's not eight miles--"
+
+"I'll come. We're just in at Black Hill, you see, and I've had no time
+to make a place like that! But I'll show you my room. Here's the park
+gate."
+
+They walked up an avenue overarched by elms, to a house old but not so
+old, once half-ruinous, but now mended and being mended, enlarged, and
+decorated, the aim a spacious place alike venerable and modern.
+Workmen yet swarmed about it. The whole presented a busy, cheerful
+aspect--a gracious one, also, for under a monster elm before the
+terrace was found the master and owner, Mr. Archibald Touris. He
+greeted the youths with a manner meant to exhibit the expansive heart
+of a country gentleman.
+
+"You've found each other out, have you? Why, you look born to be
+friends! That's as it should be.--And what, Alexander, do you think of
+Black Hill?"
+
+"It looks finely a rich man's place, sir."
+
+Mr. Touris laughed at his country bluntness, but did not take the
+tribute amiss. "Not so rich--not so mighty rich. But enough, enough!
+If Ian here behaves himself he'll have enough!" A master workman
+called him away. He went with a large wave of the hand. "Make yourself
+at home, Alexander! Take him, Ian, to see your aunt Alison." He was
+gone with the workman.
+
+"I'll take you there presently," said Ian. "I'm fond of Aunt
+Alison--you'll like her, too--but she'll keep. Let's go see my mare
+Fatima, and then my room."
+
+Fatima was a most beautiful young, snowy Arabian. Alexander sighed
+with delight when they led her out from her stable and she walked
+about with Ian beside her, and when presently Ian mounted she curveted
+and caracoled. Ian and she suited each other. Indefinably, there was
+about him, too, something Eastern. The two went to and fro, the mare's
+hoofs striking music from the flags. Behind them ran a gray range of
+buildings overtopped by bushy willows. Alexander sat on a stone bench,
+hugged his knees, and felt true love for the sight. Ian had come to
+him like a gift from the blue.
+
+Ian dismounted, and they watched Fatima disappear into her stall.
+"Come now and see the house."
+
+The house was large and cumbered with furniture too much and too rich
+for the Scotch countryside. Ian's room had a great, rich bed and a
+dressing-table that drew from Alexander a whistle, contemplative and
+scornful. But there were other matters besides luxury of couch and
+toilet. Slung against the wall appeared a fine carbine, the pistols
+and sword of Ian's father, and a wonderful long, twisted, and
+damascened knife or dirk--creese, Ian called it--that had come in some
+trading-ship of his uncle's. And he had books in a small closet room,
+and a picture that the two stood before.
+
+"Where did you get it?"
+
+"There was an Italian who owed my uncle a debt. He had no money, so he
+gave him this. He said that it was painted a long time ago and that it
+was very fine."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It is a Bible piece. This is a city of refuge. This is a sinner
+fleeing to it, and here behind him is the avenger of blood. You can't
+see, it is so dark. There!" He drew the window-curtain quite aside. A
+flood of light came in and washed the picture.
+
+"I see. What is it doing here?"
+
+"I don't know. I liked it. I suppose Aunt Alison thought it might hang
+here."
+
+"I like to see pictures in my mind. But things like that poison me!
+Let's see the rest of the house."
+
+They went again through Ian's room. Coming to a fine carved ambry, he
+hesitated, then stood still. "I'm going to show you something else! I
+show it to you because I trust you. It's like your telling me about
+your making gold out of lead." He opened a door of the ambry, pulled
+out a drawer, and, pressing some spring, revealed a narrow, secret
+shelf. His hand went into the dimness and came out bearing a silver
+goblet. This he set carefully upon a neighboring table, and looked at
+Alexander somewhat aslant out of long, golden-brown eyes.
+
+"It's a bonny goblet," said Alexander. "Why do you keep it like that?"
+
+Ian looked around him. "Years and years ago my father, who is dead
+now, was in France. There was a banquet at Saint-Germain. _A very
+great person_ gave it and was in presence himself. All the gentlemen
+his guests drank a toast for which the finest wine was poured in
+especial goblets. Afterward each was given for a token the cup from
+which he drank.... Before he died my father gave me this. But of
+course I have to keep it secret. My uncle and all the world around
+here are Whigs!"
+
+"James Stewart!" quoth Alexander. "Humph!"
+
+"Remember that you have not seen it," said Ian, "and that I never said
+aught to you but _King George, King George!_" With that he restored
+the goblet to the secret shelf, put back the drawer, and shut the
+ambry door. "Friends trust one another in little and big.--Now let's
+go see Aunt Alison."
+
+They went in silence along a corridor where every footfall was subdued
+in India matting. Alexander spoke once:
+
+"I feel all through me that we're friends. But you're a terrible fool
+there!"
+
+"I am not," said Ian. His voice carried the truth of his own feeling.
+"I am like my father and mother and the chieftains my kin, and I have
+been with certain kings ever since there were kings. Others think
+otherwise, but I've got my rights!"
+
+With that they came to the open door of a room. A voice spoke from
+within:
+
+"Ian!"
+
+Ian crossed the threshold. "May we come in, Aunt Alison? It's
+Alexander Jardine of Glenfernie."
+
+A tall, three-leaved screen pictured with pagodas, palms, and macaws
+stood between the door and the rest of the room. "Come, of course!"
+said the voice behind this.
+
+Passing the last pagoda edge, the two entered a white-paneled parlor
+where a lady in dove-gray muslin overlooked the unpacking of fine
+china. She turned in the great chair where she sat. "I am truly glad
+to see Alexander Jardine!" When he went up to her she took his two
+hands in hers. "I remember your mother and how fine a lassie she was!
+Good mind and good heart--"
+
+"We've heard of you, too," answered Alexander. He looked at her in
+frank admiration, _Eh, but you're bonny!_ written in his gaze.
+
+Mrs. Alison, as they called her, was something more than bonny. She
+had loveliness. More than that, she breathed a cleanliness of spirit,
+a lucid peace, a fibered self-mastery passing into light. Alexander
+did not analyze his feeling for her, but it was presently one of great
+liking. Now she sat in her great chair while the maids went on with
+the unpacking, and questioned him about Glenfernie and all the family
+and life there. She was slight, not tall, with hair prematurely
+white, needing no powder. She sat and talked with her hand upon Ian.
+While she talked she glanced from the one youth to the other. At last
+she said:
+
+"Alexander Jardine, I love Ian dearly. He needs and will need
+love--great love. If you are going to be friends, remember that love
+is bottomless.--And now go, the two of you, for the day is getting
+on."
+
+They passed again the macaw-and-pagoda screen and left the paneled
+room. The August light struck slant and gold. The two quitted the
+house and crossed the terrace into the avenue without again
+encountering the master of the place.
+
+"I will go with you to the top of the hill," said Ian. They climbed
+the ridge that was like a purple cloud. "I'll come to Glenfernie
+to-morrow or the next day."
+
+"Yes, come! I'm fond of Jamie, but he's three years younger than I."
+
+"You've got a sister?"
+
+"Alice? She's only twelve. You come. I've been wanting somebody."
+
+"So have I. I'm lonelier than you."
+
+They came to the level top of the heath. The sun rode low; the shadow
+of the hill stretched at their feet, out over path and harvest-field.
+
+"Good-by, then!"
+
+"Good-by!"
+
+Ian stood still. Alexander, homeward bound, dropped over the crest.
+The earth wave hid from him Black Hill, house and all. But, looking
+back, he could still see Ian against the sky. Then Ian sank, too.
+Alexander strode on toward Glenfernie. He went whistling, in expanded,
+golden spirits. Ian--and Ian--and Ian! Going through a grove of oaks,
+blackbirds flew overhead, among and above the branches. _The cranes of
+Ibycus!_ The phrase flashed into mind. "I wonder why things like that
+disturb me so!... I wonder if there's any bottom or top to living
+anyhow!... I wonder--!" He looked at the birds and at the violet
+evening light at play in the old wood. The phrase went out of his
+mind. He left the remnant of the forest and was presently upon open
+moor. He whistled again, loud and clear, and strode on happily.
+Ian--and Ian--and Ian!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+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 no effort, 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
+Glenfernie Alexander'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 water diamonds 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 in this 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 me
+      A ribbon for my fairing?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+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 the
+path 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. The fallen 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 path
+narrowing, 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 dead leaves 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 of _solitude a 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 Caesars.--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 Edward Longshanks.--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!
+
+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 and over, 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 when they 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 he did 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, and kissed 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+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 come to 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
+minister and 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 there _is_ aught--"
+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 not hear 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
+to Edinburgh 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 room four 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 were _out_ in 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 the narrow 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!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+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
+folk to 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 into a
+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 in low 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 and
+to travel _en 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 paragraph without 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 sat there, 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, gaeing up 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+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 the blood. 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 stream washed 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.
+
+    "A lad and a lass met ower the brae;
+       They blushed rose-red, but they said nae word--
+     The woodbine fair and the milk-white slae:--
+       And frae one to the other gaed a silver bird,
+           A silver bird.
+
+    "A man set his Wish all odds before,
+       With sword, with pen, and with gold he stirred
+     Till the Wish and he met on a conquered shore,
+       And frae one to the other gaed an ebon bird,
+           An ebon bird.
+
+    "God looked on a man and said: ''Tis time!
+       The broken mends, clear flows the blurred.
+     You and I are two worlds that rhyme!'
+       And frae one to the other gaed a golden bird,
+           A golden bird."
+
+She sang it through, then sat entirely still against the stem of the
+thorn, while about her lips played that faint, unapproachable,
+glamouring smile. Her hands touched the grass to either side her body;
+her slender, blue-clad figure, the all of her, smote him like some
+god's line of poetry.
+
+There was in the laird of Glenfernie's nature an empty palace. It had
+been built through ages and every wind of pleasure and pain had blown
+about it. Then it had slowly come about that the winds of pain had
+increased upon the winds of pleasure. The mind closed the door of the
+palace and the nature inclined to turn from it. It was there, but a
+sea mist hid it, and a tall thorn-hedge, and a web stretched across
+its idle gates. It had hardly come, in this life, into Glenfernie's
+waking mind that it was there at all.
+
+Now with a suddenness every door clanged open. The mist parted, the
+thorn-wood sank, the web was torn. The palace stood, shining like
+home, and it was he who was afar, in the mist and the wood, and the
+web of idleness and oblivion in shreds about him. Set in the
+throne-room, upon the throne, he saw the queen.
+
+His mood, that May day, had given the moment, and wide circumstance
+had met it. Now the hand was in the glove, the statue in the niche,
+the bow upon the string, the spark in the tinder, the sea through the
+dike. Now what had reached being must take its course.
+
+He felt that so fatally that he did not think of resistance....
+Elspeth, upon the grassy cape, beneath the blooming thorn, heard steps
+down the glen path, and turned her eyes to see the young laird moving
+between the birch stems. Now he was level with the holding; now he
+spoke to her, lifting his hat. She answered, with the smile beneath
+her eyes:
+
+"Aye, Glenfernie, it's a braw day!"
+
+"May I come into the fairy country and sit awhile and visit?"
+
+"Aye." She welcomed him to a hillock of green rising from the water's
+edge. "It _is_ fairyland, and these are the broad seas around, and I
+know if I came here by night I should find the Good People before me!"
+She looked at him with friendliness, half shy, half frank. "It is the
+best of weather for wandering."
+
+"Are you fond of that, too? Do you go up and down alone?"
+
+"By my lee-lane when Gilian's not here. She's in Aberdeen now, where
+live our mother's folk."
+
+"I have not seen you for years."
+
+"I mind the last time. Your mother lay ill. One evening at sunset Mr.
+Ian Rullock and you came to White Farm."
+
+"It must have been after sunset. It must have been dark."
+
+"Back of that you and he came from Edinburgh one time. We were down by
+the wishing-green, Robin Greenlaw and Gilian and I and three or four
+other lads and lassies. Do you remember? Mr. Rullock would have us
+dance, and we all took hands--you, too--and went around the ash-tree
+as though it were a May-pole. We changed hands, one with another, and
+danced upon the green. Then you and he got upon your horses and rode
+away. He was riding the white mare Fatima. But oh," said Elspeth,
+"then came grandfather, who had seen us from the reaped field, and he
+blamed us sair and put no to our playing! He gave word to the
+minister, and Sunday the sermon dealt with the ill women of Scripture.
+Back of that--"
+
+"Back of that--"
+
+"There was the day the two of you would go to the Kelpie's Pool."
+Elspeth's eyes enlarged and darkened. "The next morn we heard--Jock
+Binning told us--that Mr. Ian had nearly drowned."
+
+"Almost ten years ago. Once--twice--thrice in ten years. How idly were
+they spent, those years!"
+
+"Oh," cried Elspeth, "they say that you have been to world's end and
+have gotten great learning!"
+
+"One comes home from all that to find world's end and great learning."
+
+Elspeth leaned from him, back against the thorn-tree. She looked
+somewhat disquietedly, somewhat questioningly, at this new laird.
+Glenfernie, in his turn, laid upon himself both hands of control. He
+thought:
+
+"Do not peril all--do not peril all--with haste and frightening!"
+
+He sat upon the green hillock and talked of country news. She met him
+with this and that ... White Farm affairs, Littlefarm.
+
+"Robin," said Alexander, "manages so well that he'll grow wealthy!"
+
+"Oh no! He manages well, but he'll never grow wealthy outside! But
+inside he has great riches."
+
+_"Does she love him, then?"_ It poured fear into his heart. A magician
+with a sword--with a great, evil, written-upon creese like that
+hanging at Black Hill--was here before the palace.
+
+"Do you love him?" asked Alexander, and asked it with so straight a
+simplicity that Elspeth Barrow took no offense.
+
+She looked at him, and those strange smiles played about her lips.
+"Robin is a fairy man," she said. "He has ower little of struggle save
+with his rhymes," and left him to make what he could of that.
+
+"She is heart-free," he thought, but still he feared and boded.
+
+Elspeth rose from the grass, stepped from beneath the blooming tree.
+"I must be going. It wears toward noon."
+
+Together they left the flower-set cape. The laird of Glenfernie looked
+back upon it.
+
+"_Heaven sent a sample down._ You come here when you wish? You walk
+about with the spring and summer days?"
+
+"Aye, when my work's done. Gilian and I love the greenwood."
+
+He gave her the narrow path, but kept beside her on stone and dead
+leaves and mossy root. Though he was so large of frame, he moved with
+a practised, habitual ease, as far as might be from any savor of
+clumsiness. He had magnetism, and to-day he drew like a planet in
+glow. Now he looked at the woman beside him, and now he looked
+straight ahead with kindled eyes.
+
+Elspeth walked with slightly quickened breath, with knitted brows. The
+laird of Glenfernie was above her in station, though go to the
+ancestors and blood was equal enough! It carried appeal to a young
+woman's vanity, to be walking so, to feel that the laird liked well
+enough to be where he was. She liked him, too. Glenfernie House was
+talked of, talked of, by village and farm and cot, talked of, talked
+of, year by year--all the Jardines, their virtues and their vices,
+what they said and what they did. She had heard, ever since she was a
+bairn, that continual comment, like a little prattling burn running
+winter and summer through the dale. So she knew much that was true of
+Alexander Jardine, but likewise entertained a sufficient amount of
+misapprehension and romancing. Out of it all came, however, for the
+dale, and for the women at White Farm who listened to the burn's
+voice, a sense of trustworthiness. Elspeth, walking by Glenfernie,
+felt kindness for him. If, also, there ran a tremor of feeling that it
+was very fair to be Elspeth Barrow and walking so, she was young and
+it was natural. But beyond that was a sense, vague, unexplained to
+herself, but disturbing. There was feeling in him that was not in her.
+She was aware of it as she might be aware of a gathering storm, though
+the brain received as yet no clear message. She felt, struggling with
+that diffused kindness and young vanity, something like discomfort and
+fear. So her mood was complex enough, unharmonized, parted between
+opposing currents. She was a riddle to herself.
+
+But Glenfernie walked in a great simplicity of faeryland or heaven.
+She did not love Robin Greenlaw; she was not so young a lass, with a
+rose in her cheek for every one; she was come so far without mating
+because she had snow in her heart! The palace gleamed, the palace
+shone. All the music of earth--of the world--poured through. The sun
+had drunk up the mist, time had eaten the thorn-wood, the spider at
+the gate had vanished into chaos and old night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The cows and sheep and work-horses, the dogs, the barn-yard fowls, the
+very hives of bees at White Farm, seemed to know well enough that it
+was the Sabbath. The flowers knew it that edged the kitchen garden,
+the cherry-tree knew it by the southern wall. The sunshine knew it,
+wearing its calm Sunday best. Sights and sounds attuned themselves.
+
+The White Farm family was home from kirk. Jenny Barrow and Elspeth put
+away hood and wide hat of straw, slipped from and shook out and folded
+on the shelf Sunday gowns and kerchiefs. Then each donned a clean
+print and a less fine kerchief and came forth to direct and aid the
+two cotter lasses who served at White Farm. These by now had off their
+kirk things, but they marked Sunday still by keeping shoes and
+stockings. Menie and Merran, Elspeth and Jenny, set the
+yesterday-prepared dinner cold upon the table, drew the ale, and
+placed chairs and stools. Two men, Thomas and Willy, father and son,
+who drove the plow, sowed and reaped, for White Farm, came from the
+barn. They were yet Sunday-clad, with very clean, shining faces. "Call
+father, Elspeth!" directed Jenny, and set on the table a honeycomb.
+
+Elspeth went without the door. Before the house grew a great fir-tree
+that had a bench built around it. Here, in fine weather, in rest hours
+and on Sunday, might be looked for Jarvis Barrow. It was his habit to
+take the far side of the tree, with the trunk between him and the
+house. So there spread before him the running river, the dale and
+moor, and at last the piled hills. Here he sat, leaning hands upon a
+great stick shaped like a crook, his Bible open upon his knees. It was
+a great book, large of print, read over in every part, but opening
+most easily among the prophets. No cry, no denunciation, no longing,
+no judgment from Isaiah to Malachi, but was known to the elder of the
+kirk. Now he sat here, in his Sunday dress, with the Bible. At a
+little distance, on the round bench, sat Robin Greenlaw. The old man
+read sternly, concentratedly on; the young one looked at the purple
+mountain-heads. Elspeth came around the tree.
+
+"Grandfather, dinner is ready.--Robin! we didn't know that you were
+here--"
+
+"I went the way around to speak with the laird. Then I thought, 'I
+will eat at White Farm--'"
+
+"You're welcome!--Grandfather, let me take the Book."
+
+"No," said the old man, and bore it himself withindoors. Spare and
+unbent of frame, threescore and ten and five, and able yet at the
+plow-stilts, rigid of will, servant to the darker Calvinism, starving
+where he might human pride and human affections, and yet with much of
+both to starve, he moved and spoke with slow authority, looked a
+patriarch and ruled his holding. When presently he came to table in
+the clean, sanded room with the sunlight on the wall and floor, and
+when, standing, he said the long, the earnest grace, it might have
+been taken that here, in the Scotch farm-house, was at least a minor
+prophet. The grace was long, a true wrestling in prayer. Ended, a
+decent pause was made, then all took place, Jarvis Barrow and his
+daughter and granddaughter, Robin Greenlaw, Thomas and Willy, Menie
+and Merran. The cold meat, the bread, and other food were passed from
+hand to hand, the ale poured. The Sunday hush, the Sunday voices,
+continued to hold. Jarvis Barrow would have no laughter and idle
+clashes at his table on the Lord's day. Menie and Merran and Willy
+kept a stolid air, with only now and then a sidelong half-smile or
+nudging request for this or that. Elspeth ate little, sat with her
+brown eyes fixed out of the window. Robin Greenlaw ate heartily
+enough, but he had an air distrait, and once or twice he frowned. But
+Jenny Barrow could not long keep still and incurious, even upon the
+Sabbath day.
+
+"Eh, Robin, what was your crack with the laird?"
+
+"He wants to buy Warlock for James Jardine. He's got his ensign's
+commission to go fight the French."
+
+"Eh, he'll be a bonny lad on Warlock! I thought you wadna sell him?"
+
+"I'll sell to Glenfernie."
+
+The farmer spoke from the head of the table. "I'll na hae talk, Robin,
+of buying and selling on the day! It clinks like the money-changers
+and sellers of doves."
+
+Thomas, his helper, raised his head from a plate of cold mutton.
+"Glenfernie was na at kirk. He's na the kirkkeeper his father was. Na,
+na!"
+
+"Na," said the farmer. "Bairns dinna walk nowadays in parents' ways."
+
+Willy had a bit of news he would fain get in. "Nae doot Glenfernie's
+brave, but he wadna be a sodger, either! I was gaeing alang wi' the
+yowes, and there was he and Drummielaw riding and gabbing. Sae there
+cam on a skirling and jumping wind and rain, and we a' gat under a
+tree, the yowes and the dogs and Glenfernie and Drummielaw and me.
+Then we changed gude day and they went on gabbing. And 'Nae,' says
+Glenfernie, 'I am nae lawyer and I am nae sodger. Jamie wad be the
+last, but brithers may love and yet be thinking far apairt. The best
+friend I hae in the warld is a sodger, but I'm thinking I hae lost the
+knack o' fechting. When you lose the taste you lose the knack.'"
+
+"I's fearing," said Thomas, "that he's lost the taste o' releegion!"
+
+"Eh," exclaimed Jenny Barrow, "but he's a bonny big man! He came by
+yestreen, and I thought, 'For a' there is sae muckle o' ye, ye look as
+though ye walked on air!'"
+
+Thomas groaned. "Muckle tae be saved, muckle tae be lost!"
+
+Jarvis Barrow spoke from the head of the table. "If fowk canna talk on
+the Sabbath o' spiritual things, maybe they can mak shift to haud the
+tongue in their chafts! I wad think that what we saw and heard the
+day wad put ye ower the burn frae vain converse!"
+
+Thomas nodded approval.
+
+"Aweel--" began Jenny, but did not find just the words with which to
+continue.
+
+Elspeth, turning ever so slightly in her chair, looked farther off to
+the hills and summer clouds. A slow wave of color came over her face
+and throat. Menie and Merran looked sidelong each at the other, then
+their blue eyes fell to their plates. But Willy almost audibly smacked
+his lips.
+
+"Gude keep us! the meenister gaed thae sinners their licks!"
+
+"A sair sight, but an eedifying!" said Thomas.
+
+Robin Greenlaw pushed back his chair. He saw the inside of the kirk
+again, and two miserable, loutish, lawless lovers standing for public
+discipline. His color rose. "Aye, it was a sair sight," he said,
+abruptly, made a pause, then went on with the impetuousness of a burn
+unlocked from winter ice. "If I should say just what I think, I
+suppose, uncle, that I could not come here again! So I'll e'en say
+only that I think that was a sair sight and that I felt great shame
+and pity for all sinners. So, feeling it for all, I felt it for Mallie
+and Jock, standing there an hour, first on one foot and then on the
+other, to be gloated at and rebukit, and for the minister doing the
+rebuking, and for the kirkful all gloating, and thinking, 'Lord, not
+such are we!' and for Robin Greenlaw who often enough himself takes
+wildfire for true light! I say I think it was sair sight and sair
+doing--"
+
+Barrow's hand came down upon the table. "Robin Greenlaw!"
+
+"You need not thunder at me, sir. I'm done! I did not mean to make
+such a clatter, for in this house what clatter makes any difference?
+It's the sinner makes the clatter, and it's just promptly sunk and
+lost in godliness!"
+
+The old man and the young turned in their chairs, faced each other.
+They looked somewhat alike, and in the heart of each was fondness for
+the other. Greenlaw, eye to eye with the patriarch, felt his wrath
+going.
+
+"Eh, uncle, I did not mean to hurt the Sunday!"
+
+Jarvis Barrow spoke with the look and the weight of a prophet in
+Israel. "What is your quarrel about, and for what are ye flyting
+against the kirk and the minister and the kirkkeepers? Are ye wanting
+that twa sinners, having sinned, should hae their sin for secret and
+sweet to their aneselves, gilded and pairfumed and excused and
+unnamed? Are ye wanting that nane should know, and the plague should
+live without the doctor and without the mark upon the door? Or are ye
+thinking that it is nae plague at all, nae sin, and nae blame? Then ye
+be atheist, Robin Greenlaw, and ye gae indeed frae my door, and wad
+gae were ye na my nephew, but my son!" He gathered force. "Elder of
+the kirk, I sit here, and I tell ye that were it my ain flesh and
+blood that did evil, my stick and my plaid I wad take and ower the
+moor I wad gae to tell manse and parish that Sin, the wolf, had crept
+into the fauld! And I wad see thae folly-crammed and sinfu' sauls,
+that had let him in and had his bite, set for shame and shawing and
+warning and example before the congregation, and I wad say to the
+minister, 'Lift voice against them and spare not!' And I wad be there
+the day and in my seat, though my heart o' flesh was like to break!"
+His hand fell again heavily upon the board. "Sae weak and womanish is
+thae time we live in!" He flashed at his great-nephew. "Sae poetical!
+It wasna sae when the Malignants drove us and we fled to the hills and
+were fed on the muirs with the word of the Lord! It wasna sae in the
+time when Gawin Elliot that Glenfernie draws frae was hanged for
+gieing us that word! Then gin a sin-blasted ane was found amang us,
+his road indeed was shawn him! Aye, were't man or woman! _'For while
+they be folded together as thorns, and while they are drunken as
+drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry!'_"
+
+He pushed back his heavy chair; he rose from table and went forth,
+tall, ancient, gray, armored in belief. They heard him take his Bible
+from where it lay, and knew that he was back under the fir-tree,
+facing from the house toward moor and hill and mountain.
+
+"Eh-h," groaned Thomas, "the elder is a mighty witness!"
+
+The family at White Farm ate in silence. Elspeth slipped from her
+place.
+
+"Where are ye gaeing, hinny?" asked Jenny. "Ye hae eaten naething."
+
+"I've finished," said Elspeth. "I'm going to afternoon kirk, and I'll
+be getting ready."
+
+She went into the room that she shared with Gilian and shut the door.
+Robin looked after her.
+
+"When is Gilian coming home?"
+
+"Naebody knows. She is sae weel at Aberdeen! They write that she is a
+great student and is liked abune a', and they clamor to keep her.--Are
+ye gaeing to second kirk, Robin?"
+
+"I do not think so. But I'll walk over the moor with you."
+
+The meal ended. Thomas and Willy went forth to the barn. Menie and
+Merran began to clear the table. They were not going to second kirk,
+and so the work was left to their hand. Jenny bustled to get on again
+her Sunday gear. She would not have missed, for a pretty, afternoon
+kirk and all the neighbors who were twice-goers. It was fair and
+theater and promenade and kirk to her in one--though of course she
+only said "kirk."
+
+They walked over the moor, Jarvis Barrow and Jenny and Robin and
+Elspeth. And at a crossing path they came upon a figure seated on a
+stone and found it to be that of the laird of Glenfernie.
+
+"Gude day, Glenfernie!"
+
+"Good day, White Farm!"
+
+He joined himself to them. For a moment he and Robin Greenlaw were
+together.
+
+"Do you know what I hear them calling you?" quoth the latter. "I hear
+them say 'The wandering laird!'"
+
+Alexander smiled. "That's not so bad a name!"
+
+He walked now beside Jarvis Barrow. The old man's stride was hardly
+shortened by age. The two kept ahead of the two women, Greenlaw,
+Thomas, and the sheep-dog Sandy.
+
+"It's a bonny day, White Farm!"
+
+"Aye, it's bonny eneuch, Glenfernie. Are ye for kirk?"
+
+"Maybe so, maybe not. I take much of my kirk out of doors. Moors make
+grand kirks. That has a sound, has it not, of heathenish brass
+cymbals?"
+
+"It hae."
+
+"All the same, I honor every kirk that stands sincere."
+
+"Wasna your father sincere? Why gae ye not in his steps?"
+
+"Maybe I do.... Yes, he was sincere. I trust that I am so, too. I
+would be."
+
+"Why gae ye not in his steps, then?"
+
+"All buildings are not alike and yet they may be built sincerely."
+
+"Ye're wrong! Ye'll see it one day. Ye'll come round to your father's
+steps, only ye'll tread them deeper! Ye've got it in you, to the far
+back. I hear good o' ye, and I hear ill o' ye."
+
+"Belike."
+
+"Ye've traveled. See if ye can travel out of the ring of God!"
+
+"What is the ring of God? If it is as large as I think it is," said
+Glenfernie, "I'll not travel out of it."
+
+He looked out over moor and moss. There breathed about him something
+that gave the old man wonder. "Hae ye gold-mines and jewels,
+Glenfernie? Hae the King made ye Minister?"
+
+The wandering laird laughed. "Better than that, White Farm, better
+than that!" He was tempted then and there to say: "I love your
+granddaughter Elspeth. I love Elspeth!" It was his intention to say
+something like this as soon as might be to White Farm. "I love Elspeth
+and Elspeth loves me. So we would marry, White Farm, and she be lady
+beside the laird at Glenfernie." But he could not say it yet, because
+he did not know if Elspeth loved him. He was in a condition of hope,
+but very humbly so, far from assurance. He never did Elspeth the
+indignity of thinking that a lesser thing than love might lead her to
+Glenfernie House. If she came she would come because she loved--not
+else.
+
+They left the moor, passed through the hollow of the stream and by the
+mill, and began to climb the village street. Folk looked out of door
+or window upon them; kirk-goers astir, dressed in their best, with
+regulated step and mouth and eyes set aright, gave the correct
+greeting, neither more nor less. If the afternoon breeze, if a little
+runlet of water going down the street, chose to murmur: "The laird is
+thick with White Farm! What makes the laird so thick with White Farm?"
+that was breeze or runlet's doing.
+
+They passed the bare, gaunt manse and came to the kirkyard with the
+dark, low stones over the generations dead. But the grass was vivid,
+and the daisies bloomed, and even the yew-trees had some kind of
+peacock sheen, while the sky overhead burnt essential sapphire. Even
+the white of the lark held a friendly tinge as of rose petals mixed
+somehow with it. And the bell that was ending its ringing, if it was
+solemn, was also silver-sweet. Glenfernie determined that he would go
+to church. He entered with the White Farm folk and he sat with them,
+leaving the laird's high-walled, curtained pew without human tenancy.
+Mrs. Grizel came but to morning sermon. Alice was with a kinswoman of
+rank in a great house near Edinburgh, submitting, not without
+enjoyment, to certain fine filings and polishings and lacquerings and
+contacts. Jamie, who would be a soldier and fight the French, had his
+commission and was gone this past week to Carlisle, to his regiment.
+English Strickland was yet at Glenfernie House. Between him and the
+laird held much liking and respect. Tutor no longer, he stayed on as
+secretary and right-hand man. But Strickland was not at church.
+
+The white cavern, bare and chill, with small, deep windows looking out
+upon the hills of June, was but sparely set out with folk. Afternoon
+was not morning. Nor was there again the disciplinary vision of the
+forenoon. The sinners were not set the second time for a gazing-stock.
+It was just usual afternoon kirk. The prayer was made, the psalm was
+sung, Mr. M'Nab preached a strong if wintry sermon. Jarvis Barrow,
+white-headed, strong-featured, intent, sat as in some tower over
+against Jerusalem, considering the foes that beset her. Beside him sat
+his daughter Jenny, in striped petticoat and plain overgown, blue
+kerchief, and hat of straw. Next to Jenny was Elspeth in a dim-green
+stuff, thin, besprent with small flowers, a fine white kerchief, and a
+wider straw hat. Robin Greenlaw sat beside Elspeth, and the laird by
+Greenlaw. Half the congregation thought with variations:
+
+"Wha ever heard of the laird's not being in his ain place? He and
+White Farm and Littlefarm maun be well acquaint'! He's foreign,
+amaist, and gangs his ain gait!"
+
+Glenfernie, who had broken the conventions, sat in a profound
+carelessness of that. The kirk was not gray to him to-day, though he
+had thought it so on other days, nor bare, nor chill. June was
+without, but June was more within. He also prayed, though his
+unuttered words ran in and out between the minister's uttered ones.
+Under the wintry sermon he built a dream and it glowed like jewels. At
+the psalm, standing, he heard Elspeth's clear voice praising God, and
+his heart lifted on that beam of song until it was as though it came
+to Heaven.
+
+    "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place
+       In generations all.
+     Before thou ever hadst brought forth
+       The mountains great or small,
+     Ere ever thou hadst formed the earth
+       And all the world abroad,
+     Ev'n thou from everlasting art
+       To everlasting God."
+
+"Love, love, love!" cried Glenfernie's heart. His nature did with
+might what its hand found to do, and now, having turned to love
+between man and woman, it loved with a huge, deep, pulsing, world-old
+strength. He heard Elspeth, he felt Elspeth only; he but wished to
+blend with her and go on with her forever from the heaven to heaven
+which, blended so, they would make.
+
+    "... As with an overflowing flood
+      Thou carriest them away;
+    They like a sleep are, like the grass
+      That grows at morn are they.
+    At morn it flourishes and grows,
+      Cut down at ev'n doth fade--"
+
+"Not grass of the field, O Lord," cried Glenfernie's heart, "but the
+forest of oaks, but the stars that hold for aye, one to the other--"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The glen was dressed in June, at its height of green movement and
+song. Alexander and Elspeth walked there and turned aside through a
+miniature pass down which flowed a stream in miniature to join the
+larger flood. This cleft led them to a green hollow masked by the main
+wall of the glen, a fairy place, hidden and lone. Seven times had the
+two been in company since that morning of the flower-sprinkled cape
+and the thorn-tree. First stood a chance meeting upon the moor,
+Elspeth walking from the village with a basket upon her arm and the
+laird riding home after business in the nearest considerable town. He
+dismounted; he walked beside her to the stepping-stones before the
+farm. The second time he went to White Farm, and she and Jenny, with
+Merran to help, were laying linen to bleach upon the sun-washed
+hillside. He had stayed an hour, and though he was not alone with her,
+yet he might look at her, listen to her. She was not a chatterer; she
+worked or stood, almost as silent as a master painter's subtle picture
+stepped out of its frame, or as Pygmalion's statue-maid, flushing with
+life, but as yet tongue-holden. Yet she said certain things, and they
+were to him all music and wit. The third time had been by the
+wishing-green. That was but for a moment, but he counted it great
+gain.
+
+"Here," she said, "was where we danced! Mr. Ian Rullock and you and
+Robin and the rest of us. Don't you remember? It was evening and there
+was a fleet of gold clouds in the sky. It is so near the house. I walk
+here when I have a glint of time."
+
+The fourth time, riding Black Alan, he had stopped at the door and
+talked with Jarvis Barrow. He was thirsty and had asked for water, and
+Jenny had called, "Elspeth, bring the laird a cup frae the well!" She
+had brought it, and, taking it from her, all the romance of the world
+had seemed to him to close them round, to bear them to some great and
+fair and deep and passionate place. The fifth time had been the day
+when he went to kirk with White Farm and listened to her voice in the
+psalm. The sixth time had been again upon the moor. The seventh time
+was this. He had come down through the glen as he had done before. He
+had no reason to suppose that this day more than another he would find
+her, but there, half a mile from White Farm, he came upon her,
+standing, watching a lintwhite's nest. They walked together, and when
+that little, right-angled, infant fellow of the glen opened to them
+they turned and followed its bright rivulet to the green hidden
+hollow.
+
+The earth lay warm and dry, clad with short turf. They sat down
+beneath an oak-tree. None would come this way; they had to themselves
+a bright span of time and place. Elspeth looked at him with brown,
+friendly eyes. Each time she met him her eyes grew more kind; more and
+more she liked the laird. Something fluttered in her nature; like a
+bird in a room with many windows and all but one closed, it turned now
+this way, now that, seeking the open lattice. There was the lovely
+world--which way to it? And the window that in a dream had seemed to
+her to open was mayhap closed, and another that she had not noted
+mayhap opening.... But Glenfernie, winged, was in that world, and now
+all that he desired was that the bright bird should fly to him there.
+But until to-day patience and caution and much humility had kept him
+from direct speech. He knew that she had not loved, as he had done, at
+once. He had set himself to win her to love him. But so great was his
+passion that now he thought:
+
+"Surely not one, but two as one, make this terrible and happy
+furnace!" He thought, "I will speak now," and then delayed over the
+words.
+
+"This is a bonny, wee place!" said Elspeth. "Did you never hear the
+old folks tell that your great-grandmother, that was among the
+persecuted, loved it? When your father was a laddie they often used to
+sit here, the two of them. They were great wanderers together."
+
+"I never heard it," said Alexander. "Almost it seems too bright...."
+
+They sat in silence, but the train of thought started went on with
+Glenfernie:
+
+"But perhaps she never went so far as the Kelpie's Pool."
+
+"The Kelpie's Pool!... I do not like that place! Tell me, Glenfernie,
+wonders of travel."
+
+"What shall I tell you?"
+
+"Tell me of the East. Tell me what like is the Sea of Galilee."
+
+Glenfernie talked, since Elspeth bade him talk. He talked of what he
+had seen and known, and that brought him, with the aid of questions
+from the woman listening, to talk of himself. "I had a strange kind of
+youth.... So many dim, struggling longings, dreams, aspirings!--but I
+think they may be always there with youth."
+
+"Yes, they are," said Elspeth.
+
+"We talked of the Kelpie's Pool. Something like that was the
+strangeness with me. Black rifts and whirlpools and dead tarns within
+me, opening up now and again, lifted as by a trembling of the earth,
+coming up from the past! Angers and broodings, and things seen in
+flashes--then all gone as the lightning goes, and the mind does not
+hold what was shown.... I became a man and it ceased. Sometimes I know
+that in sleep or dream I have been beside a kelpie pool. But I think
+the better part of me has drained them where they lay under open sky."
+He laughed, put his hands over his face for a moment, then, dropping
+them, whistled to the blackbirds aloft in the oak-tree.
+
+"And now?"
+
+"Now there is clean fire in me!" He turned to her; he drew himself
+nearer over the sward. "Elspeth, Elspeth, Elspeth! do not tell me that
+you do not know that I love you!"
+
+"Love me--love me?" answered Elspeth. She rose from her earthen chair;
+she moved as if to leave the place; then she stood still. "Perhaps a
+part of me knew and a part did not know.... I will try to be honest,
+for you are honest, Glenfernie! Yes, I knew, but I would not let
+myself perceive and think and say that I knew.... And now what will I
+say?"
+
+"Say that you love me! Say that you love and will marry me!"
+
+"I like you and I trust you, but I feel no more, Glenfernie, I feel no
+more!"
+
+"It may grow, Elspeth--"
+
+Elspeth moved to the stem of the oak beneath which they had been
+seated. She raised her arm and rested it against the bark, then laid
+her forehead upon the warm molded flesh in the blue print sleeve. For
+some moments she stayed so, with hidden face, unmoving against the
+bole of the tree, like a relief done of old by some wonderful artist.
+The laird of Glenfernie, watching her, felt, such was his passion, the
+whole of earth and sky, the whole of time, draw to just this point,
+hang on just her movement and her word.
+
+"Elspeth!" he cried at last. "Elspeth!"
+
+Elspeth turned, but she stood yet against the tree. Now both arms were
+lifted; she had for a moment the appearance of one who hung upon the
+tree. Her eyes were wet, tears were upon her cheek. She shook them
+off, then left the oak and came a step or two toward him. "There is
+something in my brain and heart that tells me what love is. When I
+love I shall love hard.... I have had fancies.... But, like yours,
+Glenfernie, their times are outgrown and gone by.... It's clear to
+try. I like you so much! but I do not love now--and I'll not wed and
+come to Glenfernie House until I do."
+
+"'It's clear to try,' you said."
+
+Elspeth looked at him long. "If it is there, even little and far away,
+I'll try to bend my steps the way shall bring it nearer. But, oh,
+Glenfernie, it may be that there is naught upon the road!"
+
+"Will you journey to look for it? That's all I ask now. Will you
+journey to look for it?"
+
+"Yes, I may promise that. And I do not know," said Elspeth,
+wonderingly, "what keeps me from thinking I'll meet it." She sat down
+among the oak roots. "Let us rest a bit, and say no word, and then go
+home."
+
+The sunlight filled the hollow, the wimpling burn took the blue of the
+sky, the breeze whispered among the oak leaves. The two sat and gazed
+at the day, at the grass, at the little thorn-trees and hazels that
+ringed the place around. They sat very still, seeking composure. She
+gained it first.
+
+"When will your sister be coming home?"
+
+"It is not settled. Glenfernie House was sad of late years. She ought
+to have the life and brightness that she's getting now."
+
+"And will you travel no more?"
+
+He saw as in a lightning glare that she pictured no change for him
+beyond such as being laird would make. He was glad when the flash went
+and he could forget what it had of destructive and desolating. He
+would drag hope down from the sky above the sky of lightnings. He
+spoke.
+
+"There were duties now to be taken up. I could not stay away all nor
+most nor much of the time. I saw that. But I could study here, and
+once in a while run somewhere over the earth.... But now I would stay
+in this dale till I die! Unless you were with me--the two of us going
+to see the sights of the earth, and then returning home--going and
+returning--going and returning--and both a great sweetness--"
+
+"Oh!" breathed Elspeth. She put her hands again over her eyes, and she
+saw, unrolling, a great fair life _if_--_if_--She rose to her feet.
+"Let us go! It grows late. They'll miss me."
+
+They came into the glen and so went down with the stream to the open
+land and to White Farm.
+
+"Where hae you been?" asked Jenny. "Here was father hame frae the
+shearing with his eyes blurred, speiring for you to read to him!"
+
+"I was walking by the glen and the laird came down through, so we made
+here together. Where is grandfather?"
+
+"He wadna sit waiting. He's gane to walk on the muir. Will ye na bide,
+Glenfernie?"
+
+But the laird would not stay. It was wearing toward sunset. Menie,
+withindoors, called Jenny. The latter turned away. Glenfernie spoke to
+Elspeth.
+
+"If I find your grandfather on the moor I shall speak of this that is
+between us. Do not look so troubled! 'If' or 'if not' it is better to
+tell. So you will not be plagued. And, anyhow, it is the wise folks'
+road."
+
+Back came Jenny. "Has he gane? I had for him a tass of wine and a bit
+of cake."
+
+The moor lay like a stiffened billow of the sea, green with purple
+glints. The clear western sky was ruddy gold, the sun's great ball
+approaching the horizon. But when it dipped the short June night
+would know little dark in this northern land. The air struck most
+fresh and pure. Glenfernie came presently upon the old farmer, found
+him seated upon a bit of bank, his gray plaid about him, his
+crook-like stick planted before him, his eyes upon the western sea of
+glory. The younger man stopped beside him, settled down upon the bank,
+and gazed with the elder into the ocean of colored air.
+
+"Ae gowden floor as though it were glass," said Jarvis Barrow. "Ae
+gowden floor and ae river named of Life, passing the greatness of
+Orinoco or Amazon. And the tree of life for the healing of the
+nations. And a' the trees that ever leafed or flowered, ta'en
+together, but ae withered twig to that!"
+
+Glenfernie gazed with him. "I do not doubt that there will come a day
+when we'll walk over the plains of the sun--the flesh of our body then
+as gauze, moved at will where we please and swift as thought--inner
+and outer motion keeping time with the beat and rhythm of that _where
+we are_--"
+
+"The young do not speak the auld tongue."
+
+"Tongues alter with the rest."
+
+Silence fell while the sun reddened, going nearer to the mountain
+brow. The young man and the old, the farmer and the laird, sat still.
+The air struck more freshly, stronger, coming from the sea. Far off a
+horn was blown, a dog barked.
+
+"Will ye be hame now for gude, Glenfernie? Lairds should bide in their
+ain houses if the land is to have any gude of them."
+
+"I wish to stay, White Farm, the greatest part of the year round. I
+want to speak to you very seriously. Think back a moment to my father
+and mother, and to my forebears farther back yet. As they had faults,
+and yet had a longing to do the right and struggled toward it over
+thick and thin, so I believe I may say of myself. That is, I struggle
+toward it," said Alexander, "though I'm not so sure of the thick and
+thin."
+
+"Your mither wasna your father's kind. She had always her smile to the
+side and her japes, and she looked to the warld. Not that she didna
+mean to do weel in it! She did. But I couldna just see clear the seal
+in her forehead."
+
+"That was because you did not look close enough," said Alexander. "It
+was there."
+
+"I didna mind your uphawding your mither. Aweel, what did ye have to
+say?"
+
+The laird turned full to him. "White Farm, you were once a young man.
+You loved and married. So do I love, so would I marry! The woman I
+love does not yet love me, but she has, I think, some liking.--I bide
+in hope. I would speak to you about it, as is right."
+
+"Wha is she?"
+
+"Your granddaughter Elspeth."
+
+Silence, while the shadows of the trees in the vale below grew longer
+and longer. Then said White Farm:
+
+"She isna what they call your equal in station. And she has nae tocher
+or as good as nane."
+
+"For the last I have enough for us both. For the first the springs of
+Barrow and Jardine, back in Time's mountains, are much the same.
+Scotland's not the country to bother overmuch if the one stream goes,
+in a certain place, through a good farm, and the other by a not
+over-rich laird's house."
+
+"Are ye Whig and Kirk like your father?"
+
+"I am Whig--until something more to the dawn than that comes up. For
+the Kirk ... I will tell truth and say that I have my inner
+differences. But they do not lean toward Pope or prelate.... I am
+Christian, where Christ is taken very universally--the higher Self,
+the mounting Wisdom of us all.... Some high things you and I may view
+differently, but I believe that there are high things."
+
+"And seek them?"
+
+"And seek them."
+
+"You always had the air to me," vouchsafed White Farm, "of one wha
+hunted gowd elsewhaur than in the earthly mine." He looked at the red
+west, and drew his plaid about him, and took firmer clutch upon his
+staff. "But the lassie does not love you?"
+
+"My trust is that she may come to do so."
+
+The elder got to his feet. Alexander rose also.
+
+"It's coming night! Ye will be gaeing on over the muir to the House?"
+
+"Yes. Then, sir, I may come to White Farm, or meet her when I may, and
+have my chance?"
+
+"Aye. If so be I hear nae great thing against ye. If so be ye're
+reasonable. If so be that in no way do ye try to hurt the lassie."
+
+"I'll be reasonable," said the laird of Glenfernie. "And I'd not hurt
+Elspeth if I could!" His face shone, his voice was a deep and happy
+music. He was so bound, so at the feet of Elspeth, that he could not
+but believe in joy and fortune. The sun had dipped; the land lay
+dusk, but the sky was a rose. There was a skimming of swallows
+overhead, a singing of the wind in the ling. He walked with White Farm
+to the foot of the moor, then said good night and turned toward his
+own house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Two days later Alexander rode to Black Hill. There had been in the
+night a storm with thunder and lightning, wind and rain. Huge, ragged
+banks of clouds yet hung sullen in the air, though with lakes of blue
+between and shafts of sun. The road was wet and shone. Now Black Alan
+must pick his way, and now there held long stretches of easy going.
+The old laird's quarrel with Mr. Archibald Touris was not the young
+laird's. The old laird's liking for Mrs. Alison was strongly the young
+laird's. Glenfernie, in the months since his father's death, had
+ridden often enough to Black Hill. Now as he journeyed, together with
+the summer and melody of his thoughts Elspeth-toward, he was holding
+with himself a cogitation upon the subject of Ian and Ian's last
+letter. He rode easily a powerful steed, needing to be strong for so
+strongly built a horseman. His riding-dress was blue; he wore his own
+hair, unpowdered and gathered in a ribbon beneath a three-cornered
+hat. There was perplexity and trouble, too, in the Ian complex, but
+for all that he rode with the color and sparkle of happiness in his
+face. In his gray eyes light played to great depths.
+
+Black Hill appeared before him, the dark pine and crag of the hill
+itself, and below that the house with its far-stretching, well-planted
+policy. He passed the gates, rode under the green elm boughs of the
+avenue, and was presently before the porch of the house. A man
+presented himself to take Black Alan.
+
+"Aye, sir, there's company. Mr. Touris and Mrs. Alison are with them
+in the gardens."
+
+Glenfernie went there, passing by a terrace walk around the house.
+Going under the windows of the room that was yet Ian's when he came
+home. Ian still in his mind, he recovered strongly the look of that
+room the day Ian had taken him there, in boyhood, when they first met.
+Out of that vividness started a nucleus more vivid yet--the picture in
+the book-closet of the city of refuge, and the silver goblet drawn
+from the hidden shelf of the aumry. The recaptured moment lost shape
+and color, returned to the infinite past. He turned the corner of the
+house and came into the gardens that Mr. Touris had had laid out after
+the French style.
+
+Here by the fountain he discovered the retired merchant, and with him
+a guest, an old trade connection, now a power in the East India
+Company. The laird of Black Hill, a little more withered, a little
+more stooped than of old, but still fluent, caustic, and with now and
+then to the surface a vague, cold froth of insincerity, made up much
+to this magnate of commerce. He stood on his own heath, or by his own
+fountain, but his neck had in it a deferential crook. Lacs--rupees--
+factories--rajahs--ships--cottons--the words fell like the tinkle of a
+golden fountain. Listening to these two stood, with his hands behind
+his back, Mr. Wotherspoon, Black Hill's lawyer and man of business
+down from Edinburgh. At a little distance Mrs. Alison showed her roses
+to the wife of the East India man and to a kinsman, Mr. Munro Touris,
+from Inverness way.
+
+Mr. Touris addressed himself with his careful smile to Alexander.
+"Good day, Glenfernie! This, Mr. Goodworth, is a good neighbor of
+mine, Mr. Jardine of Glenfernie. Alexander, Mr. Goodworth is art and
+part of the East India. You have met Mr. Wotherspoon before, I think?
+There are Alison and Mrs. Goodworth and Munro Touris by the roses."
+
+Glenfernie went over to the roses. Mrs. Alison, smiling upon him,
+presented him to Mrs. Goodworth, a dark, bright, black-eyed, talkative
+lady. He and Munro Touris nodded to each other. The laird of Black
+Hill, the India merchant, and the lawyer now joined them, and all
+strolled together along the very wide and straight graveled path. The
+talk was chiefly upheld by Black Hill and the great trader, with the
+lawyer putting in now and again a shrewd word, and the trader's wife
+making aside to Mrs. Alison an embroidery of comment. There had now
+been left trade in excelsis and host and guests were upon the state of
+the country, an unpopular war, and fall of ministers. Came in phrases
+compounded to meet Jacobite complications and dangers. The
+Pretender--the Pretender and his son--French aid--French army that
+might be sent to Scotland--position of defense--rumors everywhere you
+go--disaffected and Stewart-mad--. Munro Touris had a biting word to
+say upon the Highland chiefs. The lawyer talked of certain Lowland
+lords and gentlemen. Mr. Touris vented a bitter gibe. He had a black
+look in his small, sunken eyes. Alexander, reading him, knew that he
+thought of Ian. In a moment the whole conversation had dragged that
+way. Mrs. Goodworth spoke with vivacity.
+
+"Lord, sir! I hope that your nephew, now that he wears the King's
+coat, has left off talking as he did when he was a boy! He showed his
+Highland strain with a warrant! You would have thought that he had
+been _out_ himself thirty years ago!"
+
+Her husband checked her. "You have not seen him since he was sixteen.
+Boys like that have wild notions of romance and devotion. They change
+when they're older."
+
+The lawyer took the word. "Captain Rullock doubtless buried all that
+years ago. His wearing the King's coat hauds for proof."
+
+Munro Touris had been college-mate in Edinburgh. "He watered all that
+gunpowder in him years ago, did he not, Glenfernie?"
+
+"'To water gunpowder--to shut off danger.' That's a good figure of
+yours, Munro!" said Alexander. Munro, who had been thought dull in the
+old days, flushed with pleasure.
+
+They had come to a kind of summer-house overrun with roses. Mr.
+Archibald Touris stopped short and, with his back to this structure,
+faced the company with him, brought thus to a halt. He looked at them
+with a carefully composed countenance.
+
+"I am sure, Munro, that Ian Rullock 'watered the gunpowder,' as you
+cleverly say. Boys, ma'am"--to Mrs. Goodworth--"are, as your husband
+remarks, romantic simpletons. No one takes them and their views of
+life seriously. Certainly not their political views! When they come
+men they laugh themselves. They are not boys then; they are men. Which
+is, as it were, the preface to what I might as well tell you. My
+nephew has resigned his captaincy and quitted the army. Apparently he
+has come to feel that soldiering is not, after all, the life he
+prefers. It may be that he will take to the law, or he may wander and
+then laird it when I am gone. Or if he is very wise--I meant to speak
+to you of this in private, Goodworth--he might be furnished with
+shares and ventures in the East India. He has great abilities."
+
+"Well, India's the field!" said the London merchant, placidly. "If a
+man has the mind and the will he may make and keep and flourish and
+taste power--"
+
+"Left the King's forces!" cried Munro Touris. "Why--! And will he be
+coming to Black Hill, sir?"
+
+"Yes. Next week. We have," said Mr. Touris, and though he tried he
+could not keep the saturnine out of his voice--"we have some things to
+talk over."
+
+As he spoke he moved from before the summer-house into a cross-path,
+and the others followed him and his Company magnate. The Edinburgh
+lawyer and Glenfernie found themselves together. The former lagged a
+step and held the younger man back with him; he dropped his voice
+
+"I've not been three hours in the house. I've had no talk with Mr.
+Touris. What's all this about? I know that you and his nephew are as
+close as brothers--not that brothers are always close!"
+
+"He writes only that he is tired of martial life. He has the soldier
+in him, but he has much besides. That 'much besides' often steps in to
+change a man's profession."
+
+"Well, I hope you'll persuade him to see the old gunpowder very damp!
+I remember that, as a very young man, he talked imprudently. But he
+has been," said the lawyer, "far and wide since those days."
+
+"Yes, far and wide."
+
+Mr. Wotherspoon with a long forefinger turned a crimson rose seen in
+profile full toward him. "I met him--once--when I was in London a year
+ago. I had not seen him for years." He let the rose swing back. "He
+has a magnificence! Do you know I study a good deal? They say that so
+do you. I have an inclination toward fifteenth-century Italian. I
+should place him there." He spoke absently, still staring at the rose.
+"A dash--not an ill dash, of course--of what you might call the Borgia
+... good and evil tied into a sultry, thunderous splendor."
+
+Glenfernie bent a keen look upon him out of gray eyes. "An enemy might
+describe him so, perhaps. I can see that such a one might do so."
+
+"Ah, you're his friend!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Wotherspoon, straightening himself from the
+contemplation of the roses, "there's no greater thing than to have a
+steadfast friend!"
+
+It seemed that an expedition had been planned, for a servant now
+appeared to say that coach and horses were at the door. Mr. Touris
+explained:
+
+"I've engaged to show Mr. and Mrs. Goodworth our considerable town.
+Mr. Wotherspoon, too, has a moment's business there. Alison will not
+come, but Munro Touris rides along. Will you come, too, Glenfernie?
+We'll have a bit of dinner at the 'Glorious Occasion.'"
+
+"No, thank you. I have to get home presently. But I'll stay a little
+and talk to Mrs. Alison, if I may."
+
+"Ah, you may!" said Mrs. Alison.
+
+From the porch they watched the coach and four away, with Munro Touris
+following on a strong and ugly bay mare. The elm boughs of the avenue
+hid the whole. The cloud continents and islands were dissolving into
+the air ocean, the sun lay in strong beams, the water drops were
+drying from leaf and blade. Mrs. Alison and Alexander moved through
+the great hall and down a corridor to a little parlor that was hers
+alone. They entered it. It gave, through an open door and two windows
+set wide, upon a small, choice garden and one wide-spreading, noble,
+ancient tree. Glenfernie entered as one who knew the place, but upon
+whom, at every coming, it struck with freshness and liking. The room
+itself was most simple.
+
+"I like," said Alexander, "our spare, clean, precise Scotch parlors.
+But this is to me like a fine, small prioress's room in a convent of
+learned saints!"
+
+His old friend laughed. "Very little learned, very little saintly, not
+at all prior! Let us sit in the doorway, smell the lavender, and hear
+the linnets in the tree."
+
+She took the chair he pushed forward. He sat upon the door-step at her
+feet.
+
+"Concerning Ian," she said. "What do you make out of it all?"
+
+"I make out that I hope he'll not involve himself in some French and
+Tory mad attempt!"
+
+"What do his letters say?"
+
+"They speak by indirection. Moreover, they're at present few and
+short.... We shall see when he comes!"
+
+"Do you think that he will tell you all?"
+
+Alexander's gray eyes glanced at her as earlier they had glanced at
+Mr. Wotherspoon. "I do not think that we keep much from each other!...
+No, of course you are right! If there is anything that in honor he
+cannot tell, or that I--with my pledges, such as they are, in another
+urn--may not hear, we shall find silences. I pin my trust to there
+being nothing, after all!"
+
+"The old wreath withered, and a new one better woven and more
+evergreen--"
+
+"I do not know.... I said just now that Ian and I kept little from
+each other. In an exceeding great measure that is true. But there are
+huge lands in every nature where even the oldest, closest, sworn
+friend does not walk. It must be so. Friendship is not falsified nor
+betrayed by its being so."
+
+"Not at all!" said Mrs. Alison. "True friend or lover loves that sense
+of the unplumbed, of the infinite, in the cared-for one. To do else
+would be to deny the unplumbed, the infinite, in himself, and so the
+matching, the equaling, the _oneing_ of love!" She leaned forward in
+her chair; she regarded the small, fragrant garden where every sweet
+and olden flower seemed to bloom. "Now let us leave Ian, and old,
+stanch, trusted, and trusting friendship. It is part of oneness--it
+will be cared for!" She turned her bright, calm gaze upon him. "What
+other realm have you come into, Alexander? It was plain the last time
+that you were here, but I did not speak of it--it is plain to-day!"
+She laughed. She had a silver, sweet, and merry laugh. "My dear, there
+is a bloom and joy, a _vivification_ about you that may be felt ten
+feet away!" She looked at him with affection and now seriously. "I
+know, I think, the look of one who comes into spiritual treasures.
+This is that and not that. It is the wilderness of lovely
+flowers--hardly quite the music of the spheres! It is not the mountain
+height, but the waving, leafy, lower slopes--and yet we pass on to the
+height by those slopes! Are you in love, Alexander?"
+
+"You guess so much!" he said. "You have guessed that, too. I do not
+care! I am glad that the sun shines through me."
+
+"You must be happy in your love! Who is she?"
+
+"Elspeth Barrow, the granddaughter of Jarvis Barrow of White Farm....
+You say that I must be happy in my love. The Lord of Heaven knows that
+I am! and yet she is not yet sure that she loves me in her turn. One
+might say that I had great uncertainty of bliss. But I love so
+strongly that I have no strength of disbelief in me!"
+
+"Elspeth Barrow!"
+
+"My old friend--the unworldliest, the better-worldliest soul I
+know--do not you join in that hue and cry about world's gear and
+position! To be Barrow is as good as to be Jardine. Elspeth is
+Elspeth."
+
+"Oh, I know why I made exclamation! Just the old, dull earthy
+surprise! Wait for me a moment, Alexander." She put her hands before
+her eyes, then, dropping them, sat with her gaze upon the great tree
+shot through with light from the clearing sky. "I see her now. At
+first I could not disentangle her and Gilian, for they were always
+together. I have not seen them often--just three or four times to
+remember, perhaps. But in April I chanced for some reason to go to
+White Farm.... I see her now! Yes, she has beauty, though it would not
+strike many with the edge of the sword.... Yes, I see--about the mouth
+and the eyes and the set of the head. It's subtle--it's like some
+pictures I remember in Italy. And intelligence is there. Enchantment
+... the more real, perhaps, for not being the most obvious.... So you
+are enchained, witched, held by the great sorceress!... Elspeth is
+only one of her little names--her great name is just love--love
+between man and woman.... Oh yes, the whole of the sweetness is
+distilled into one honey-drop--the whole giant thing is shortened into
+one image--the whole heaven and earth slip silkenly into one banner,
+and you would die for it! You see, my dear," said Mrs. Alison, who had
+never married, "I loved one who died. I know."
+
+Glenfernie took her hand and kissed it. "Nothing is loss to
+you--nothing! For me, I am more darkly made. So I hope to God I'll
+not lose Elspeth!"
+
+Her tears, that were hardly of grief, dropped upon his bent head. "Eh,
+my laddie! the old love is there in the midst of the wide love. But
+the larger controls.... Well, enough of that! And do you mean that you
+have asked Elspeth to marry you--and that she does not know her own
+heart?"
+
+They talked, sitting before the fragrant garden, in the little room
+that was tranquil, blissful, and recluse. At last he rose.
+
+"I must go."
+
+They went out through the garden to the wicket that parted her demesne
+from the formal, wide pleasure-sweeps. He stopped for a moment under
+the great tree.
+
+"In a fortnight or so I must go to Edinburgh to see Renwick about that
+land. And it is in my mind to travel from there to London for a few
+weeks. There are two or three persons whom I know who could put a
+stout shoulder to the wheel of Jamie's prospects. Word of mouth is
+better with them than would be letters. Jamie is at Windsor. I could
+take him with me here or there--give him, doubtless, a little help."
+
+"You are a world-man," said his friend, "which is quite different from
+a worldly man! Come or go as you will, still all is your garden that
+you cultivate.... Now you are thinking again of Elspeth!"
+
+"Perhaps if for a month or two I plague her not, then when I come
+again she may have a greater knowledge of herself. Perhaps it is more
+generous to be absent for a time--"
+
+"I see that you will not doubt--that you cannot doubt--that in the
+end she loves you!"
+
+"Is it arrogance, self-love, and ignorance if I think that? Or is it
+knowledge? I think it, and I cannot and will not else!"
+
+They came to the wicket, and stood there a moment ere going on by the
+terrace to the front of the house. The day was now clear and vivid,
+soft and bright. The birds sang in a long ecstasy, the flowers bloomed
+as though all life must be put into June, the droning bees went about
+with the steadiest preoccupation. Alexander looked about him.
+
+"The earth is drunk with sweetness, and I see now how great joy is sib
+to great pain!" He shook himself. "Come back to earth and daylight,
+Alexander Jardine!" He put a hand, large, strong, and shapely, over
+Mrs. Alison's slender ivory one. "She, too, has long fingers, though
+her hand is brown. But it is an artist hand--a picture hand--a
+thoughtful hand."
+
+Mrs. Alison laughed, but her eyes were tender over him. "Oh, man! what
+a great forest--what an ever-rising song--is this same thing you're
+feeling! And so old--and so fire-new!" They walked along the terrace
+to the porch. "They're bringing you Black Alan to ride away upon. But
+you'll come again as soon as Ian's here?"
+
+"Yes, of course. You may be assured that if he is free of that Stewart
+coil--or if he is in it only so deep that he may yet free himself--I
+shall say all that I can to keep him free or to urge him forth. Not
+for much would I see Ian take ship in that attempt!"
+
+"No!... I have been reading the Book of Daniel. Do you know what Ian
+is like to me? He is like some great lord--a prince or governor--in
+the court maybe of Belshazzar, or Darius the Mede, or Cyrus the
+Persian--in that hot and stately land of golden images and old rivers
+and the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and
+dulcimer and all kinds of music. He must serve his tyrant--and yet
+Daniel, kneeling in his house, in his chamber, with the windows open
+toward Jerusalem, might hear a cry to hold his name in his prayers....
+What strange thoughts we have of ourselves, and of those nearest and
+dearest!"
+
+"Mr. Wotherspoon says that he is fifteenth-century Italian. You have
+both done a proper bit of characterization! But I," said Alexander, "I
+know another great territory of Ian."
+
+"I know that, Glenfernie! And so do I know other good realms of Ian.
+Yet that was what I thought when I read Daniel. And I had the thought,
+too, that those old people were capable of great friendships."
+
+Black Alan was waiting. Glenfernie mounted, said good-by again; the
+green boughs of the elm-trees took him and his steed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Ian forestalled Alexander, riding to Glenfernie House the morning
+after his arrival at Black Hill. "Let us go," he said, "where we can
+talk at ease! The old, alchemical room?"
+
+They crossed the grass-grown court to the keep, entered and went up
+the broken stair to the stone-walled chamber that took up the second
+floor, that looked out of loophole windows north, south, east, and
+west. The day was high summer, bright and hot. Strong light and less
+strong light came in beams from the four quarters and made in the
+large place a conflict of light and shadow. The fireplace was great
+enough for Gog and Magog to have warmed themselves thereby. Around, in
+an orderly litter, yet stood on table or bench or shelf many of the
+matters that Alexander had gathered there in his boyhood. In one
+corner was the furnace that when he was sixteen his father had let him
+build. More recent was the oaken table in the middle of the room, two
+deep chairs, and shelves with many books. After the warmth of the sun
+the place presented a grave, cool, brown harbor.
+
+The two, entering, had each an arm over the other's shoulder. Where
+they were known their friendship was famed. Youth and manhood, they
+had been together when it was possible. When it was not so the
+thought of each outtraveled separation. Their differences, their
+varied colors of being, seemed but to bind them closer. They entered
+this room like David and Jonathan.
+
+Ian also was tall, but not so largely made as was the other. Lithe,
+embrowned, with gold-bronze hair and eyes, knit of a piece, moving as
+by one undulation, there was something in him not like the Scot,
+something foreign, exotic. Sometimes Alexander called him "Saracen"--a
+finding of the imagination that dated from old days upon the moor
+above the Kelpie's Pool when they read together the _Faery Queen_. The
+other day, at Black Hill, this ancient fancy had played through
+Alexander's mind while Mr. Wotherspoon talked of Italy, and Mrs.
+Alison of Babylonish lords.... The point was that he relished Paynim
+knight and Renaissance noble and prince of Babylon. Let Ian seem or be
+all that, and richer yet! Still there would be Ian, outside of all
+circles drawn.
+
+In the room that he called the "alchemical," Ian, disengaging himself,
+turned and put both hands on Alexander's shoulders. "Thou Old
+Steadfast!" he cried. "God knows how glad I am to see thee!"
+
+Alexander laughed. "Not more glad than I am at the sight of you!
+What's the tidings?"
+
+"What should they be? I am tired of being King George's soldier!"
+
+"So that you are tired of being any little king of this earth's
+soldier!"
+
+"Why, I think I am--"
+
+"Kings 'over the water' included, Ian?"
+
+"Kings without kingdoms? Well," said Ian, "they don't amount to much,
+do they?"
+
+"They do not." The two moved together to the table and the chairs by
+it. "You are free of them, Ian?"
+
+"What is it to be free of them?"
+
+"Well, to be plain, out of the Stewart cark and moil! Pretender,
+Chevalier de St. George, or uncrowned king--let it drift away like the
+dead leaf it is!"
+
+"A dead leaf. Is it a dead leaf?... I wonder!... But you are usually
+right, old Steadfast!"
+
+"I see that you will not tell me plainly."
+
+"Are you so anxious? There is nothing to be anxious about."
+
+"Nothing.... What is 'nothing'?"
+
+Ian drummed upon the table and whistled "Lillibullero."
+"Something--nothing. Nothing--something! Old Steadfast, you are a
+sight for sair een! They say you make the best of lairds! Every cotter
+sings of just ways!"
+
+"My father was a good laird. I would not shatter the tradition. Come
+with me to Edinburgh and London, on that journey I wrote you of!"
+
+"No. I want to sink into the summer green and not raise my head from
+some old poetry book! I have been marching and countermarching until I
+am tired. As for what you have in your mind, don't fash yourself about
+it! I will say that, at the moment, I think it _is_ a dead leaf.... Of
+course, should the Pope's staff unexpectedly begin to bud and
+flower--! But it mayn't--indeed, it only looks at present smooth and
+polished and dead.... I left the army because, naturally, I didn't
+want to be there in case--just in case--the staff budded. Heigho! It
+is the truth. You need not look troubled," said Ian.
+
+His friend must rest with that. He did so, and put that matter aside.
+At any rate, things stood there better than he had feared. "I shall be
+gone a month or two. But you'll still be here when I come home?"
+
+"As far as I know I'll be here through the summer. I have no plans....
+If the leaf remains dry and dead, what should you say to taking ship
+at Leith in September for Holland? Amsterdam--then Antwerp--then the
+Rhine. We might see the great Frederick--push farther and look at the
+Queen of Hungary."
+
+"No, I may not. I look to be a home-staying laird."
+
+They sat with the table between them, and the light from the four
+sides of the room rippled and crossed over them. Books were on the
+table, folios and volumes in less.
+
+"The home-staying laird--the full scholar--at last the writer--the
+master ... it is a good fortune!"
+
+As Ian spoke he stretched his arms, he leaned back in his chair and
+regarded the room, the fireplace, the little furnace, and the shelves
+ranged with the quaint, makeshift apparatuses of boyhood. He looked at
+the green boughs without the loophole windows and at the crossing
+lights and shadows, and the brown books upon the brown table, and at
+last, under somewhat lowered lids, at Alexander. What moved in the
+bottom of his mind it would be hard to say. He thought that he loved
+the man sitting over against him, and so, surely, to some great amount
+he did. But somewhere, in the thousand valleys behind them, he had
+stayed in an inn of malice and had carried hence poison in a vial as
+small as a single cell. What suddenly made that past to burn and set
+it in the present it were hard to say. A spark perhaps of envy or of
+jealousy, or a movement of contempt for Alexander's "fortune." But he
+looked at his friend with half-closed eyes, and under the sea of
+consciousness crawled, half-blind, half-asleep, a willingness for
+Glenfernie to find some thorn in life. The wish did not come to
+consciousness. It was far down. He thought of himself as steel true to
+Alexander. And in a moment the old love drew again. He put out his
+hands across the board. "When are we going to see Mother Binning and
+to light the fire in the cave?... There are not many like you,
+Alexander! I'm glad to get back."
+
+"I'm glad to have you back, old sworn-fellow, old Saracen!"
+
+They clasped hands. Gray eyes and brown eyes with gold flecks met in a
+gaze that was as steady with the one as with the other. It was
+Alexander who first loosened handclasp.
+
+They talked of affairs, particular and general, of Ian's late
+proceedings and the lairdship of Alexander, of men and places that
+they knew away from this countryside. Ian watched the other as they
+talked. Whatever there was that had moved, down there in the abyss,
+was asleep again.
+
+"Old Steadfast, you are ruddy and joyous! How long since I was here,
+in the winter? Four months? Well, you've changed. What is it?... Is it
+love? Are you in love?"
+
+"If I am--" Glenfernie rose and paced the room. Coming to one of the
+narrow windows, he stood and looked out and down upon bank and brae
+and wood and field and moor. He returned to the table. "I'll tell you
+about it."
+
+He told. Ian sat and listened. The light played about him, shook gold
+dots and lines over his green coat, over his hands, his faintly
+smiling face, his head held straight and high. He was so well to look
+at, so "magnificent"! Alexander spoke with the eloquence of a
+possessing passion, and Ian listened and felt himself to be the
+sympathizing friend. Even the profound, unreasonable, unhumorous
+idealism of old Steadfast had its quaint, Utopian appeal. He was going
+to marry the farmer's granddaughter, though he might, undoubtedly,
+marry better.... Ian listened, questioned, summed up:
+
+"I have always been the worldly-wise one! Is there any use in my
+talking now of worldly wisdom?"
+
+"No use at all."
+
+"Then I won't!... Old Alexander the Great, are you happy?"
+
+"If she gives me her love."
+
+Ian dismissed that with a wave of his hand. "Oh, I think she'll give
+it, dear simpleton!" He looked at Glenfernie now with genial
+affection. "Well, on the whole, and balancing one thing against
+another, I think that I want you to be happy!"
+
+Alexander laughed at that minification. "And my happiness is big
+enough--or if I get it it will be big enough--not in the least to
+disturb our friendship country, Ian!"
+
+"I'll believe that, too. Our relations are old and rooted."
+
+"Old and rooted."
+
+"So I wish you joy.... And I remember when you thought you would not
+marry!"
+
+"Oh--memories! I'm sweeping them away! I'm beginning again!... I hold
+fast the memory of friendship. I hold fast the memory that somehow, in
+this form or that, I must have loved her from the beginning of
+things!" He rose and moved about the room. Going to the fireplace, he
+leaned his forehead against the stone and looked down at the laid, not
+kindled, wood. He turned and came back to Ian. "The world seems to me
+all good."
+
+Ian laughed at him, half in raillery, but half in a flood of kindness.
+If what had stirred had been ancient betrayal, alive and vital one
+knew not when, now again it was dead, dead. He rose, he put his arm
+again about Alexander's shoulder. "Glenfernie! Glenfernie! you're in
+deep! Well, I hope the world will stay heaven, e'en for your sake!"
+
+They left the old room with its hauntings of a boy's search for gold,
+with, back of that, who might know what hauntings of ancient times and
+fortress doings, violences and agonies, subduings, revivings, cark and
+care and light struggling through, dark nights and waited-for dawns!
+They went down the stair and out of the keep. Late June flamed around
+them.
+
+Ian stayed another hour or two ere he rode back to Black Hill. With
+Glenfernie he went over Glenfernie House, the known, familiar rooms.
+They went to the school-room together and out through the breach in
+the old castle wall, and sat among the pine roots, and looked down
+through leafy tree-tops to the glint of water. When, in the sun-washed
+house and narrow garden and grassy court, they came upon men and women
+they stopped and spoke, and all was friendly and merry as it should be
+in a land of good folk. Ian had his crack with Davie, with Eppie and
+Phemie and old Lauchlinson and others. They sat for a few minutes with
+Mrs. Grizel where, in a most housewifely corner, she measured currants
+and bargained with pickers of cherries. Strickland they came upon in
+the book-room. With the Jardines and this gentleman the sense of
+employed and employee had long ago passed into a larger inclusion. He
+and the young laird talked and worked together as members of one
+family. Now there was some converse among the three, and then the two
+left Strickland in the cool, dusky room. Outside the house June flamed
+again. For a while they paced up and down under the trees in the
+narrow garden atop the craggy height. Then Ian mounted Fatima, who all
+these years was kept for him at Black Hill.
+
+"You'll come over to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Glenfernie watched him down the steep-descending, winding road, and
+thought of many roads that, good company, he and Ian had traveled
+together.
+
+This was the middle of the day. In the afternoon he walked to White
+Farm.... It was sunset when he turned his face homeward. He looked
+back and saw Elspeth at the stepping-stones, in a clear flame of
+golden sky and golden water. She had seemed kind; he walked on air,
+his hand in Hope's. Hope had well-nigh the look of Assurance. He was
+going away because it was promised and arranged for and he must go.
+But he was coming again--he was coming again.
+
+A golden moon rose through the clear east. He was in no hurry to reach
+Glenfernie House. The aching, panting bliss that he felt, the energy
+compressed, held back, straining at the leash, wanted night and
+isolation. So it could better dream of day and the clasp of that other
+that with him would make one. Now he walked and now stood, his eyes
+upon the mounting orb or the greater stars that it could not dim, and
+now he stretched himself in the summer heath. At last, not far from
+midnight, he came to that face of Glenfernie Hill below the old wall,
+to the home stream and the bit of thick wood where once, in boyhood,
+he had lain with covered face under the trees and little by little had
+put from his mind "The Cranes of Ibycus." The moonlight was all broken
+here. Shafts of black and white lay inextricably crossed and mingled.
+Alexander passed through the little wood and climbed, with the secure
+step of old habit, the steep, rough path to the pine without the wall,
+there stooped and came through the broken wall to the moon-silvered
+court, and so to the door left open for him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The laird of Glenfernie was away to Edinburgh on Black Alan, Tam
+Dickson with him on Whitefoot. Ian Rullock riding Fatima, behind him a
+Black Hill groom on an iron-gray, came over the moor to the head of
+the glen. Ian checked the mare. Behind him rolled the moor, with the
+hollow where lay, water in a deep jade cup, the Kelpie's Pool. Before
+him struck down the green feathered cleft, opening out at last into
+the vale. He could see the water there, and a silver gleam that was
+White Farm. He sat for a minute, pondering whether he should ride back
+the way he had come or, giving Fatima to Peter Lindsay, walk through
+the glen. He looked at his watch, looked, too, at a heap of clouds
+along the western horizon. The gleam in the vale at last decided him.
+He left the saddle.
+
+"Take Fatima around to White Farm, Lindsay. I'll walk through the
+glen." His thought was, "I might as well see what like is Alexander's
+inamorata!" It was true that he had seen her quite long ago, but time
+had overlaid the image, or perhaps he had never paid especial note.
+
+Peter Lindsay stooped to catch the reins that the other tossed him.
+"There's weather in thae clouds, sir!"
+
+"Not before night, I think. They're moving very slowly."
+
+Lindsay turned with the horses. Ian, light of step, resilient,
+"magnificent," turned from the purple moor into the shade of birches.
+A few moments and he was near the cot of Mother Binning. A cock
+crowed, a feather of blue smoke went up from her peat fire.
+
+He came to her door, meaning to stay but for a good-natured five
+minutes of gossip. She had lived here forever, set in the picture with
+ash-tree and boulder. But when he came to the door he found sitting
+with her, in the checkered space behind the opening, Glenfernie's
+inamorata.
+
+Now he remembered her.... He wondered if he had truly ever forgotten
+her.
+
+When he had received his welcome he sat down upon the door-step. He
+could have touched Elspeth's skirt. When she lowered her eyes they
+rested upon his gold-brown head, upon his hand in a little pool of
+light.
+
+"Eh, laddie!" said Mother Binning, "but ye grow mair braw each time ye
+come!"
+
+Elspeth thought him braw. The wishing-green where they danced, hand in
+hand!... Now she knew--now she knew--why her heart had lain so cold
+and still--for months, for years, cold and still! That was what hearts
+did until the sun came.... Definitely, in this hour, for her now, upon
+this stretch of the mortal path, Ian became the sun.
+
+Ian sat daffing, talking. The old woman listened, her wheel idle; the
+young woman listened. The young woman, sitting half in shadow, half in
+light, put up her hand and drew farther over her face the brim of her
+wide hat of country weave. She wished to hide her eyes, her lips. She
+sat there pale, and through her ran in fine, innumerable waves human
+passion and longing, wild courage and trembling humility.
+
+The sunlight that flooded the door-stone and patched the cottage floor
+began to lessen and withdraw. Low and distant there sounded a roll of
+thunder. Jock Binning came upon his crutches from the bench by the
+stream where he made a fishing-net.
+
+"A tempest's daundering up!"
+
+Elspeth rose. "I must go home--I must get home before it comes!"
+
+"If ye'll bide, lassie, it may go by."
+
+"No, I cannot." She had brought to Mother Binning a basket heaped with
+bloomy plums. She took it up and set it on the table. "I'll get the
+basket when next I come. Now I must go! Hark, there's the thunder
+again!"
+
+Ian had risen also. "I will go with you. Yes! It was my purpose to
+walk through to White Farm. I sent Fatima around with Peter Lindsay."
+
+As they passed the ash-tree there was lightning, but yet the heavens
+showed great lakes of blue, and a broken sunlight lay upon the path.
+
+"There's time enough! We need not go too fast. The path is rough for
+that."
+
+They walked in silence, now side by side, now, where the way was
+narrow, one before the other. The blue clouded over, there sprang a
+wind. The trees bent and shook, the deep glen grew gray and dark.
+That wind died and there was a breathless stillness, heated and heavy.
+Each heard the other's breathing as they walked.
+
+"Let us go more quickly! We have a long way."
+
+"Will you go back to Mother Binning's?"
+
+"That, too, is far."
+
+They had passed the cave a little way and were in mid-glen. It was
+dusk in this narrow pass. The trees hung, shadows in a brooding
+twilight; between the close-set pillars of the hills the sky showed
+slate-hued, with pallid feathers of cloud driven across. Lightning
+tore it, the thunder was loud, the trees upon the hilltops began to
+move. Some raindrops fell, large, slow, and warm. The lightning ran
+again, blindingly bright; the ensuing thunderclap seemed to shake the
+rock. As it died, the cataract sound of the wind was heard among the
+ranked trees. The drops came faster, came fast.
+
+"It's no use!" cried Ian. "You'll be drenched and blinded! There's
+danger, too, in these tall trees. Come back to the cave and take
+shelter!"
+
+He turned. She followed him, breathless, liking the storm--so that no
+bolt struck him. In every nerve, in every vein, she felt life rouse
+itself. It was like day to old night, summer to one born in winter, a
+passion of revival where she had not known that there was anything to
+revive. The past was as it were not, the future was as it were not;
+all things poured into a tremendous present. It was proper that there
+should be storm without, if within was to be this enormous, aching,
+happy tumult that was pain indeed, but pain that one would not spare!
+
+Ian parted the swinging briers. They entered the cavern. If it was
+dim outside in the glen, it was dimmer here. Then the lightning
+flashed and all was lit. It vanished, the light from the air in
+conflict with itself. All was dark--then the flash again! The rain now
+fell in a torrent.
+
+"At least it is dry here! There is wood, but I have no way to make
+fire."
+
+"I am not cold."
+
+"Sit here, upon this ledge. Alexander and I cleared it and widened
+it."
+
+She sat down. When he spoke of Alexander she thought of Alexander,
+without unkindness, without comparing, without compunction, a thought
+colorless and simple, as of one whom she had known and liked a long
+time ago. Indeed, it might be said that she had little here with which
+to reproach herself. She had been honest--had not said "Take!" where
+she could not fulfil.... And now the laird of Glenfernie was like a
+form met long ago--long ago! It seemed so long and far away that she
+could not even think of him as suffering. As she might leave a
+fugitive memory, so she turned her mind from him.
+
+Ian thought of Alexander ... but he looked, by the lightning's lamp,
+at the woman opposite.
+
+She was not the first that he had desired, but he desired now with
+unwonted strength. He did not know why--he did not analyze himself nor
+the situation--but all the others seemed gathered up in her. She was
+fair to him, desirable!... He thirsted, quite with the mortal honesty
+of an Arab, day and night and day again without drink in the desert,
+and the oasis palms seen at last on the horizon. In his self-direction
+thitherward he was as candid, one-pointed, and ruthless as the Arab
+might be. He had no deliberate thought of harm to the woman before
+him--as little as the Arab would have of hurting the well whose cool
+wave seemed to like the lip touch. Perhaps he as little stopped to
+reason as would have done the Arab. Perhaps he had no thought of
+deeply injuring a friend. If there were two desert-traversers, or more
+than two, making for the well, friendship would not hold one back,
+push another forward. Race!--and if the well was but to one, then let
+fate and Allah approve the swiftest! Under such circumstances would
+not Alexander outdo him if he might? He was willing to believe so.
+Glenfernie said himself that the girl did not know if she cared for
+him. If, then, the well was not for him, anyway?... _Where was the
+wrong?_ Now Ian believed in his own power and easy might and
+pleasantness and, on the whole, goodness--believed, too, in the love
+of Alexander for him, love that he had tried before, and it held. _And
+if he made love to Elspeth Barrow need old Steadfast ever know it?_
+And, finally, and perhaps, unacknowledged to himself, from the first,
+he turned to that cabinet of his heart where was the vial made of
+pride, that held the drop of malice. The storm continued. They looked
+through the portcullis made by the briers upon a world of rain. The
+lightning flashed, the thunder rolled; in here was the castle hold,
+dim and safe. They were as alone as in a fairy-tale, as alone as
+though around the cave beat an ocean that boat had never crossed.
+
+They sat near each other; once or twice Ian, rising, moved to and fro
+in the cave, or at the opening looked into the turmoil without. When
+he did this her eyes followed him. Each, in every fiber, had
+consciousness of the other. They were as conscious of each other as
+lion and lioness in a desert cave.
+
+They talked, but they did not talk much. What they said was trite
+enough. Underneath was the potent language, wave meeting wave with
+shock and thrill and exultation. These would not come, here and now,
+to outer utterance. But sooner or later they would come. Each knew
+that--though not always does one acknowledge what is known.
+
+When they spoke it was chiefly of weather and of country people....
+
+The lightning blazed less frequently, thunder subdued itself. For a
+time the rain fell thick and leaden, but after an hour it thinned and
+grew silver. Presently it wholly stopped.
+
+"This storm is over," said Ian.
+
+Elspeth rose from the ledge of stone. He drew aside the dripping
+curtain of leaf and stem, and she stepped forth from the cave, and he
+followed. The clouds were breaking, the birds were singing. The day of
+creation could not have seen the glen more lucent and fragrant. When,
+soon, they came to its lower reaches, with White Farm before them,
+they saw overhead a rainbow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day of the storm and the cave was over, but with no outward word
+their inner selves had covenanted to meet again. They met in the leafy
+glen. It was easy for her to find an errand to Mother Binning's, or,
+even, in the long summer afternoons, to wander forth from White Farm
+unquestioned. As for him, he came over the moor, avoided the cot at
+the glen head, and plunged down the steep hillside below. Once they
+met Jock Binning in the glen. After that they chose for their
+trysting-place that green hidden arm that once she and the laird of
+Glenfernie had entered.
+
+Elspeth did not think in those days; she loved. She moved as one who
+is moved; she was drawn as by the cords of the sun. The Ancient One,
+the Sphinx, had her fast. The reflection of a greater thing claimed
+her and taught her, held her like a bayadere in a temple court.
+
+As for Ian, he also held that he loved. He was the Arab bound for the
+well for which he thirsted, single-minded as to that, and without much
+present consciousness of tarnish or sin.... But what might arise in
+his mind when his thirst was quenched? Ian did not care, in these
+blissful days, to think of that.
+
+He had come on the day of the storm, the cave, and the rainbow to a
+fatal place in his very long life. He was upon very still, deep water,
+glasslike, with only vague threads and tremors to show what might
+issue in resistless currents. He had been in such a place, in his
+planetary life, over and over and over again. This concatenation had
+formed it, or that concatenation; the surrounding phenomena varied,
+but essentially it was always the same, like a dream place. The
+question was, would he turn his boat, or raft, or whatever was beneath
+him, or his own stroke as swimmer, and escape from this glassy place
+whose currents were yet but tendrils? He could do it; it was the
+Valley of Decision.... But so often, in all those lives whose bitter
+and sweet were distilled into this one, he had not done it. It had
+grown much easier not to do it. Sometimes it had been illusory love,
+sometimes ambition, sometimes towering pride and self-seeking,
+sometimes mere indolent unreadiness, dreamy self-will. On he had gone
+out of the lower end of the Valley of Decision, where the tendrils
+became arms of giants and decisions might no longer be made.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The laird of Glenfernie stayed longer from home than, riding away, he
+had expected to do. It was the latter half of August when he and Black
+Alan, Tam Dickson and Whitefoot, came up the winding road to
+Glenfernie door. Phemie it was, at the clothes-lines, who noted them
+on the lowest spiral, who turned and ran and informed the household.
+"The laird's coming! The laird's coming!" Men and women and dogs began
+to stir.
+
+Strickland, looking from the window of his own high room, saw the
+riders in and out of the bronzing woods. Descending, he joined Mrs.
+Grizel upon the wide stone step without the hall door. Davie was in
+waiting, and a stable-boy or two came at a run.
+
+"Two months!" said Mrs. Grizel. "But it used to be six months, a year,
+two years, and more! He grows a home body, as lairds ought to be!"
+
+Alexander dismounted at the door, took her in his arms and kissed her
+twice, shook hands with Strickland, greeted Davie and the men. "How
+good it is to get home! I've pined like a lost bairn. And none of you
+look older--Aunt Grizel hasn't a single white hair!"
+
+"Go along with you, laddie!" said Aunt Grizel. "You haven't been so
+long away!"
+
+The sun was half-way down the western quarter. He changed his
+riding-clothes, and they set food for him in the hall. He ate, and
+Davie drew the cloth and brought wine and glasses. Some matter or
+other called Mrs. Grizel away, but Strickland stayed and drank wine
+with him.
+
+Questions and answers had been exchanged. Glenfernie gave in detail
+reasons for his lengthened stay. There had been a business
+postponement and complication--in London Jamie's affairs; again, in
+Edinburgh, insistence of kindred with whom Alice was blooming,
+"growing a fine lady, too!" and at the last a sudden and for a while
+dangerous sickness of Tam Dickson's that had kept them a week at an
+inn a dozen miles this side of Edinburgh.
+
+"Each time I started up sprang a stout hedge! But they're all down now
+and here I am!" He raised his wine-glass. "To home, and the sweetness
+thereof!" said Alexander.
+
+"I am glad to see you back," said Strickland, and meant it.
+
+The late sunlight streamed through the open door. Bran, the old hound,
+basked in it; it wiped the rust from the ancient weapons on the wall
+and wrote hieroglyphics in among them; it made glow the wine in the
+glass. Alexander turned in his chair.
+
+"It's near sunset.... Now what, just, did you hear about Ian Rullock's
+going?"
+
+"We supposed that he would be here through the autumn--certainly until
+after your return. Then, three days ago, comes Peter Lindsay with the
+note for you, and word that he was gone. Lindsay thought that he had
+received letters from great people and had gone to them for a visit."
+
+Alexander spread the missive that had been given him upon the table.
+"It's short!" He held it so that Strickland might read:
+
+     GLENFERNIE,--Perhaps the leaf is not yet wholly sere.
+     Be that as it may be, I'm leaving Black Hill for a time.
+
+                                               IAN RULLOCK.
+
+"That's a puzzling billet!" said Alexander. "'_Glenfernie_--_Ian
+Rullock!_'"
+
+"What does he mean by the leaf not dead?"
+
+"That was a figure of speech used between us in regard to a certain
+thing.... Well, he also has moods! It is my trust that he has not
+answered to some one's piping that the leaf's not dead! That is the
+likeliest thing--that he answered and has gone. I'll ride to Black
+Hill to-morrow." The sun set, twilight passed, candles were lighted.
+"Have you seen any from White Farm?"
+
+"I walked there from Littlefarm with Robin Greenlaw. Jarvis Barrow was
+reading Leviticus, looking like a listener in the Plain of Sinai. They
+expected Gilian home from Aberdeen. They say the harvest everywhere is
+good."
+
+Alexander asked no further and presently they parted for the night.
+The laird of Glenfernie looked from his chamber window, and he looked
+toward White Farm. It was dark, clear night, and all the autumn stars
+shone like worlds of hope.
+
+The next morning he mounted his horse and went off to Black Hill. He
+would get this matter of Ian straight. It was early when he rode, and
+he came to Black Hill to find Mr. Touris and his sister yet at the
+breakfast-table. Mrs. Alison, who might have been up hours, sat over
+against a dour-looking master of the house who sipped his tea and
+crumbled his toast and had few good words for anything. But he was
+glad and said that he was glad to see Glenfernie.
+
+"Now, maybe, we'll have some light on Ian's doings!"
+
+"I came for light to you, sir."
+
+"Do you mean that he hasn't written you?"
+
+"Only a line that I found waiting for me. It says, simply, that he
+leaves Black Hill for a while."
+
+"Well, you won't get light from me! My light's darkness. The women
+found in his room a memorandum of ships and two addresses, one a house
+in Amsterdam, and one, if you please, in Paris--_Faubourg
+Saint-Germain!_"
+
+"Do you mean that he left without explanation or good-by?"
+
+Mrs. Alison spoke. "No, Archibald does not mean that. One evening Ian
+outdid himself in bonniness and golden talk. Then as we took our
+candles he told us that the wander-fever had him and that he would be
+riding to Edinburgh. Archibald protested, but he daffed it by. So the
+next day he went, and he may be in Edinburgh. It would seem nothing,
+if these Highland chiefs were not his kin and if there wasn't this
+round and round rumor of the Pretender and the French army! There may
+be nothing--he may be riding back almost to-morrow!"
+
+But Mr. Touris would not shake the black dog from his shoulders.
+"He'll bring trouble yet--was born the sort to do it!"
+
+Alexander defended him.
+
+"Oh, you're his friend--sworn for thick and thin! As for Alison, she'd
+find a good word for the fiend from hell!--not that my sister's son is
+anything of that," said the Scotchman. "But he'll bring trouble to
+warm, canny, king-and-kirk-abiding folk! He's an Indian macaw in a
+dove-cote."
+
+They rose from table. Out on the terrace they walked up and down in
+the soft, bright morning light. Mr. Touris seemed to wish company; he
+clung to Glenfernie until the latter must mount his horse and ride
+home. Only for a moment did Alexander and Mrs. Alison have speech
+together.
+
+"When will you be seeing Elspeth?"
+
+"I hope this afternoon."
+
+"May joy come to you, Alexander!"
+
+"I want it to come. I want it to come."
+
+He and Black Alan journeyed home. As he rode he thought now and again
+of Ian, perhaps in Edinburgh according to his word of mouth, but
+perhaps, despite that word, on board some ship that should place him
+in the Low Countries, from which he might travel into France and to
+Paris and that group of Jacobites humming like a byke of bees around a
+prince, the heir of all the Stewarts. He thought with old affection
+and old concern. Whatever Ian did--intrigued with Jacobite interest or
+held aloof like a sensible man--yet was he Ian with the old appeal.
+_Take me or leave me--me and my dusky gold!_ Alexander drew a deep
+breath, shook his shoulders, raised his head. "Let my friend be as he
+is!"
+
+He ceased to think of Ian and turned to the oncoming afternoon--the
+afternoon rainbow-hued, coming on to the sound of music.
+
+Again in his own house, he and Strickland worked an hour or more upon
+estate business. That over and dinner past, he went to the room in the
+keep. When the hour struck three he passed out of the opening in the
+old wall, clambered down the bank, and, going through the wood, took
+his way to White Farm.
+
+Just one foreground wish in his mind was granted. There was an orchard
+strip by White Farm, and here, beneath a red-apple tree, he found
+Elspeth alone. She was perfectly direct with him.
+
+"Willy told us that you were home. I thought you might come now to
+White Farm. I was watching. I wanted to speak to you where none was
+by. Let us cross the burn and walk in the fields."
+
+The fields were reaped, lay in tawny stubble. The path ran by this and
+by a lichened stone wall. Overhead, swallows were skimming. Heath and
+bracken, rolled the colored hills. The air swam cool and golden, with
+a smell of the harvest earth.
+
+"Elspeth, I stayed away years and years and years, and I stayed away
+not one hour!"
+
+She stopped; she stood with her back to the wall. The farm-house had
+sunk from sight, the sun was westering, the fields lay dim gold and
+solitary. She had over her head a silken scarf, the ends of which she
+drew together and held with one brown, slender hand against her
+breast. She wore a dark gown; he saw her bosom rise and fall.
+
+"I watched for you to tell you that this must not go on any longer. I
+came to my mind when you were gone, Mr. Alexander--I came to my mind!
+I think that you are braw and noble, but in the way of loving, as love
+is between man and woman, I have none for you--I have none for you!"
+
+The sun appeared to dip, the fields to darken. Pain came to
+Glenfernie, wildering and blinding. He stood silent.
+
+"I might have known before you went--I might have known from that
+first meeting, in May, in the glen! But I was a fool, and vague, and
+willing, I suppose, to put tip of tongue to a land of sweetness! If,
+mistaken myself, I helped you to mistake, I am bitter sorry and I ask
+your forgiveness! But the thing, Glenfernie, the thing stands! It's
+for us to part."
+
+He stared at her dumbly. In every line of her, in every tone of her,
+there was finality. He was tenacious of purpose, capable of
+long-sustained and patient effort, but he seemed to know that, for
+this life, purpose and effort here might as well be laid aside. The
+knowledge wrapped him, quiet, gray, and utter. He put his hands to his
+brow; he moved a few steps to and fro; he came to the wall and leaned
+against it. It seemed to him that he regarded the clay-cold corpse of
+his life.
+
+"O the world!" cried Elspeth. "When we are little it seems so little!
+If you suffer, I am sorry."
+
+"Present suffering may be faced if there's light behind."
+
+"There's not this light, Glenfernie.... O world! if there is some
+other light--"
+
+"And time will do naught for me, Elspeth?"
+
+"No. Time will do naught for you. It is over! And the day goes down
+and the world spins on."
+
+They stood apart, without speaking, under their hands the heaped
+stones of the wall. The swallows skimmed; a tinkling of sheep-bells
+was heard; the stubble and the moor beyond the fields lay in gold, in
+sunken green and violet; the hilltops met the sky in a line long,
+clean, remote, and still. Elspeth spoke.
+
+"I am going now, back home. Let's say good-by here, each wishing the
+other some good in, or maybe out of, this carefu' world!"
+
+"You, also, are unhappy. Why?"
+
+"I am not! Do I seem so? I am sorry for unhappiness--that is all! Of
+course we grow older," said Elspeth, "older and wiser. But you nor no
+one must think that I am unhappy! For I am not." She put out her hands
+to him. "Let us say good-by!"
+
+"Is it so? Is it so?"
+
+"Never make doubt of that! I want you to see that it is clean
+snapped--clean gone!"
+
+She gave him her hands. They lay in his grasp untrembling, filled with
+a gathered strength. He wrung them, bowed his head upon them, let them
+go. They fell at her sides; then she raised them, drew the scarf over
+her head and, holding it as before, turned and went away up the path
+between the yellow stubble and the wall. She walked quickly, dark
+clad; she was gone like a bird into a wood, like a branch of autumn
+leaves when the sea fog rolls in.
+
+The laird of Glenfernie turned to his ancient house on the craggy
+hill.... That night he made him a fire in his old loved room in the
+keep. He sat beside it; he lighted candles and opened books, and now
+and then he sat so still before them that he may have thought that he
+read. But the books slipped away, and the candles guttered down, and
+the fire went out. At last, in the thick darkness, he spread his arms
+upon the table and bowed his head in them, and his frame shook with a
+man's slow weeping.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The bright autumn sank into November, November winds and mists into a
+muffled, gray-roofed, white-floored December. And still the laird of
+Glenfernie lived with the work of the estate and, when that was done,
+and when the long, lonely, rambling daily walk or ride was over, with
+books. The room in the keep had now many books. He sat among them, and
+he built his fire higher, and his candles burned into late night.
+Whether he read or did not read, he stayed among them and drew what
+restless comfort he might. Strickland, from his own high room, waking
+in the night, saw the loophole slit of light.
+
+He felt concern. The change that had come to his old pupil was marked
+enough. Strickland's mind dwelt on the old laird. Was that the
+personality, not of one, but of two, of the whole line, perhaps,
+developing all the time, step by step with what seemed the plastic,
+otherwise, free time of youth, appearing always in due season, when
+its hour struck? Would Alexander, with minor differences, repeat his
+father? How of the mother? Would the father drown the mother? In the
+enormous all-one, the huge blend, what would arrive? Out of all
+fathers and mothers, out of all causes?
+
+It could not be said that Alexander was surly. Nor, if the weather
+was dark with him, that he tried to shake his darkness into others'
+skies. Nor that he meanly succumbed to the weight, whatever it was,
+that bore upon him. He did his work, and achieved at least the show of
+equanimity. Strickland wondered. What was it that had happened? It
+never occurred to him that it had happened here in this dale. But in
+all that life of Alexander's in the wider world there must needs have
+been relationships of lands established. Somewhere, something had
+happened to overcloud his day, to uncover ancestral resemblances,
+possibilities. Something, somewhere, and he had had news of it this
+autumn.... It happened that Strickland had never seen Glenfernie with
+Elspeth Barrow.
+
+Mrs. Grizel was not observant. So that her nephew came to breakfast,
+dinner, and supper, so that he was not averse to casual speech of
+household interests, so that he seemed to keep his health, so that he
+gave her now and then words and a kiss of affection, she was willing
+to believe that persons addicted to books and the company of
+themselves had a right to stillness and gravity. Alice stayed in
+Edinburgh; Jamie soldiered it in Flanders. Strickland wrote and
+computed for and with the laird, then watched him forth, a solitary
+figure, by the fir-trees, by the leafless trees, and down the circling
+road into the winter country. Or he saw firelight in the keep and knew
+that Alexander walked to and fro, to and fro, or sat bowed over a
+book. Late at night, waking, he saw that Glenfernie still watched.
+
+It was not Ian Rullock nor anything to do with him that had helped on
+this sharp alteration, this turn into some Cimmerian stretch of the
+mind's or the emotions' vast landscape. If Strickland had at first
+wondered if this might be the case, the thought vanished. Glenfernie,
+free to speak of Ian, spoke freely, with the relief of there, at
+least, a sunny day. It somewhat amazed and disquieted, even while it
+touched, the older man of quiet passions and even ways, the old
+strength of this friendship. Glenfernie seemed to brood with a
+mother-passion over Ian. To an extent here he confided in Strickland.
+The latter knew of the worry about Jacobite plots and the drawing of
+Ian into that vortex--Ian known now to be in Paris, writing thence
+twice or thrice during this autumn and early winter, letters that came
+to Glenfernie's hand by unusual channels, smacking all of them of
+Jacobite or High Tory transmissals. Strickland did not see these
+letters. Of them Alexander said only that Ian wrote as usual, except
+that he made no reference to sere leaves turning green or a dead staff
+budding.
+
+In the room with only the loophole windows, by the firelight,
+Alexander read over again the second of these letters. "So you have
+loved and lost, old Steadfast? Let it not grieve you too much!" And
+that was all of that. And it pleased Alexander that it was all. Ian
+was too wise to touch and finger the heart. Ian, Ian, rich and deep
+and himself almost! Ten thousand Ian recollections pressed in upon
+Alexander. Let Ian, an he would, go a-lusting after old dynasties! Yet
+was he Ian! In these months it was Ian memories that chiefly gave
+Alexander comfort.
+
+They gave beyond what, at this time, Mrs. Alison could give. At
+considerable intervals he went to Black Hill. But his old friend lived
+in a rare, upland air, and he could not yet find rest in her clime.
+She saw that.
+
+"It's for after a while, isn't it, Alexander? Oh, after a while you'll
+see that it is the breathing, living air! But do not feel now that you
+are in duty bound to come here. Wait until you feel like coming, and
+never think that I'll be hurt--"
+
+"I am a marsh thing," he said. "I feel dull and still and cold, and
+over me is a heavy atmosphere filled with motes. Forgive me and let me
+come to you farther on and higher up."
+
+He went back to the gray crag, Glenfernie House and the room in the
+keep, the fire and his books, and a brooding traveling over the past,
+and, like a pool of gold in a long arctic night, the image, nested and
+warm, of Ian. Love was lost, but there stayed the ancient, ancient
+friend.
+
+Two weeks before Christmas Alice came home, bright as a rose. She
+talked of a thousand events, large and small. Glenfernie listened,
+smiled, asked questions, praised her, and said it was good to have
+brightness in the house.
+
+"Aye, it is!" she answered. "How grave and old you and Mr. Strickland
+and the books and the hall and Bran look!"
+
+"It's heigho! for Jamie, isn't it?" asked Alexander. "Winter makes us
+look old. Wait till springtime!"
+
+That evening she waylaid Strickland. "What is the matter with
+Alexander?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"He looks five years older. He looks as though he had been through
+wars."
+
+"Perhaps he has. I don't know what it is," said Strickland, soberly.
+
+"Do you think," said Alice--"do you think he could have had--oh,
+somewhere out in the world!--a love-affair, and it ended badly? She
+died, or there was a rival, or something like that, and he has just
+heard of it?"
+
+"You have been reading novels," said Strickland. "And yet--!"
+
+That night, seeing from his own window the light in the keep, he
+turned to his bed with the thought of the havoc of love. Lying there
+with open eyes he saw in procession Unhappy Love. He lay long awake,
+but at last he turned and addressed himself to sleep. "He's a strong
+climber! Whatever it is, maybe he'll climb out of it."
+
+But in the keep, Alexander, sitting by the fire with lowered head and
+hanging hands, saw not the time when he would climb out of it....
+
+He went no more to White Farm. He went, though not every Sunday, to
+kirk and sat with his aunt and with Strickland in the laird's boxlike,
+curtained pew. Mr. M'Nab preached of original sin and ineffable
+condemnation, and of the few, the very, very few, saved as by fire. He
+saw Jarvis Barrow sitting motionless, sternly agreeing, and beyond him
+Jenny Barrow and then Elspeth and Gilian. Out of kirk, in the
+kirkyard, he gave them good day. He studied to keep strangeness out
+of his manner; an onlooker would note only a somewhat silent,
+preoccupied laird. He might be pondering the sermon. Mr. M'Nab's
+sermons were calculated to arouse alarm and concern--or, in the case
+of the justified, stern triumph--in the human breast. White Farm made
+no quarrel with the laird for that quietude and withdrawing. In the
+autumn he had told Jarvis Barrow of that hour with Elspeth in the
+stubble-field. The old man listened, then, "They are strange warks,
+women!" he said, and almost immediately went on to speak of other
+things. There seemed no sympathy and no regret for the earthly
+happening. But he liked to debate with the laird election and the
+perseverance of the saints.
+
+Jenny Barrow, only, could not be held from exclamation over
+Glenfernie's defection. "Why does he na come as he used to? Wha's done
+aught to him or said a word to gie offense?" She talked to Menie and
+Merran since Elspeth and Gilian gave her notice that they were wearied
+of the subject. Perhaps Jenny's concern with it kept her from the
+perception that not Glenfernie only was changing or had changed.
+Elspeth--! But Elspeth had been always a dreamer, rather silent, a
+listener rather than a speaker. Jenny did not look around corners; the
+overt sufficed for a bustling, good-natured life. Gilian's arrival,
+moreover, made for a diversion of attention. By the time novelty
+subsided again into every day an altered Elspeth had so fitted into
+the frame of life that Jenny was unaware of alteration.
+
+But Gilian was not Jenny.
+
+Each of Jarvis Barrow's granddaughters had her own small bedroom.
+Three nights after Gilian's home-coming she came, when the candles
+were out, into Elspeth's room. It was September and, for the season,
+warm. A great round moon poured its light into the little room.
+Elspeth was seated upon her bed. Her hair was loosened and fell over
+her white gown. Her feet were under her; she sat like an Eastern
+carving, still in the moonlight.
+
+"Elspeth!"
+
+Elspeth took a moment to come back to White Farm. "What is it,
+Gilian?"
+
+Gilian moved to the window and sat in it. She had not undressed. The
+moon silvered her, too. "What has happened, Elspeth?"
+
+"Naught. What should happen?"
+
+"It's no use telling me that.--We've been away from each other almost
+a year. I know that I've changed, grown, in that time, and it's
+natural that you should do the same. But it's something besides that!"
+
+Elspeth laughed and her laughter was like a little, cold, mirthless
+chime of silver bells. "You're fanciful, Gilian!... We're no longer
+lassies; we're women! So the colors of things get a little
+different--that's all!"
+
+"Don't you love me, Elspeth?"
+
+"Yes, I love you. What has that to do with it?"
+
+"Has it not? Has love naught to do with it? Love at all--all love?"
+
+Elspeth parted her long dark hair into two waves, drew it before her,
+and began to braid it, sitting still, her limbs under her, upon the
+bed. "I saw you on the moor walking and talking with grandfather.
+What did he say to you?"
+
+"You are changed and I said that you were changed. He had not
+noticed--he would not be like to notice! Then he told me about the
+laird and you."
+
+"Yes. About the laird and me."
+
+"You couldn't love him? They say he is a fine man."
+
+"No, I couldn't love him. I like him. He understands. No one is to
+blame."
+
+"But if it is not that, what is it--what is it, Elspeth?"
+
+"It's naught--naught--naught, I tell you!"
+
+"It's a strange naught that makes you like a dark lady in a
+ballad-book!"
+
+Elspeth laughed again. "Didn't I say that you were fanciful? It's late
+and I am sleepy."
+
+That had been while the leaves were still upon the trees. The next
+morning and thenceforward Elspeth seemed to make a point of
+cheerfulness. It passed with her aunt and the helpers in the house.
+Jarvis Barrow appeared to take no especial note if women laughed or
+sighed, so long as they lived irreproachably.
+
+The leaves bronzed, the autumn rains came, the leaves fell, the trees
+stood bare, the winds began to blow, there fell the first snowflakes.
+Gilian, walking home from the town, was overtaken on the moor by Robin
+Greenlaw.
+
+"Where is Elspeth?"
+
+"We are making our winter dresses. She would not leave her sewing."
+
+The cousins walked upon the moor path together. Gilian was fairer and
+more strongly made than Elspeth. They walked in silence; then said
+Robin:
+
+"You're the old Gilian, but I'm sure I miss the old Elspeth!"
+
+"I think, myself, she's gone visiting! I rack and rack my brains to
+find what grief could have come to Elspeth. She will not help me."
+
+"Gilian, could it be that, after all, her heart is set on the laird?"
+
+"Did you know about that?"
+
+"In part I guessed, watching them together. And then I saw how
+Glenfernie oldened in a night. Then, being with my uncle one day, he
+let drop a word that I followed up. I led him on and he told me.
+Glenfernie acted like a true man."
+
+"If there's one thing of which I'm sure it is that she hardly thinks
+of him from Sunday to Sunday. She thinks then for a little because she
+sees him in kirk--but that passes, too!"
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't know of anybody else. Maybe no outer thing has
+anything to do with it. Sometimes we just have drumlie, dreary seasons
+and we do not know why.... She loves the spring. Maybe when spring
+comes she'll be Elspeth once more!"
+
+"I hope so," said Greenlaw. "Spring makes all the world bonny again."
+
+That was in November. On Christmas Eve Elspeth Barrow drowned herself
+in the Kelpie's Pool.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+There had been three hours of light on Christmas Day when Robin
+Greenlaw appeared at Glenfernie House and would see the laird.
+
+"He's in his ain room in the keep," said Davie, and went with the
+message.
+
+Alexander came down the stair and out into the flagged court. The
+weather had been unwontedly clement, melting the earlier snows,
+letting the brown earth forth again for one look about her. To-day
+there was pale sunlight. Greenlaw sat his big gray. The laird came to
+him.
+
+"Get down, man, and come in for Christmas cheer!"
+
+"Send Davie away," said Greenlaw.
+
+Alexander's gray eyes glanced. "You're bringing something that is not
+Christmas cheer!--Davie, tell Dandie Saunderson to saddle Black Alan
+at once.--Now, Robin!"
+
+"Yesterday," said Greenlaw, "Elspeth Barrow vanished from White Farm.
+They wanted to send Christmas fare to old Skene the cotter. She said
+she would take a basket there, and so she went away, down the
+stream--about ten of the morning they think it was. It was not for
+hours that they grew at all anxious. She's never come back. She did
+not go to Skene's. We can hear no word of her from any. Her
+grandfather and I and the men at White Farm looked for her through the
+night. This morning there's an alarm sent up and down the dale."
+
+"What harm could happen--"
+
+"She might have strayed into some lonely place--fallen--hurt herself.
+There were gipsies seen the other day over by Windyedge. Or she might
+have walked on and on upon what road she took, and somehow none
+chanced to notice her. I am going now to ride the Edinburgh way."
+
+"Have you gone up the glen?"
+
+"That was tried this morning at first light. But that is just opposite
+to Skene's and the way she certainly took at first. She would have to
+turn and go about through the woods, or White Farm would see her." His
+voice had a haunting note of fear and trouble.
+
+Glenfernie caught it. "She was not out of health nor unhappy?"
+
+"She is changed from the old Elspeth. When you ask her if she is
+unhappy she says that she is not.... I do not know. Something is
+wrong. With the others, I am seeking about as though I expected each
+moment to see her sitting or standing by the roadside. But I do not
+expect to see her. I do not know what I expect. We have sent to
+Windyedge to apprehend those gipsies."
+
+"Let me speak one moment to Mr. Strickland to send the men forth and
+go himself. Then I am ready."
+
+On Black Alan he rode with Robin down the hill and through the wood
+and upon the White Farm way. The earth was mainly bare of snow, but
+frozen hard. The hoofs rang out but left no print. The air hung still,
+light and dry; the sun, far in the south, sent slanting, pale-gold
+beams. The two men made little speech as they rode. They passed men
+and youths, single figures and clusters.
+
+"Ony news, Littlefarm? We've been--or we're going--seeking here, or
+here--"
+
+A woman stopped them. "It was thae gipsies, sirs! I had a dream about
+them, five nights syne! A lintwhite was flying by them, and they gave
+chase. Either it's that or she made away with herself! I had a dream
+that might be read that way, too."
+
+When they came to White Farm it was to find there only Jenny and Menie
+and Merran.
+
+"Somebody maun stay to keep the house warm gin the lassie come
+stumbling hame, cauld and hungry and half doited! Eh, Glenfernie, ye
+that are a learned man and know the warld, gie us help!"
+
+"I am going up the glen," said Alexander to Greenlaw. "I do not know
+why, but I think it should be tried again. And I know it, root and
+branch. I am going afoot. I will leave Black Alan here."
+
+They wasted no time. He went, while Robin Greenlaw on his gray took
+the opposed direction. Looking back, he saw the great fire that Jenny
+kept, dancing through the open door and in the pane of the window.
+Then the trees and the winding of the path shut it away, shut away
+house and field and all token of human life.
+
+He moved swiftly to the mouth of the glen, but then more slowly. The
+trees soared bare, the water rushed with a hoarse sound, snow lay in
+clefts. So well he knew the place! There was no spot where foot might
+have climbed, no ledge nor opening where form might lay, huddled or
+outstretched, that lacked his searching eye or hand. Here was the
+pebbly cape with the thorn-tree where in May he had come upon Elspeth,
+sitting by the water, singing.... Farther on he turned into that
+smaller, that fairy glen, bending like an arm from the main pass. Here
+was the oak beneath which they had sat, against which she had leaned.
+It wrapt him from himself, this place. He stood, and space around
+seemed filled with forms just beyond visibility. What were they? He
+did not know, but they seemed to breathe against his heart, to
+whisper.... He searched this place well, but there were only the
+winter banks and trees, the little burn, the invisible presences. Back
+in the deep glen a hawk sailed overhead, across the stripe of
+pale-blue sky. Alexander went on by the stream and the projecting rock
+and the twisted roots. There was no sound other than the loud voice of
+the water, talking only of its return to the sea. When he came to the
+cave he pushed aside the masking growth and entered. Dark and barren
+here, with the ashes of an old fire! For one moment, as it were
+distinctly, he saw Ian. He stood so clear in the mind's eye that it
+seemed that one intense effort might have set him bodily in the
+cavern. But the central strength let the image go. Alexander moved the
+ashes of the fire with his foot, shuddered in the place of cold and
+shadow, and, stooping, went out of the cave and on upon his search for
+Elspeth Barrow.
+
+He sought the glen through, and at last, at the head, he came to
+Mother Binning's cot. Her fire was burning; she was standing in the
+door looking toward him.
+
+"Eh, Glenfernie! is there news of the lassie?"
+
+"None. You've got the sight. Can you not _see_?"
+
+"It's gane from me! When it gaes I'm just like ony bird with a broken
+wing."
+
+"If you cannot see, what do you think?"
+
+"I dinna want to think and I dinna want to say. Whaur be ye gaeing
+now?"
+
+"On over the moor and down by the Kelpie's Pool."
+
+"Gae on then. I'll watch for ye coming back."
+
+He went on. Something strange had him, drawing him. He came out from
+the band of trees upon the swelling open moor, bare and brown save
+where the snow laced it. Gold filtered over it; a pale sky arched
+above; it was wide, still, and awful--a desert. He saw the light run
+down and glint upon the pool. Searchers had ridden across this moor
+also, he had been told. He went down at once to the pool and stood by
+the kelpie willow. He was not thinking, he was not keenly feeling. He
+seemed to stand in open, endless, formless space, and in unfenced
+time. A clump of dry reeds rose by his knee, and upon the other side
+of these he noticed that a stone had been lifted from its bed. He
+stooped, and in the reeds he found an inch-long fragment of ribbon--of
+a snood.
+
+He stepped back from the willow. He took off and dropped upon the moor
+hat and riding-coat and boots, inner coat and waistcoat. Then he
+entered the Kelpie's Pool. He searched it, measure by measure, and at
+last he found the body of Elspeth. He drew it up; he loosened and let
+fall the stone tied in the plaid that was wrapped around it; he bore
+the form out of the pool and laid it upon the bank beyond the willow.
+The sunlight showed the whole, the face and figure. The laird of
+Glenfernie, kneeling beside it, put back the long drowned hair and
+saw, pinned upon the bosom of the gown, the folded letter, wrapped
+twice in thicker paper. He took it from her and opened it. The writing
+was yet legible.
+
+     I hope that I shall not be found. If I am, let this answer
+     for me. I was unhappy, more unhappy than you can think. Let
+     no one be blamed. It was one far from here and you will not
+     know his name. Do not think of me as wicked nor as a
+     murderess. The unhappy should have pardon and rest. Good-by
+     to all--good-by!
+
+In the upper corner was written, "For White Farm." That was all.
+
+Glenfernie put this letter into the bosom of his shirt. He then got on
+again the clothing he had discarded, and, stooping, put his arms
+beneath the lifeless form. He lifted it and bore it from the Kelpie's
+Pool and up the moor. He was a man much stronger than the ordinary; he
+carried it as though he felt no weight. The icy water of the pool upon
+him was as nothing, and as he walked his face was still as a stone
+face in a desert. So he came with Elspeth's body back to the glen, and
+Mother Binning saw him coming.
+
+"Hech, sirs! Hech, sirs! Will it hae been that way--will it hae been
+that way?"
+
+He stopped for a moment. He laid his burden down upon the boards just
+within the door and smoothed back the streaming hair. "Even the shell
+flung out by the ocean is beautiful!"
+
+"Eh, man! Eh, man! It's wae sometimes to be a woman!"
+
+"Give me," he said, "a plaid, dry and warm, to hap her in."
+
+"Will ye na leave her here? Put her in my bed and gae tell White
+Farm!"
+
+"No, I will carry her home."
+
+Mother Binning took from a chest a gray plaid. He lifted again the
+dead woman, and she happed the plaid about her. "Ah, the lassie--the
+lassie! Come to me, Glenfernie, and I will scry for you who it was!"
+
+He looked at her as though he did not hear her. He lifted the body,
+holding it against his shoulder like a child, and went forth. He knew
+the path so absolutely, he was so strong and light of foot, that he
+went without difficulty through the glen, by the loud crying water, by
+the points of crag and the curving roots and the drifts of snow, by
+the green patches of moss and the trees great and small. He did not
+hasten nor drag, he did not think. He went like a bronze Talus, made
+simply to find, to carry home.
+
+Known feature after known feature of the place rose before him, passed
+him, fell away. Here was the arm of the glen, and here was the pebbled
+cape and the thorn-tree. The winter water swirled around it, sang of
+cold and a hateful power. Here was the mouth of the glen. Here were
+the fields which had been green and then golden with ripe corn. Here
+were the White Farm roof and chimneys and windows, and blue smoke from
+the chimney going straight up like a wraith to meet blue sky. Before
+him was the open door.
+
+He had thought of there being only Jenny and the two servant lasses.
+But in the time he had been gone there had regathered to White Farm,
+for learning each from each, for consultation, for mere rest and food,
+a number of the searchers. Jarvis Barrow had returned from the
+northward-stretching moor, Thomas and Willy from the southerly fields.
+Men who had begun to drag deep places in the stream were here for some
+provision. A handful of women, hooded and wrapped, had come from
+neighboring farms or from the village. Among them talked Mrs.
+Macmurdo, who kept the shop, and the hostess of the Jardine Arms. And
+there was here Jock Binning, who, for all his lameness and his
+crutches, could go where he wished.... But it was Gilian, crossing
+upon the stepping-stones, who saw Glenfernie coming by the stream with
+the covered form in his arms. She met him; they went up the bank to
+the house together. She had uttered one cry, but no more.
+
+"The Kelpie's Pool," he had answered.
+
+Jarvis Barrow came out of the door. "Eh! God help us!"
+
+They laid the form upon a bed. All the houseful crowded about. There
+was no helping that, and as little might be helped Jenny's
+lamentations and the ejaculations of others. It was White Farm
+himself who took away the plaid. It lay there before them all, the
+drowned form. The face was very quiet, strangely like Elspeth again,
+the Elspeth of the springtime. All looked, all saw.
+
+"Gude guide us!" cried Mrs. Macmurdo. "And I wadna be some at the
+Judgment Day when come up the beguiled, self-drownit lassies!"
+
+Jock Binning's voice rose from out the craning group. "Aye, and I
+ken--and I ken wha was the man!"
+
+White Farm turned upon him. He towered, the old man. A winter wrath
+and grief, an icy, scintillant, arctic passion, marked two there, the
+laird of Glenfernie and the elder of the kirk. Gilian's grief stood
+head-high with theirs, but their anger, the old man's disdaining and
+the young man's jealousy, was far from her. In Jarvis Barrow's hand
+was the paper, taken from Elspeth, given him by Glenfernie. He turned
+upon the cripple. "Wha, then? Wha, then? Speak out!"
+
+He had that power of command that forced an answer. Jock Binning,
+crutched and with an elfish face and figure and voice, had pulled down
+upon himself the office of revelator. The group swayed a little from
+him and he was left facing White Farm and the laird of Glenfernie. He
+had a wailing, chanting, elvish manner of speech. Out streamed this
+voice:
+
+"'Twere the last of June, twa-three days after the laird rode to
+Edinburgh, and she brought my mither a giftie of plums and sat doon
+for a crack with her. By he came and stood and talked. Syne the
+clouds thickened and the thunder growlit, and he wad walk with her
+hame through the glen--"
+
+"Wha wad? Wha?"
+
+"Captain Ian Rullock."
+
+"_Ian Rullock!_"
+
+"Aye, Glenfernie! And after that they never came to my mither's again.
+But I marked them aft when they didna mark me, in the glen. Aye, and I
+marked them ance in the little glen, and there they were lovers
+surely--gin kisses and clasped arms mak lovers! She wad come by
+herself to their trysting, and he wad come over the muir and down the
+crag-side. It was na my business and I never thocht to tell. But eh!
+all ill will out, says my mither!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The early sunlight fell soft and fine upon the river Seine and the
+quays and buildings of Paris. The movement and buzz of people had, in
+the brightness, something of the small ecstasy of bees emerging from
+the hive with the winter pall just slipped. Distant bells were
+ringing, hope enticed the grimmest poverty. Much, after all, might be
+taken good-naturedly!
+
+A great, ornate coach, belonging to a person of quality, crossed the
+Seine from the south to the north bank. Three gentlemen, seated
+within, observed each in his own fashion the soft, shining day. One
+was Scots, one was English, and the owner of the coach, a Frenchman.
+The first was Ian Rullock.
+
+"Good weather for your crossing, monsieur!" remarked the person of
+quality. He was so markedly of position that the two men whom he had
+graciously offered to bring a mile upon their way, and who also were
+younger men, answered with deference and followed in their speech only
+the lines indicated.
+
+"It promises fair, sir," said Ian. "In three days Dunkirk, then smooth
+seas! Good omens everywhere!"
+
+"You do not voyage under your own name?"
+
+"After to-morrow, sir, I am Robert Bonshaw, a Scots physician."
+
+"Ah, well, good fortune to you, and to the exalted person you serve!"
+
+The coach, cumbrous and stately, drawn by four white horses, left the
+bridge and came under old palace walls, and thence by narrow streets
+advanced toward the great house of its owner. Outside was the numerous
+throng, the scattering to this side and that of the imperiled foot
+travelers. The coach stopped.
+
+"Here is the street you would reach!" said the helpful person of
+quality.
+
+A footman held open the door; the Scot and the Englishman gave proper
+expression of gratitude to their benefactor, descended to earth,
+turned again to bow low, and waited bareheaded till the great machine
+was once more in motion and monseigneur's wig, countenance, and velvet
+coat grew things of the past. Then the two turned into a still and
+narrow street overhung by high, ancient structures and roofed with
+April sky.
+
+The one was going from Paris, the other staying. Both were links in a
+long chain of political conspiring. They walked now down the street
+that was dark and old, underfoot old mire and mica-like glistening of
+fresher rain. The Englishman spoke:
+
+"Have you any news from home?"
+
+"None. None for a long while. I had it conveyed to my kindred and to
+an old friend that I had disappeared from Paris--gone eastward, Heaven
+knew where--probably Crim Tartary! So my own world at least, as far as
+I am concerned, will be off the scent. That was in the winter. I have
+really heard nothing for months.... When the dawn comes up and we are
+all rich and famed and gay, _my-lorded_ from John o' Groat's House to
+Land's End--then, Warburton, then--"
+
+"Then?"
+
+"Then we'll be good!" Ian laughed. "Don't you want, sometimes, to be
+good, Warburton? Wise--and simple. Doesn't it rise before you in the
+night with a most unearthly beauty?"
+
+"Oh, I think I am so-so good!" answered the other. "So-so bad, so-so
+good. What puts you in this strain?"
+
+"Tell me and I will tell you! And now I'm going to Scotland, into the
+Highlands, to paint a prince who, when he's king, will, no manner of
+doubt, wear the tartan and make every thane of Glamis thane of Cawdor
+likewise!... One half the creature's body is an old, childish loyalty,
+and the other half's ambition. The creature's myself. There are also
+bars and circles and splashes of various colors, dark and bright.
+Sometimes it dreams of wings--wings of an archangel, no less,
+Warburton! The next moment there seems to be an impotency to produce
+even beetle wings!... What a weathercock and variorum I am, thou art,
+he is!"
+
+"We're no worse than other men," said Warburton, comfortably. "We're
+all pretty ignorant, I take it!"
+
+They came to a building, old and not without some lingering of
+strength and grace. It stood in the angle of two streets and received
+sunshine and light as well as cross-tides of sound. The Scot and the
+Englishman both lodged here, above a harness-maker and a worker in
+fine woods. They passed into the court and to a stair that once had
+known a constant, worldly-rich traffic up and down. Now it was still
+and twilight, after the streets. Both men had affairs to put in order,
+business on hand. They moved now abstractedly, and when Warburton
+reached, upon the first landing, the door of his rooms, he turned
+aside from Ian with only a negligent, "We'll sup together and say last
+things then."
+
+The Scot went on alone to the next landing and his own room. These
+were not his usual lodgings in Paris. Agent now of high Jacobite
+interests, shuttle sent from conspirers in France to chiefs in
+Scotland, on the eve of a departure in disguise, he had broken old
+nest and old relations, and was now as a stranger in a city that he
+knew well, and where by not a few he was known. The room that he
+turned into had little sign of old, well-liked occupancy; the servant
+who at his call entered from a smaller chamber was not the man to whom
+he was used, but a Highlander sent him by a Gordon then in Paris.
+
+"I am back, Donal!" said Ian, and threw himself into a chair by the
+table. "Come, give an account of your errands!"
+
+Donal, middle-aged, faithful, dour and sagacious, and years away from
+loch and mountain, gave account. Horses, weapons, clothing, all
+correct for Dr. Robert Bonshaw and his servant, riding under high
+protection from Paris to Dunkirk, where a well-captained
+merchant-vessel stayed for them in port. Ian nodded approval.
+
+"I'm indebted, Donal, to my cousin Gordon!"
+
+Donal let a smile come to within a league of the surface. "Her
+ainself has a wish to hear the eagle scream over Ben Nevis!"
+
+Rullock's hand moved over a paper, checking a row of figures. "Did you
+manage to get into my old lodging?"
+
+"Aye. None there. All dusty and bare. But the woman who had the key
+gave me--since I said I might make a guess where to find you,
+sir--these letters. They came, she said, two weeks ago." Donal laid
+them upon the table.
+
+"Ah!" said Ian, "they must have gotten through before I shut off the
+old passageway." He took them in his hand. "There's nothing more now,
+Donal. Go out for your dinner."
+
+The man went. Ian added another column of figures, then took the
+letters and with them moved to a window through which streamed the sun
+of France. The floor was patched with gold; there was warmth as well
+as light. He pushed a chair into it, sat down, and opened first the
+packet that he knew had come from his uncle. He broke the seal and
+read two pages of Mr. Touris in a mood of anger. There were rumors--.
+True it was that Ian had now his own fortune, had it at least until he
+lost it and his life together in some mad, unlawful business! But let
+him not look longer to be heir of Archibald Touris! Withdraw at once
+from ill company, political or other, and return to Scotland, or at
+least to England, or take the consequences! The letter bore date the
+first week of December. It had been long in passing from hand to hand
+in a troubled, warring world. Ian Rullock, fathoms deep in the
+present business, held in a web made by many lines of force, both
+thick and thin, refolded the paper and made to put it into his
+pocketbook, then bethinking himself, tore it instead into small pieces
+and, rising, dropped these into a brazier where burned a little
+charcoal. He would carry nothing with his proper name upon it. Coming
+back to the chair in the sunshine, he sat for a moment with his eyes
+upon a gray huddle of roofs visible through the window. Then he broke
+the seal and unfolded the letter superscribed in Alexander's strong
+writing.
+
+There were hardly six lines. And they did not tell of how discovery
+had been made, nor why, nor when. They said nothing of death nor
+life--no word of the Kelpie's Pool. They carried, tersely, a direct
+challenge, the ground Ian Rullock's conception of friendship, a
+conception tallying nicely with Alexander Jardine's idea of a mortal
+enmity. Such a fishing-town, known of both, back of such a sea beach
+in Holland--such a tavern in this place. Meet there--wait there, the
+one who should reach it first for the other, and--to give all possible
+ground to delays of letters, travel, arrangements generally--in so
+late a month as April. "Find me there, or await me there, my one-time
+friend, henceforth my foe! I--or Justice herself above me--would teach
+you certain things!"
+
+The cartel bore date the 1st of January--later by a month than the
+Black Hill letter. It dropped from Ian's hand; he sat with blankness
+of mind in the sunlight. Presently he shivered slightly. He leaned
+his elbows on his knees and his forehead in his hands and sat still.
+Alexander! He felt no hot straining toward meeting, toward fighting,
+Alexander. Perversely enough, after a year of impatient, contemptuous
+thought in that direction, he had lately felt liking and an ancient
+strong respect returning like a tide that was due. And he could not
+meet Alexander in April--that was impossible! No private affair could
+be attended to now.
+
+... Elspeth, of whom the letter carried no word, Elspeth from whom he
+had not heard since in August he left that countryside, Elspeth who
+had agreed with him that love of man and woman was nobody's business
+but their own, Elspeth who, when he would go, had let him go with a
+fine pale refusal to deal in women's tears and talk of injury, who had
+said, indeed, that she did not repent, much bliss being worth some
+bale--Elspeth whom he could not be sure that he would see again, but
+whom at times before his eyes at night he saw.... Immediately upon his
+leaving Black Hill she had broken with Glenfernie. She was clear of
+him--the laird could reproach her with nothing!
+
+What had happened? He had told her how, at need, a letter might be
+sent. But one had never come. He himself had never written. Writing
+was set in a prickly ring of difficulties and dangers. What had
+happened? Strong, secret inclination toward finding least painful
+things for himself brought his conclusion. Sitting there in the
+sunshine, his will deceiving him, he determined that it was simply
+that Elspeth had at last told Glenfernie that she could not love him
+because she loved another. Probably--persistence being markedly a
+trait of Old Steadfast's--he had been after her once and again, and
+she had turned upon him and said much more than in prudence she should
+have said! So Alexander would have made his discovery and might, if he
+pleased, image other trysts than his own in the glen! Certainly he had
+done this, and then sat down and penned his challenge!
+
+Elspeth! He was unshakably conscious that Glenfernie would tell none
+what Elspeth might have been provoked into giving away. Old Steadfast,
+there was no denying, had that knightliness. Three now knew--no more
+than three. If, through some mischance, there had been wider
+discovery, she would have written! The Black Hill letter, too, would
+have had somewhat there to say.
+
+Then, behind the challenge, stood old and new relations between Ian
+Rullock and Alexander Jardine! It was what Glenfernie might choose to
+term the betrayal of friendship--a deep scarification of Old
+Steadfast's pride, a severing cut given to his too imperial
+confidence, poison dropped into the wells of domination, "No!" said to
+too much happiness, to any surpassing of him, Ian, in happiness, "No!"
+to so much reigning!
+
+Ian shook himself, thrust away the doubtful glimmer of a smile. That
+way really did lie hell....
+
+He came back to a larger if a much perplexed self. He could not meet
+Glenfernie on that sea beach, fight him there. He did not desire to
+kill Old Steadfast, though, as the world went, pleasure was to be had
+in now and then giving superiority pain. Face to face upon those
+sands, some blood shed and honor satisfied, Alexander would be
+reasonable--being by nature reasonable! Ian shook himself.
+
+"Now he draws me like a lodestone, and now I feel Lucifer to his
+Michael! What old, past mountain of friendship and enmity has come
+around, full wheel?"
+
+But it was impossible for him to go to that sea strand in Holland.
+
+Elspeth! He wondered what she was doing this April day. Perhaps she
+walked in the glen. It was colder there than here, but yet the trees
+would be budding. He saw her face again, and all its ability to show
+subtle terror and subtle joy, and the glancing and the running of the
+stream between. Elspeth.... He loved her again as he sat there,
+somewhat bowed together in the sunlight, Alexander's challenge upon
+the floor by his foot. There came creeping to him an odd feeling of
+long ago having loved her--long ago and more than once, many times
+more than once. Name and place alone flickered. There might be
+something in Old Steadfast's contention that one lived of old time and
+all time, only there came breaking in dozing and absent-mindedness!
+Elspeth--
+
+He saw her standing by him, and it seemed as though she had a basket
+on her arm, and she looked as she had looked that day of the
+thunder-storm and the hour in the cave behind the veil of rain.
+Without warning there welled into his mind broken lines from an old
+tale in verse of which he was fond:
+
+    "Me dreamed al this night, pardie,
+    An elf-queen shall my leman be ...
+    An elf-queen wil I have, I-wis,
+    For in this world no woman is
+        Worthy to be my mate ...
+    Al other women I forsake
+    And to an elf-queen I me take
+        By dale and eke by down."
+
+Syllable and tone died. With his hand he brushed from his eyes the
+vision that he knew to be nothing but a heightened memory. Might,
+indeed, all women be one woman, one woman be all women, all forms one
+form, all times one time, like event fall softly, imperceptibly, upon
+like event until there was thickness, until there was made a form of
+all recurrent, contributory forms? Events, tendencies, lives--
+unimaginable continuities! Repetitions and repetitions and
+repetitions--and no one able to leave the trodden road that ever
+returned upon itself--no one able to take one step from the circle
+into a new dimension and thence see the form below....
+
+Ian put his hands over his eyes, shook himself, started up and stood
+at the window. Sky, and roofs on roofs, and in the street below toy
+figures, pedestrians. "Come back--come back to breathable air! Now
+what's to be done--what's to be done?" After some moments he turned
+and picked up the letter upon the floor and read it twice. In memory
+and in imagination he could see the fishing-town, the inn there, the
+dunes, the ocean beach fretted by the long, incoming wave. Perhaps
+and most probably, this very bright afternoon, the laird of Glenfernie
+waited for him there, pacing the sands, perhaps, watching the comers
+to the inn door.... Well, he must watch in vain. Ian Rullock would one
+day give him satisfaction, but certainly not now. Vast affairs might
+not be daffed aside for the laird of Glenfernie's convenience! Ian
+stood staring out of window at those huddled roofs, the challenge
+still in his hand. Then, slowly, he tore the paper to pieces and
+committed it to the brazier where was already consumed Black Hill's
+communication.
+
+That evening he supped with Warburton, and the next morning saw him
+and Donal riding forth from Paris, by St.-Denis, on toward Dunkirk.
+From this place, four days later, sailed the brig _Cock of the North_,
+destination the Beauly Firth. Dr. Robert Bonshaw and his man
+experienced, despite the prediction of the Frenchman of quality, a
+rough and long voyage. But the _Cock of the North_ weathered
+tumultuous sea and wind and came, in the northern spring, to anchor in
+a great picture of firth and green shore and dark, piled mountains.
+Dr. Robert Bonshaw and his man, going ashore and into Inverness, found
+hospitality there in the house of a certain merchant. Thence, after a
+day or so, he traveled to the castle of a Highland chief of commanding
+port. Here occurred a gathering; here letters and asseverations
+brought from France were read, listened to, weighed or taken without
+much weighing, so did the Highland desire run one way. An old net
+added to itself another mesh.
+
+Dr. Robert Bonshaw, a very fit, invigorating agent, traveled far and
+near through the Highlands this May, this June, this July. It was to
+him an interesting, difficult, intensely occupied time; he was far
+from Lowland Scotland and any echoes therefrom, saving always
+political echoes. He had no leisure for his own affairs, saving always
+that background consideration that, if the Stewarts really got back
+the crown, Ian Rullock was on the road to power and wealth. This
+consideration was not articulate, but diffused. It interfered not at
+all with the foreground activities and hard planning--no more than did
+the fine Highland air. It only spurred him as did the winy air. The
+time and place were electric; he worked hard, many hours on end, and
+when he sought his bed he dropped at once to needed sleep. From morn
+till late at night, whether in castle or house or journeying from clan
+to clan, he was always in company. There was no time for old thoughts,
+memories, surmises. That was one world and he was now in another.
+
+Upon the eleventh day of May, the year 1745, was fought in Flanders
+the battle of Fontenoy. The Duke of Cumberland, Koenigsegge the
+Austrian, and the Dutch Prince of Waldeck had the handling of
+something under fifty thousand English. Marshal Saxe with Louis XV at
+his side wielded a somewhat larger number of French. The English and
+their allies were beaten. French spirits rode on high, French
+intentions widened.
+
+The Stewart interest felt the blood bound in its veins. The bulk of
+the British army was on the Continent and shaken by Fontenoy; King
+George himself tarried in Hanover. Now was the time--now was the time
+for the heir of all the Stewarts to put his fortune to the touch--to
+sail from France, to land in Scotland, to raise his banner and draw
+his sword and gather Highland chief and Lowland Jacobite, the while in
+England rose for him and his father English Jacobites and soon, be
+sure, all English Tories! France would send gold and artillery and men
+to her ancient ally, Scotland. Up at last with the white Stewart
+banner! reconquer for the old line and all it meant to its adherents
+the two kingdoms! In the last week of July Prince Charles Edward,
+somewhat strangely and meagerly attended, landed at Loch Sunart in the
+Highlands. There he was joined by Camerons, Macdonalds, and Stewarts,
+and thence he moved, with an ever-increasing Highland _tail_, to
+Perth. A bold stream joined him here--northern nobles of power, with
+their men. He might now have an army of two thousand. Sir John Cope,
+sent to oppose him with what British troops there were in Scotland,
+allowed himself to be circumvented. The Prince, having proclaimed his
+father, still at Rome, James III, King of Great Britain, and produced
+his own commission as Regent, marched from Perth to Edinburgh. The
+city capitulated and Charles Edward was presently installed in
+Holyrood, titularly at home in his father's kingdom, in his ancient
+palace, among his loyal subjects, but actually with far the major
+moiety of that kingdom yet to gain.
+
+The gracious act of rewarding must begin. Claim on royal gratitude is
+ever a multitudinous thing! In the general manifoldness, out of the
+by no means yet huge store of honey Ian Rullock, for mere first rung
+of his fortune's ladder, received the personally given thanks of his
+Prince and a captaincy in the none too rapidly growing army.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The castle, defiant, untakable save by long siege and famine, held for
+King George by a garrison of a few hundreds, spread itself like a rock
+lion in a high-lifted rock lair. Bands of Highlanders watched its
+gates and accesses, guarding against Hanoverian sallies. From the
+castle down stretched Edinburgh, heaped upon its long, spinelike hill,
+to the palace of Holyrood, and all its tall houses, tall and dark, and
+all its wynds and closes, and all its strident voices, and all its
+moving folk, seemed to have in mind that palace and the banner before
+it. The note of the having rang jubilation in all its degrees, or with
+a lower and a muffled sound distaste and fear, or it aimed at a middle
+strain neither high nor low, a golden mean to be kept until there
+might be seen what motif, after all, was going to prevail! It would
+never do, thought some, to be at this juncture too clamorous either
+way. But to the unpondering ear the jubilation carried it, as to the
+eye tartans and white cockades made color, made high light, splashed
+and starred and redeemed the gray town. There was one thing that could
+not but appeal. A Scots royal line had come into its home nest at
+Holyrood. Not for many and many and many a year had such a thing as
+that happened! If matters went in a certain way Edinburgh might
+regain ancient pomp and circumstance. That was a consideration that
+every hour arranged a new plea in the citizen heart.
+
+Excitement, restless movement, tendency to come together in a crowd,
+were general, as were ejaculation, nervous laughter, declamation. The
+roll of drum, call of trumpet, skirl of pipes, did not lack. Charles
+Edward's army encamped itself at Duddingston a little to the east of
+the city. But its units came in numbers into the town. The warlike hue
+diffused itself. Horsemen were frequent, and a continual entering of
+new adherents, men in small or large clusters, marching in from the
+country, asking the way to the Prince. For all the buzzing and
+thronging, great order prevailed. Women sat or stood at windows, or
+passed in and out of dark wynds, or, escorted, picked their way at
+street crossings. Now and then went by a sedan-chair. Many women
+showed in their faces a truly religious fervor, a passionate Jacobite
+loyalty, lighting like a flame. Many sewed white cockades. All
+Scotland, all England, would surely presently want these! Men of all
+ranks, committed to the great venture, moved with a determined gaiety
+and _elan_. "This is the stage, we are the actors; the piece is a
+great piece, the world looks on!" The town of Edinburgh did present a
+grandiose setting. Suspense, the die yet covered, the greatness of the
+risk, gave, too, its glamour of height and stateliness. All these men
+might see, in some bad moment at night, not only possible battle
+death--that was in the counting--but, should the great enterprise
+fail, scaffolds and hangmen. Many who went up and down were merely
+thoughtless, ignorant, reckless, or held in a vanity of good fortune,
+yet to the eye of history all might come into the sweep of great
+drama. Place and time rang and were tense. Flare and sonorousness and
+a deep vibration of the old massive passions, and through all the
+outward air a September sea mist creeping.
+
+Ian Rullock, walking down the High Street, approaching St. Giles,
+heard his name spoken from a little knot of well-dressed citizens. As
+he turned his head a gentleman detached himself from the company. It
+proved to be Mr. Wotherspoon the advocate, old acquaintance and
+adviser of Archibald Touris, of Black Hill.
+
+"Captain Rullock--"
+
+"Mr. Wotherspoon, I am glad to see you!"
+
+Mr. Wotherspoon, old moderate Whig, and the Jacobite officer walked
+together down the clanging way. The mist was making pallid garlands
+for the tall houses, a trumpet rang at the foot of the street,
+Macdonald of Glengarry and fifty clansmen, bright tartan and screaming
+pipes, poured by.
+
+"Auld Reekie sees again a stirring time!" said the lawyer.
+
+"I am glad to have met you, sir," said Rullock. "I fancy that you can
+tell me home news. I have heard none for a long time."
+
+"You have been, doubtless," said Mr. Wotherspoon, "too engaged with
+great, new-time things to be fashed with small, old-time ones."
+
+"One of our new-time aims," said Ian, "is to give fresh room to an
+old-time thing. But we won't let little bolts fly! I am anxious for
+knowledge."
+
+Mr. Wotherspoon seemed to ponder it. "I live just here. Perhaps you
+will come up to my rooms, out of this Mars' racket?"
+
+"In an hour's time I must wait on Lord George Murray. But I have till
+then."
+
+They entered a close, and climbed the stair of a tall, tall house,
+dusky and old. Here, half-way up, was the lawyer's lair. He unlocked a
+door and the two came, through a small vestibule, into a good-sized,
+comfortable, well-furnished room. Rullock glanced at the walls.
+
+"I was here once or twice, years ago. I remember your books. What a
+number you have!"
+
+"I recall," said Mr. Wotherspoon, "a visit that you paid me with the
+now laird of Glenfernie."
+
+The window to which they moved allowed a glimpse of the colorful
+street. Mr. Wotherspoon closed it against the invading noise and the
+touch of chill in the misty air. He then pushed two chairs to the
+table and took from a cupboard a bottle and glasses.
+
+"My man is gadding, with eyes like saucers--like the rest of us, like
+the rest of us, Captain Rullock!" They sat down. "My profession," said
+the lawyer, "can be made to be narrow and narrowing. On the other
+hand, if a man has an aptitude for life, there is much about life to
+be learned with a lawyer's spy-glass! A lawyer sees a variety of
+happenings in a mixed world. He quite especially learns how seldom
+black and white are found in anything like a pure condition. A
+thousand thousand blends. Be wise and tolerant--or to be wise be
+tolerant!" He pushed the bottle.
+
+Ian smiled. "I take that, sir, to mean that you find _God save King
+James!_ not wholly harsh and unmusical--"
+
+"Perhaps not wholly so," said the lawyer. "I am Whig and Presbyterian
+and I prefer _God save King George!_ But I do not look for the world
+to end, whether for King George or King James. I did not have in mind
+just this public occasion."
+
+His tone was dry. Ian kept his gold-brown eyes upon him. "Tell me what
+you have heard from Black Hill."
+
+"I was there late in May. Mr. Touris learned at that time that you had
+quitted France."
+
+"May I ask how he learned it?"
+
+"The laird of Glenfernie, who had been in the Low Countries, told him.
+Apparently Glenfernie had acquaintances, agents, who traced it out for
+him that you had sailed from Dunkirk for Beauly Firth, under the name
+of Robert Bonshaw."
+
+"_So he was there, pacing the beach_," thought Ian. He lifted his
+glass and drank Mr. Wotherspoon's very good wine. That gentleman went
+on.
+
+"It was surmised at Black Hill that you were helping on the event--the
+great event, perhaps--that has occurred. Indeed, in July, Mr. Touris,
+writing to me, mentioned that you had been seen beyond Inverness. But
+the Highlands are deep and you traveled rapidly. Of course, when it
+was known that the Prince had landed, your acquaintance assumed your
+joining him and becoming, as you have become, an officer in his army."
+He made a little bow.
+
+Ian inclined his head in return. "All at Black Hill are well, I hope?
+My aunt--"
+
+"Mrs. Alison is a saint. All earthly grief, I imagine, only quickens
+her homeward step."
+
+"What grief has she had, sir, beyond--"
+
+"Beyond?"
+
+"I know that my aunt will grieve for the break that has come between
+my uncle and myself. I have, too," said Ian, with deliberation, "been
+quarreled with by an old friend. That also may distress her."
+
+The lawyer appeared to listen to sounds from the street. Rising, he
+moved to the window, then returned. "Bonnet lairds coming into town!
+You are referring now to Glenfernie?"
+
+"Then he has made it common property that he chose to quarrel with
+me?"
+
+"Oh, chose to--" said Mr. Wotherspoon, reflectively.
+
+There was a silence. Ian set down his wine-glass, made a movement of
+drawing together, of determination.
+
+"I am sure that there is something of which I have not full
+understanding. You will much oblige me by attention to what I now say,
+Mr. Wotherspoon. It is possible that I may ask you to see that its
+substance reaches Black Hill." He leaned back in his chair and with
+his gold-brown eyes met the lawyer's keen blue ones. "Nothing now can
+be injured by telling you that for a year I have acted under
+responsibility of having in keeping greater fortunes than my own. That
+kind of thing, none can know better than you, binds a man out of his
+own path and his own choices into the path and choices of others.
+Secrecy was demanded of me. I ceased to write home, and presently I
+removed from old lodgings and purposely blurred indications of where I
+was or might be found. In this way--the warring, troubled time
+aiding--it occurred that there practically ceased all communication
+between me and those of my blood and friendship whose political
+thinking differs from mine.... I begin to see that I know little
+indeed of what may or may not have occurred in that countryside. Early
+in April, however, there came to my hand in Paris two letters--one
+from my uncle, written before Christmas, one from Alexander Jardine,
+written a month later. My uncle's contained the information that,
+lacking my immediate return to this island and the political faith of
+his side of the house, I was no longer his nephew and heir. The laird
+of Glenfernie, upon an old quarrel into which I need not enter, chose
+to send me a challenge simply. _Meet him, on such a sands in
+Holland_.... Well, great affairs have right of way over small ones!
+Under the circumstances, he might as well have appointed a plain in
+the moon! The duel waits.... I tell you what I know of home affairs. I
+shall be obliged for any information you may have that I have not."
+
+Mr. Wotherspoon's sharp blue eyes seemed to consider it. He drummed on
+the table. "I am a much older man than you, Captain Rullock, and an
+old adviser of your family. Perhaps I may speak without offense? That
+subject of quarrel, now, between you and the laird of Glenfernie--"
+
+The other made a movement, impatient and imperious. "It is not
+likely, sir, that he divulged that!"
+
+"He? No! But fate--fortune--the unrolling course of things--plain
+Providence--whatever you choose to call it--seems at times quite below
+or above that reticence which we others so naturally prize and
+exhibit!"
+
+"You'll oblige me, sir, by not speaking in riddles."
+
+The irony dropped from Mr. Wotherspoon's tone. He faced the business
+squarely. "Do you mean to say that you do not know of the suicide of
+Elspeth Barrow?"
+
+The chair opposite made a grating sound, pushed violently back upon
+the bare, polished floor. Down the street, through the window, came
+the sound of Cluny Macpherson's pipers, playing down from the
+Lawnmarket. Rullock seemed to have thrust his chair back into the
+shadow. Out of it came presently his voice, low and hoarse:
+
+"No."
+
+"They found her on Christmas Day--drowned in the Kelpie's Pool.
+Self-murder--murder also of a child that would have been."
+
+Again silence. The lawyer found that he must go through with it,
+having come so far. "It seems that there is a cripple fellow of the
+neighborhood who had stumbled, unseen, upon your trysts. He told--spoke
+it all out to the crowd gathered. There was a letter, too, upon her
+which gave a clue. But she never named you and evidently meant not to
+name you.... Poor child! She may have thought herself strong, and then
+things have come over her wave on wave. Her grandfather--that dark
+upbringing on tenets harsh and wrathful--certainty of disgrace.
+Pitiful!"
+
+There came a sound from the chair pushed back from the light. Mr.
+Wotherspoon measured the table with his fingers.
+
+"It seems that the countryside was searching for her. It was the laird
+of Glenfernie who, alone and coming upon some trace, entered the
+Kelpie's Pool and found her there. They say that he carried her, dead,
+in his arms through the glen to White Farm."
+
+Some proclamation or other was being made at the Cross of Edinburgh. A
+trumpet blew and the street was filled with footsteps.
+
+"The laird of Glenfernie," said the lawyer, "has joined, I hear, Sir
+John Cope at Dunbar. It is not impossible that you may have speech
+together from opposing battle-lines." He poured wine. "My bag of news
+is empty, Captain Rullock."
+
+Ian rose from his seat. His face was gray and twisted, his voice, when
+he spoke, hollow, low, and dry. "I must go now to Lord George
+Murray.... It was all news, Mr. Wotherspoon. I--What are words,
+anyhow? Give you good day, sir!"
+
+Mr. Wotherspoon, standing in his door, watched him down the stair and
+forth from the house. "He goes brawly! How much is night, and how much
+streak of dawn?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir John Cope, King George's general in Scotland, had but a small
+army. It was necessary in the highest degree that Prince Charles
+Edward should meet and defeat this force before it was enlarged,
+before from England came more and more regular troops.... A battle
+won meant prestige gained, the coming over of doubting thousands, an
+echo into England that would bring the definite accession of great
+Tory names. Cope and his twenty-five hundred men, regulars and
+volunteers, approaching Edinburgh from the east, took position near
+the village of Prestonpans. On the morning of the 20th of September
+out moved to meet him the Prince and Lord George Murray, behind them
+less than two thousand men.
+
+By afternoon the two forces confronted each the other; but Cope had
+chosen well, the right position. The sea guarded one flank, a deep and
+wide field ditch full of water the other. In his rear were stone
+walls, and before him a wide marsh. The Jacobite strength halted,
+reconnoitered, must perforce at last come to a standstill before
+Cope's natural fortress. There was little artillery, no great number
+of horse. Even the bravest of the brave, Highland or Lowland, might
+draw back from the thought of trying to cross that marsh, of meeting
+the moat-like ditch under Cope's musket-fire. Sunset came amid
+perturbation, a sense of check, impending disaster.
+
+Ian Rullock, acting for the moment as aide-de-camp, had spent the day
+on horseback. Released in the late afternoon, lodged in a hut at the
+edge of the small camp, he used the moment's leisure to climb a small
+hill and at its height to throw himself down beside a broken cairn. He
+shut his eyes, but after a few moments opened them and gazed upon the
+camp of Cope, covering also but a little space, so small were the
+armies. His lips parted.
+
+"Well, Old Steadfast, and what if you are there, waiting?..."
+
+The sun sank. A faint red light diffused itself, then faded into brown
+dusk. He rose and went down into the camp. In the brows of many there
+might be read depression, uncertainty. But in open places fires had
+been built, and about several of these Highlanders were dancing to the
+screaming of their pipes. Rullock bent his steps to headquarters. An
+officer whom he knew, coming forth, drew him aside in excitement.
+
+"We've got it--we've got it, Rullock!"
+
+"What? The plan?"
+
+"The way through! Here has come to the Prince the man who owns the
+marsh! He knows the firm ground. Cope does not know that it is there!
+Cope thinks that it is all slough! This man swears that he can and
+will take us across, one treading behind another. It's settled. When
+sleep seems to wrap us, then we'll move!"
+
+That was what was done, and done so perfectly, late at night, Sir John
+Cope sleeping, thinking himself safe as in a castle. File after file
+wound noiselessly, by the one way through the marsh, and upon the
+farther side, so near to Cope, formed in the darkness into
+battle-lines.... Ian Rullock, passing through the marsh, saw in
+imagination Alexander lying with eyes closed.
+
+The small force, the Stewart hope, prepared for onslaught. The dawn
+was coming, there was a smell of it in the air, far away a cock
+crowed. There stood, in the universal dimness, a first and strongest
+line, a second and weaker, badly armed line. The mass of this army
+were Highlanders, alert, strong, accustomed to dawn movements,
+dreamlike in the heather, along the glen-sides, in the crooked pass.
+They knew the tactics of surprise. They had claymores and targes, and
+the most muskets. But the second line had inadequate provision of
+weapons. Many here bore scythes fastened to staves. As they carried
+these over their shoulders Ian, looking back, saw them against the
+palest light like Death in replica.
+
+The two lines hung motionless, on stout ground, now within the defense
+to which Cope had trusted, very close to the latter's sleeping camp.
+There were sentries, but the night was dark, the marsh believed to be
+unpassable, the crossing carried out with stealthy skill. But now the
+night was going.
+
+In the most uncertain, the faintest light, there seemed to Cope's
+watchers, looking that way, a line of bushes not noted the day before.
+Officers were awakened. A movement ran through the camp like the
+shiver of water under dawn wind. The light thickened. A trumpet rang
+with a startled, emphatic note. Drums rolled. _To arms! To arms!_ King
+George's army started up in the dawning. Infantry hastened into ranks,
+cavalrymen ran to their horses. The line of bushes moved, began to
+come forward with great rapidity.
+
+The Highlanders flung themselves upon Cope's just-forming cavalry.
+With their claymores they slashed at the faces of horses. The hurt
+beasts wheeled, broke for the rear. Their fellows were wounded. Amid a
+whirlwind of blows, screams, shouts, with a suddenness that appalled,
+disorder became general. The Highlanders seemed to fight with a
+demoniac strength and ferocity and after methods of their own. They
+used their claymores, their dirks, their scythes fastened upon poles,
+against the horses, then, springing up, put long arms about the
+horsemen and, regardless of sword or pistol, dragged them down. They
+shouted their Gaelic slogans; their costume, themselves, seemed out of
+a fiercer, earlier world. A strangeness overclouded the senses; mist
+wreaths were everywhere, and an uncertainty as to the numbers of
+demons.... The cavalry broke. Officers tried to save the situation, to
+rally the units, to save all from being borne back. But there was no
+helping. Befell a panic flight, and at its heels the Highland rush
+streamed into and had its way with Cope's infantry. The battle was won
+with a swift and horrible completeness and became a massacre. Not much
+quarter was given; much that was horrible was done and seen.
+Immoderate victory sat and sang to the white-cockaded army.
+
+Out of the mist-bank before Captain Ian Rullock grew a great horse
+with a man upon it of great stature and frame. It came to the Jacobite
+like a vision, with a startling and intense reality. He was standing
+with his sword drawn; there was a drift of mist, and then there was
+the horse and rider--there was Alexander.
+
+He looked down at Ian, and his face was not pale but set. He made a
+gesture that seemed full of satisfaction, and would have dismounted
+and drawn his sword. But there came a dash of maddened horses and
+their riders and a leaping stream of tartaned men. These drove like a
+wedge between; his horse wheeled, would leave no more its fellows; the
+tide of brute and man bore him away with it. Ian watched all go
+fighting by, a moving frieze, out of the mist into the mist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+A triumphant Stewart went back to Holyrood, an exultant army, calling
+itself, now with some good show of bearing it through, the "royal"
+army, carried into Edinburgh its confident step and sanguine hue.
+Victory was with the old line, the magnificent attempt! The erstwhile
+doubting throng began, stage by stage, to mount toward enthusiasm. It
+was the quicker done that Charles Edward, or his wisest advisers, put
+forth a series of judicious civic and public measures. And, now that
+Cope had fled, King George had in Scotland no regular troops. Every
+day there came open accessions to the Prince's strength. The old
+Stewarts up again became a magnet, drawing more and more the filings.
+The Prince had presently between five and six thousand troops. The
+north was his, Edinburgh, the Jacobites scattered through the
+Lowlands. The moderate Whig and Presbyterian might begin to think of
+compounding, of finding virtues in necessity. The irreconcilables felt
+great alarm and saw coming upon them a helplessness.
+
+But the Stewarts, with French approval behind, aimed at the recovery
+of England no less than Scotland. Windsor might well overdazzle
+Holyrood. This interest had received many and strong protestations of
+support from a wide swathe of English nobility and gentry. Lift the
+victorious army over the border, set it and the young Prince bodily
+upon English ground, would not great family after great family rouse
+its tenants, arm them, join the Prince? So at least it seemed to the
+flushed Stewart hope. King George was home from Hanover, British
+troops being brought back from the Continent. Best to fan high the
+fire of the rising while it might with most ease be fanned--best to
+march as soon as might be into England!
+
+On the 1st of November they marched, three detachments by three roads,
+and the meeting-place Carlisle. All went most merrily well. On the
+10th of November began the siege of Carlisle. The Prince had cannon
+now, some taken at Prestonpans, some arrived, no great time before,
+from France, first fruits of French support. The English General Wade
+was at Newcastle with a larger army than that of the Jacobites. But
+the siege of Carlisle was not lifted by Wade. After three days city
+and castle surrendered. Charles Edward and his army entered England.
+
+From Carlisle they marched to Penrith--to Kendal, Lancaster, Preston,
+Manchester--clear, well-conducted marches, the army held well together
+and in hand, here and there handfuls of recruits. But no flood of
+loyally-shouting gentry, no bearers of great names drawing the sword
+for King James III and a gallant, youthful Regent! Each dawn said they
+will come! Each eve said they have not come! One month from leaving
+Edinburgh found this army of Highland chiefs and their clans, Lowland
+Scots, a few Englishmen, a few Irishmen, and a few Frenchmen, led by
+skilful enough generals and by a Prince the great-grandson of Charles
+I, deep in England, but little advanced in bulk for all that. Old
+cavalier England stayed upon its acres. Other times, other manners!
+And how to know when an old vortex begins to disintegrate and a mode
+of action becomes antiquated, belated?
+
+Wade was to one side with his army, and now there loomed ahead the
+Duke of Cumberland and ten thousand English troops. Battle seemed
+imminent, yet again the Scots force pushed by. The 4th of December
+found this strange wedge, of no great mass, but of a tested,
+rapier-like keenness and hardness, at the town of Derby, with London
+not a hundred and thirty miles away. And still no English rising for
+the rightful King! Instead Whig armies, and a slow Whiggish buzzing
+beginning through all the country.
+
+The Duke of Cumberland and Marshal Wade, two jaws opening for Jacobite
+destruction, had between them twenty thousand men. Spies brought
+report of thirty thousand drawn up before London, on Finchley Common.
+The Prince might have so many lions of the desert in his Highlanders,
+but multitude will make a net that lions cannot break. At Derby also
+they had news from that Scotland now so dangerously far behind them.
+Royal Scots had landed from France, the Irish brigade from the same
+country was on the seas, and French regiments besides. Lord John
+Drummond had in Scotland now at least three thousand men and good
+promise of more. The Prince held council with the Duke of Perth, Lord
+George Murray, Lord Nairn, the many chiefs and leading voices. Return
+to Scotland, make with these newly gathered troops and with others a
+greater army, expect aid from France, stand in a gained kingdom the
+onslaught from Hanoverian England? Or go on--go on toward London?
+Encounter, defeat, with half his number, the Duke of Cumberland's ten
+thousand, keep Wade from closing in behind them, meet the Finchley
+Common thousands, come to the enemy's capital of half a million souls?
+Return where there were friends? Go on where false-promising friends
+hugged safety? Go on to London, still hoping, trusting still to the
+glamour and outcry that ran before them, to extraordinary events
+called miracles? Hot was the debate! But on the 6th of December the
+Jacobite army turned back toward Scotland.
+
+It began its homeward march long before dawn. Not all nor most had
+been told the decision. Even the changed direction, eyes upon
+slow-descending not upon climbing stars, did not at first enlighten.
+It might mean some detour, the Duke being out-maneuvered. But at last
+rose the winter dawn and lit remembered scene after scene. The news
+ran. The army was in retreat.
+
+Ian Rullock, riding with a kinsman, Gordon, heard, up and down, an
+angry lamenting sound. "Little do the clans like turning back!"
+
+"Hark! The chieftains are telling them it is for the best."
+
+"Is it for the best? I do not like this month or aught that is done in
+it!"
+
+A week later they were at Lancaster; three days after that at Kendal.
+Here Wade might have fallen upon them, but did not. A day or two and
+the main column approached Penrith. The no great amount of artillery
+was yet precious. Heavy to drag over heavy roads, the guns and
+straining horses were left in the rear. Four companies of Lowland
+infantry, Macdonald of Glengarry and his five hundred Highlanders, a
+few cavalrymen, and Lord George Murray himself tarried with the guns.
+The main column disappeared, lost among mountains and hills; this
+detached number had the wild country, the forbidding road, the
+December day to themselves. To get the guns and ammunition-wagons
+along proved a snail-and-tortoise business. Guns and escort fell
+farther and farther behind.
+
+Ian Rullock, acting still as aide, rode from the Prince nearing
+Penrith to Lord George Murray, now miles to the rear. Why was the
+delay? and 'ware the Duke of Cumberland, certainly close at hand! The
+delay was greater, the distance between farther, than the Prince had
+supposed. Rullock rode through the late December afternoon by huge
+frozen waves of earth, under a roof of pallid blue, in his ears a
+small complaining wind like a wailing child. He rode till nightfall,
+and only then came to his objective, finding needed rest in the
+village of Shap. Here he sought Lord George Murray, gave information
+and was given it in turn, ate, drank, and then turned back through the
+December night to the Prince.
+
+He rode and the huge winter stars seemed to watch him with at once a
+glittering intentness and a disdain of his pygmy being. Once he looked
+up to them with a gesture of his head. "Are we so far apart and so
+different?" he asked of Orion.
+
+He was several miles upon his way to Penrith. Before him appeared a
+crossroad, noted by him in the afternoon. A great salient of a hill
+overhung it, and on the near side a fir wood crept close. He looked
+about him, and as he rode kept his hand upon his pistol. He did not
+think to meet an enemy in strength, but there might be lurkers, men of
+the countryside ready to fall upon stragglers from the army that had
+passed that way. He had left behind the crossroad when from in front,
+around the jut of the hill, came four horsemen. He turned his head.
+Others had started from the wood. He made to ride on as though he were
+of their kindred and cause, but hands were laid upon his bridle.
+
+"Courier, no doubt--"
+
+All turned into the narrow road. Half an hour's riding brought in
+sight a substantial farm-house and about it the dimly flaring lights
+of a considerable camp, both cavalry and infantry. Rullock supposed it
+to be a detachment of Wade's, though it was possible that the Duke of
+Cumberland might have thrust advance troops thus far. He wished quite
+heartily that something might occur to warn Lord George Murray, the
+Macdonalds and the Prince's guns, asleep at Shap. For himself, he
+might, if he chose, pick out among the glittering constellations a
+shape like a scaffold.
+
+When he dismounted he was brought past a bivouac fire and a coming and
+going of men afoot and on horseback, into the farm-house, where two or
+three officers sat at table. Questioned, threatened, and
+re-questioned, he had of course nothing to divulge. The less pressure
+was brought in that these troops were in possession of the facts which
+the moment desired. His name and rank he gave, it being idle to
+withhold them. In the end he was shut alone into a small room of the
+farm-house, behind a guarded door. He saw that there was planned an
+attack upon the detachment that with dawn would move from Shap. But
+this force of Wade's or of the Duke's was itself a detachment and
+apparently of no great mass. He could only hope that Lord George and
+the Macdonalds would move warily and when the shock came be found
+equal. All that was beyond his control. In the chill darkness he
+turned to the consideration of his own affair, which seemed desperate
+enough. He found, by groping, a bench against the wall. Wrapping
+himself in his cloak, he lay down upon this and tried to sleep, but
+could not. With all his will he closed off the future, and then as
+best he might the immediately environing present. After all, these
+armies--these struggles--these eery ambitions.... The feeling of _out
+of it_ crept over him. It was an unfamiliar perception, impermanent.
+Yet it might leave a trace to work in the under-consciousness, on a
+far day to emerge, be revalued and added to.
+
+This December air! Fire would be good--and with that thought he seemed
+to catch a gleam through the small-paned, small window, and in a
+moment through the opening door. He rose from the bench. A man in a
+long cloak entered the room, behind him a soldier bearing a lantern
+which he set upon a shelf above a litter of boards and kegs.
+Dismissed by a gesture, he went out, shutting the door behind him.
+The first man dropped his cloak, drew a heavy stool from the
+thrust-aside lumber, and sat down beneath the lantern. He spoke:
+
+"Of all our many meeting-places, this looks most like the old cave in
+the glen!"
+
+Ian moistened his lips. He resumed his seat against the wall. "I
+wondered, after Prestonpans, if you went home."
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"No, you are right. I did not."
+
+"At all times it is the liar's wont still to lie. Small things or
+great--use or no use!"
+
+"I am a prisoner and unarmed. You are the captor. To insult lies in
+your power."
+
+"That is a jargon that may be dropped between us. Yet I, too, am bound
+by conventions! Seeing that you are a prisoner, and not my prisoner
+only, I cannot give you your sword or pistols, and we cannot fight....
+The fighting, too, is a convention. I see that, and that it is not
+adequate. Yet so do I hold you in hatred that I would destroy you in
+this poor way also!"
+
+The two sat not eight feet apart. Time was when either, finding
+himself in deadly straits, would have seen in the other a sure
+rescuer, or a friend to perish with him. One would have come to the
+other in a burst of light and warmth. So countless were the
+associations between them, so much knowledge, after all, did they have
+of each other, that even now, if they hated and contended, it must be,
+as it were, a contention within an orb. To each hemisphere, repelling
+the other, must yet come in lightning flashes the face of the whole.
+
+Glenfernie, under the lantern-light, looked like the old laird his
+father. "No long time ago," he said, "'revenge,' 'vengeance,' seemed
+to me words of a low order! It was not so in my boyhood. Then they
+were often to me passionate, immediate, personal, and vindicated
+words! But it grew to be that they appeared words of a low order. It
+is not so now. As far as that goes I am younger than I was a year ago.
+I stand in a hot, bright light where they are vindicated. If fate sets
+you free again, yet I do not set you free! I shall be after you. I
+entered this place to tell you that."
+
+"Do as you will!" answered Ian. Scorn mounted in his voice. "I shall
+withstand the shock of you!"
+
+The net of name and form hardened, grew more iron and closer meshed.
+Each _I_ contracted, made its carapace thicker. Each _I_ bestrode,
+like Apollyon, the path of the other.
+
+"Why should I undertake to defend myself?" said Ian. "I do not
+undertake to do so! So at least I shall escape the hypocrite! It is in
+the nature of man to put down other kings and be king himself!"
+
+"Aye so? The prime difficulty in that is that the others, too, are
+immortal." Glenfernie rising, his great frame seemed to fill the
+little room. "Sooner may the Kelpie's Pool sink into the earth than I
+forego to give again to you what you have given! What is now all my
+wish? It is to seem to you, here and hereafter, the avenger of blood
+and fraud! Remember me so!"
+
+He stood looking at the sometime friend with a dark and working face.
+Then, abruptly turning, he went away. The door of the small room
+closed behind him. Ian heard the bolt driven.
+
+The night went leadenly by. At last he slept, and was waked by
+trumpets blowing. He saw through the window that it was at faintest
+dawn. Much later the door opened and a man brought him a poor
+breakfast. Rullock questioned him, but could gain nothing beyond the
+statement that to-day at latest the "rebels" would be wiped from the
+face of the earth. When he was gone Ian climbed to the small window
+that, even were it open and unguarded, was yet too small for his body
+to pass. But, working with care, he managed to loosen and draw inward
+without noise one of the round panes. Outside lay a trampled
+farm-yard. A few soldiers, apparently invalided, lounged about, but
+there was no such throng such as he had passed through when they
+brought him here. He supposed that the attack upon the force at Shap
+might be in progress. If the Duke of Cumberland's whole power was at
+hand the main column might be set upon. All around him the hills, the
+farm inclosure, and these petty walls cut off the outer world. The
+hours, the day, limped somehow by. He walked to keep himself warm.
+Back and forth and to and fro. December--December--December! How cold
+was the Kelpie's Pool? Poisoned love--poisoned friendship--ambition in
+ruin--bells ringing for executions! To and fro--to and fro. He had
+always felt life as sensuous, rich, and warm, with garlands and
+colors. It had been large and aglow, with a profusion of arabesques of
+imagination and emotion. Thought had not lacked, but thought, too,
+bore a personal, passional cast, and was much interested in a golden
+world of sense. Just this December day the world seemed the ocean-bed
+of life, where dull creatures moved slowly in cold, thick ooze, and
+annihilation was much to be desired.... The day went by. The same man
+brought him supper. There seemed to be triumph in his face. "They'll
+be bringing in more prisoners--unless we don't make prisoners!"
+Nothing more could be gained from that quarter. In the night it began
+to rain. He listened to its dash against the window. Black Hill came
+into mind, and the rain against his windows there. He was cold, and he
+tried, with the regressive sense, to feel himself in that old, warm
+nest. His Black Hill room rose about him, firelit. The fire lighted
+that Italian painting of a city of refuge and a fleeing man, behind
+whom ran the avenger of blood.... Then it was July, and he was in the
+glen with Elspeth Barrow. He fought away from the recollection of
+that, for it involved a sickness of the soul.... Italy! Think of
+Italy. Venice, and a month that he had spent there alone--Old
+Steadfast being elsewhere. It had been a warm season, warm and rich,
+sun-kissed and languorous, like the fruit, like the Italian women....
+Leave out the women, but try to feel again the sun of Venice!
+
+He tried, but the cold of his prison fought with the sun. Then
+suddenly sprang clamor without. The uproar increased. He rose, he
+heard the bolts open, the door open. In came light and voices.
+"Captain Rullock! We beat them at Clifton! We learned that you were
+here! Lord George sent us back for you...."
+
+Three days later Scotch earth was again beneath their feet. They
+marched to Glasgow; they marched to Stirling; they fought the battle
+of Falkirk and again there was Jacobite victory. And now there was an
+army of eight thousand.... And then began a time of poor policy,
+mistaken moves. And in April befell the battle of Culloden and
+far-resounding ruin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+The green May rolled around and below the Highland shelter where Ian
+lay, fugitive, like thousands of others, after Culloden. The Prince
+had stayed to give an order to his broken army. _Sauve qui peut!_ Then
+he, too, became a fugitive, passing from one fastness to another of
+these glens and the mountains that overtowered them. The Stewart hope
+was sunk in the sea of dead hopes. Cumberland, with for the time and
+place a great force and with an ugly fury, hunted all who had been in
+arms against King George.
+
+Ian Rullock couched high upon a mountain-side, in a shelter of stone
+and felled tree built in an angle of crag, screened by a growth of
+birch and oak, made long ago against emergencies. A path, devious and
+hidden, connected it first with a hut far below, and then, at several
+miles' distance, with the house of a chieftain, now a house of terror,
+with the chieftain in prison and his sons in hiding, and the women
+watching with hard-beating hearts. Ian, a kinsman of the house, had
+been given, _faute de mieux_, this old, secret hold, far up, where at
+least he could see danger if it approached. Food had been stored for
+him here and sheepskins given for bedding. He was so masked by
+splintered and fallen pieces of rock that he might, with great
+precautions, kindle a fire. A spring like a fairy cup gave him water.
+More than one rude comfort had been provided. He had even a book or
+two, caught up from his kinsman's small collection. He had been here
+fourteen days.
+
+At first they were days and nights of vastly needed rest. Bitter had
+been the fatigue, privation, wandering, immediately after Culloden!
+Now he was rested.
+
+He was by nature sanguine. When the sun had irretrievably blackened
+and gone out he might be expected at least to attempt to gather
+materials and ignite another. He was capable of whistling down the wind
+those long hopes of fame and fortune that had hung around the Stewart
+star. And now he was willing to let go the old half-acknowledged boyish
+romance and sentiment, the glamour of the imagination that had dressed
+the cause in hues not its own. Two years of actual contact with the
+present incarnations of that cause had worn the sentiment threadbare.
+
+Seated or lying upon the brown earth by the splintered crag, alone
+save for the wheeling birds and the sound of wind and water and the
+sailing clouds, he had time at last for the rise into mind, definitely
+shaped and visible, of much that had been slowly brewing and forming.
+He was conscious of a beginning of a readjustment of ideas. For a long
+time now he had been pledged to personal daring, to thought forced to
+become supple and concentrated, to hard, practical planning, physical
+hardship and danger. In the midst of this had begun to grow up a
+criticism of all the enterprises upon which he was engaged. Scope--in
+many respects the Jacobite character, generally taken, was amiable and
+brave, but its prime exhibit was not scope! Somewhat narrow, somewhat
+obsolete; Ian's mind now saw Jacobitism in that light. As he sat
+without his rock fortress, in the shadow of birch-trees, with lower
+hills and glens at his feet, he had a pale vision of Europe, of the
+world. Countries and times showed themselves contiguous. "Causes,"
+dynastic wars, political life, life in other molds and hues, appeared
+in chords and sequences and strokes of the eye, rather than in the old
+way of innumerable, vivid, but faintly connected points. "I begin to
+see," thought Ian, "how things travel together, like with like!" His
+body was rested, recovered, his mind invigorated. He had had with him
+for long days the very elixir of solitude. Relations and associations
+that before had been banked in ignorance came forth and looked at him.
+"You surely have known us before, though you had forgotten that you
+knew us!" He found that he was taking delight in these expansions of
+meaning. He thought, "If I can get abroad out of this danger, out of
+old circles, I'll roam and study and go to school to wider plans!" He
+suddenly thought, "This kind of thing is what Old Steadfast meant when
+he used to say that I did not see widely enough." He moved sharply. A
+hot and bitter flood seemed to well up within him. "He himself is
+seeing narrowly now--Alexander Jardine!"
+
+He left the crag and went for a scrambling and somewhat dangerous walk
+along the mountain-side. There was peril in leaving that one
+rock-curtained place. Two days before he had seen what he thought to
+be signs of red-coated soldiers in the glen far below. But he must
+walk--he must exercise his body, note old things, not give too much
+time to new perceptions! He breathed the keen, sweet mountain air;
+with a knife that he had he fell to making a staff from a young oak;
+he watched the pass below and the shadows of the clouds; he climbed
+fairly to the mountain-top and had a great view; he sang an old song,
+not aloud, but under his breath; and at last he must come back with
+solitude to his fastness. And here was brooding thought again!
+
+Two more days passed. The man from the hut below in the pass came at
+dusk with food carefully sent from the chieftain's hall. Redcoats had
+gone indeed through the glen, but they could never find the path to
+this place! They might return or they might not; they were like the
+devil who rose by your side when you were most peaceful! Angus went
+down the mountain-side. The sound of his footstep died away. Ian had
+again Solitude herself.
+
+Another day and night passed. He watched the sun climb toward noon,
+and as the day grew warm he heard a step upon the hidden path. With a
+pistol in either hand he moved, as stealthily, as silently as might
+be, to a platform of rock that overhung the way of the intruder. In
+another moment the latter was in sight--one man climbing steadily the
+path to the old robber fastness. He saw that it was Glenfernie. No one
+followed him. He came on alone.
+
+Rullock put by his pistols and, moving to a chair of rock, sat there.
+The other's great frame rose level with him, stepped upon the rocky
+floor. Ian had been growing to feel an anger at solitude. When he saw
+Alexander he had not been able to check an inner movement of welcome.
+He felt an old--he even felt a new--affection for the being upon whom,
+certainly, he had leaned. There flowed in, in an impatient wave, the
+consideration that he must hate....
+
+But Glenfernie hated. Ian rose to face him.
+
+"So you've found your way to my castle? It is a climb! You had best
+sit and rest yourself. I have my sword now, and I will give you
+satisfaction."
+
+Glenfernie nodded. He sat upon a piece of fallen rock. "Yes, I will
+rest first, thank you! I have searched since dawn, and the mountain is
+steep. Besides, I want to talk to you."
+
+Ian brought from his cupboard oat-cake and a flask of brandy. The
+other shook his head.
+
+"I had food at sunrise, and I drank from a spring below."
+
+"Very good!"
+
+The laird of Glenfernie sat looking down the mountain-sides and over
+to far hills and moving clouds, much as he used to sit in the crook of
+the old pine outside the broken wall at Glenfernie. There was a trick
+of posture when he was at certain levels within himself. Ian knew it
+well.
+
+"Perhaps I should tell you," said Alexander, "that I came alone
+through the pass and that I have been alone for some days. If there
+are soldiers near I do not know of them."
+
+"It is not necessary," answered Ian. While he spoke he saw in a flash
+both that his confidence was profound that it was not necessary, and
+that that incapacity to betray that might be predicated of Old
+Steadfast was confined to but one of the two upon this rock. The
+enlightenment stung, then immediately brought out a reaction. "To each
+some specialty in error! I no more than he am monstrous!" There arose
+a desire to defend himself, to show Old Steadfast certain things. He
+spoke. "We are going to fight presently--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That's understood. Now listen to me a little! For long years we were
+together, friends near and warm! You knew that I saw differently from
+you in regard to many things--in regard, for instance, to women. I
+remember old discussions.... Well, you differed, and sometimes you
+were angry. But for all that, friendship never went out with violence!
+You knew the ancient current that I swam in--that it was narrower,
+more mixed with earth, than your own! But you were tolerant. You took
+me as I was.... What has developed was essentially there then, and you
+knew it. The difference is that at last it touched what you held to be
+your own. Then, and not till then, the sinner became _anathema!_"
+
+"In some part you say truth. But my load of inconsistency does not
+lighten yours of guilt."
+
+"Perhaps not. We were friends. Five-sixths of me made a fair enough
+friend and comrade. We interlocked. You had gifts and possessions I
+had not. I liked the oak-feeling of you--the great ship in sail! In
+turn, I had the key, perhaps, to a few lands of bloom and flavor that
+you lacked. We interchanged and thought that we were each the richer.
+Five-sixths.... Say, then, that the other sixth might be defined as
+no-friend, or as false friend! Say that it was wilful, impatient of
+superiorities, proud, vain, willing to hurt, betray, and play the
+demon generally! Say that once it gave itself swing it darkened some
+of the other sixths.... Well, it is done! Yet there was gold. Perhaps,
+laird of Glenfernie, there is still gold in the mine!"
+
+"You are mistaken in your proportions. Gold! You are to me the specter
+of the Kelpie's Pool!"
+
+Silence held for a minute or two. The clouds, passing between earth
+and sun, made against the mountain slopes impalpable, dark, fantastic
+shapes. An eagle wheeled above its nest at the mountain-top. Ian spoke
+again. His tone had altered.
+
+"If I do not decline remorse, I at least decline the leaden cope of it
+you would have me wear! There is such a thing as fair play to oneself!
+Two years ago come August Elspeth Barrow and I agreed to part--"
+
+"Oh, 'agreed'--"
+
+"Have it so! I said that we must part. She acquiesced--and that
+without the appeals that the stage and literature show us. Oh,
+doubtless I might have seen a pierced spirit, and did not, and was
+brute beast there! But one thing you have got to believe, and that is
+that neither of us knew what was to happen. Even with that, she was
+aware of how a letter might be sent, with good hope of reaching me.
+She was not a weak, ignorant girl.... I went away, and within a
+fortnight was deep in that long attempt that ends here. I became
+actively an agent for the Prince and his father. A hundred names and
+their fates were in my hands. You can fill in the multitude of
+activities, each seeming small in itself, but the whole preoccupying
+every field.... If Elspeth Barrow wrote I never received her letter.
+When my thought turned in that direction, it saw her well and not
+necessarily unhappy. Time passed. For reasons, I ceased to write home,
+and again for reasons I obliterated paths by which I might be reached.
+For months I heard nothing, as I said nothing. I was on the very eve
+of quitting Paris, under careful disguise, to go into Scotland. Came
+suddenly your challenge--and still, though I knew that to you at least
+our relations must have been discovered, I knew no more than that! I
+did not know that she was dead.... I could not stay to fight you then.
+I left you to brand me as you pleased in your mind."
+
+"I had already branded you."
+
+"Later, I saw that you had. Perhaps then I did not wonder. In
+September--almost a year from that Christmas Eve--I yet did not know.
+Then, in Edinburgh, I came upon Mr. Wotherspoon. He told me.... I had
+no wicked intent toward Elspeth Barrow--none according to my canon,
+which has been that of the natural man. We met by accident. We loved
+at once and deeply. She had in her an elf queen! But at last the human
+must have darkened and beset her. Had I known of those fears, those
+dangers, I might have turned homeward from France and every shining
+scheme...."
+
+"Ah no, you would not--"
+
+"... If I would not, then certainly I should have written to Jarvis
+Barrow and to others, acknowledging my part--"
+
+"Perhaps you would have done that. Perhaps not. You might have found
+reasons of obligation for not doing so. 'Loved deeply'! You never
+loved her deeply! You have loved nothing deeply save yourself!"
+
+"Perhaps. Yet I think," said Ian, "that I would have done as much as
+that. But Alexander Jardine, of course, would not have taken one
+erring step!"
+
+"Have you done now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Glenfernie rose to his feet. He stood against the gulf of air and his
+great frame seemed enlarged, like the figure of the Brocken. He was
+like his father, the old laird, but there glowed an extremer dark
+anger and power. The old laird had made himself the dream-avenger of
+injuries adopted, not felt at first hand. The present laird knew the
+wounding, the searing. "All his life my father dreamed of grappling
+with Grierson of Lagg. My Grierson of Lagg stands before me in the
+guise of a false friend and lover!... What do I care for your weighing
+to a scruple how much the heap of wrong falls short of the uttermost?
+The dire wrong is there, to me the direst! Had I deep affection for
+you once? Now you speak to me of every treacherous morass, every
+_ignis fatuus_, past and present! The traveler through life does right
+to drain the bogs as they arise--put it out of their power to suck
+down man, woman, and child! It is not his cause alone. It is the
+general cause. If there be a God, He approves. Draw your sword and let
+us fight!"
+
+They fought. The platform of rock was smooth enough for good footing.
+They had no seconds, unless the shadows upon the hills and the
+mountain eagles answered for such. Ian was the highly trained fencer,
+adept of the sword. Glenfernie's knowledge was lesser, more casual.
+But he had his bleak wrath, a passion that did not blind nor overheat,
+but burned white, that set him, as it were, in a tingling, crackling
+arctic air, where the shadows were sharp-edged, the nerves braced and
+the will steel-tipped. They fought with determination and long--Ian
+now to save his own life, Alexander for Revenge, whose man he had
+become. The clash of blade against blade, the shifting of foot upon
+the rock floor, made the dominant sound upon the mountain-side. The
+birds stayed silent in the birch-trees. Self-service, pride, anger,
+jealousy, hatred--the inner vibrations were heavy.
+
+The sword of Ian beat down his antagonist's guard, leaped, and gave a
+deep wound. Alexander's sword fell from his hand. He staggered and
+vision darkened. He came to his knees, then sank upon the ground. Ian
+bent over him. He felt his anger ebb. A kind of compunction seized
+him. He thought, "Are you so badly hurt, Old Steadfast?"
+
+Alexander looked at him. His lips moved. "Lo, how the wicked prosper!
+But do you think that Justice will have it so?" The blood gushed; he
+sank back in a swoon.
+
+On this mountain-side, some distance below the fastness, a stone,
+displaced by a human foot, rolled down the slope with a clattering
+sound. The fugitive above heard it, thought, too, that he caught other
+sounds. He crossed to the nook whence he had view of the way of
+approach. Far down he saw the redcoats, and then, much nearer, coming
+out from dwarf woods, still King George's men.
+
+Ian caught up his belt and pistols. He sheathed his sword. "They'll
+find you and save you, Glenfernie! I do not think that you will die!"
+Above him sprang the height of crag, seemingly unscalable. But he had
+been shown the secret, just possible stair. He mounted it. Masked by
+bushes, it swung around an abutment and rose by ledge and natural
+tunnel, perilous and dizzy, but the one way out to safety. At last, a
+hundred feet above the old shelter, he dipped over the crag head to a
+saucer-like depression walled from all redcoat view by the surmounted
+rock. With a feeling of triumph he plunged through small firs and
+heather, and, passing the mountain brow, took the way that should lead
+him to the next glen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+The laird of Glenfernie, rising from the great chair by the table,
+moved to the window of the room that had been his father's and
+mother's, the room where both had died. He remembered the wild night
+of snow and wind in which his father had left the body. Now it was
+August, and the light golden upon the grass and the pilgrim cedar.
+Alexander walked slowly, with a great stick under his hand. Old Bran
+was dead, but a young Bran stretched himself, wagged his tail, and
+looked beseechingly at the master.
+
+"I'll let you out," said the latter, "but I am a prisoner; I cannot
+let myself out!"
+
+He moved haltingly to the door, opened it, and the dog ran forth.
+Glenfernie returned to the window. "Prisoner." The word brought to his
+strongly visualizing mind prisoners and prisons through all Britain
+this summer--shackled prisoners, dark prisons, scaffolds.... He leaned
+his head against the window-frame.
+
+"O God that my father and my grandfather served--God of old times--of
+Israel in Egypt! I think that I would release them all if I
+could--_all but one! Not him!_" He looked at the cedar. "Who was he,
+in truth, who planted that, perhaps for a remembrance? And he, and
+all men, had and have some one deep wrong that shall not be brooked!"
+
+He stood in a brown study until there was a tap at the door. "Come
+in!"
+
+Alice entered, bearing before her a bowl of flowers of all fair hues
+and shapes. She herself was like a bright, strong, winsome flower. "To
+make your room look bonny!" she said, and placed the bowl upon the
+table. To do so she pushed aside the books. "What a withered,
+snuff-brown lot! Won't you be glad when you are back in the keep with
+all the books?"
+
+Glenfernie, wrapped in a brown gown, came with his stick back to the
+great chair before the books. "Bonny--they are bonny!" he said and
+touched the flowers. "I've set a week from to-day to be dressed and
+out of this and back to the keep. Another week, and I shall ride Black
+Alan."
+
+"Ah," said Alice. "You mustn't determine that you can do it all
+yourself! There will be the doctor and the wound!"
+
+Alexander took her hands and held them. "You are a fine philosopher!
+Where is Strickland?"
+
+"Helping Aunt Grizel with accounts. Do you want him?"
+
+"When you go. But not for a long while if you will stay."
+
+Alice regarded him with her mother's shrewdness. "Oh, Glenfernie, for
+all you've traveled and are so learned, it's not me nor Mr.
+Strickland, but the moon now that you're wanting! I don't know what
+your moon is, but it's the moon!"
+
+Alexander laughed. "And is not the moon a beautiful thing?"
+
+"The books say that it is cold and almost dead, wrinkled and ashen.
+But I've got to go," said Alice, "and I'll send you Mr. Strickland."
+
+Strickland came presently. "You look much stronger this morning,
+Glenfernie. I'm glad of that! Shall I read to you, or write?"
+
+"Read, I think. My eyes dazzle still when I try. Some strong old
+thing--the Plutarch there. Read the _Brutus_."
+
+Strickland read. He thought that now Alexander listened, and that now
+he had traveled afar. The minutes passed. The flowers smelled sweetly,
+murmuring sounds came in the open windows. Bran scratched at the door
+and was admitted. Far off, Alice's voice was heard singing. Strickland
+read on. The laird of Glenfernie was not at Rome, in the Capitol, by
+Pompey's statue. He walked with Elspeth Barrow the feathery green
+glen.
+
+Davie appeared in the door. "A letter, sir, come post." He brought it
+to Glenfernie's outstretched hand.
+
+"From Edinburgh--from Jamie," said the latter.
+
+Strickland laid down his book and moved to the window. Standing there,
+his eyes upon the great cedar, massive and tall as though it would
+build a tower to heaven, his mind left Brutus, Caesar, and Cassius, and
+played somewhat idly over the British Isles. He was recalled by an
+exclamation, not loud, but so intense and fierce that it startled like
+a meteor of the night. He turned. Glenfernie sat still in his great
+chair, but his features were changed, his mouth working, his eyes
+shooting light. Strickland advanced toward him.
+
+"Not bad news of Jamie!"
+
+"Not of Jamie! From Jamie." He thrust the letter under the other's
+eyes. "Read--read it out!"
+
+Strickland read aloud.
+
+     "Here is authoritative news. Ian Rullock, after lying two
+     months in the tolbooth, has escaped. A gaoler connived, it
+     is supposed, else it would seem impossible. Galbraith tells
+     me he would certainly have been hanged in September. It is
+     thought that he got to Leith and on board a ship. Three
+     cleared that day--for Rotterdam, for Lisbon, and Virginia."
+
+Alexander took the letter again. "That is all of that import."
+Strickland once more felt astonishment. Glenfernie's tone was quiet,
+almost matter-of-fact. The blood had ebbed from his face; he sat there
+collected, a great quiet on the heels of storm. It was impossible not
+to admire the power that could with such swiftness exercise control.
+Strickland hesitated. He wished to speak, but did not know how far he
+might with wisdom. The laird forestalled him.
+
+"Sit down! This is to be talked over, for again my course of life
+alters."
+
+Strickland took his chair. He leaned his arm upon the table, his chin
+upon his hand. He did not look directly at the man opposite, but at
+the bowl of flowers between them.
+
+"When a man has had joy and lost it, what does he do?" Glenfernie's
+voice was almost contemplative.
+
+"One man one thing, and one another," said Strickland. "After his
+nature."
+
+"No. All go seeking it in the teeth of death and horror. That's
+universal! Joy must be sought. But it may not wear the old face; it
+may wear another."
+
+"I suppose that true joy has one face."
+
+"When one platonizes--perhaps! I keep to-day to earth, to the cave. Do
+you know," said Alexander, "why I sit here wounded?"
+
+"Of outward facts I do not know any more than is, I think, pretty
+generally known through this countryside."
+
+"As--?"
+
+Strickland looked still at the bowl of flowers. "It is known, I think,
+that you loved Elspeth Barrow and would have wedded her. And that,
+while you were from home, the man who called himself, and was called
+by you, your nearest friend, stepped before you--made love to her,
+betrayed her--and left her to bear the shame.... I myself know that he
+kept you in ignorance, and that, away from here, he let you still
+write to him in friendship and answered in that tone.... All know that
+she drowned herself because of him, and that you knew naught until you
+yourself entered the Kelpie's Pool and found her body and carried her
+home.... After that you left the country to find and fight Ian
+Rullock. Folk know, too, that he evaded you then. You returned. Then
+came this insurrection, and news that he was in Scotland with the
+Pretender. You joined the King's forces. Then, after Culloden, you
+found the false friend in hiding, in the mountains. The two of you
+fought, and, as is often the way, the injurer seemed again to win. You
+were dangerously wounded. He fled. Soldiers upon his track found you
+lying in your blood. You were carried to Inverness. Dickson and I went
+to you, brought you at last home. In the mean time came news that the
+man you fought had been taken by the soldiers. I suppose that we have
+all had visions of him, in prison, expecting to suffer with other
+conspirators."
+
+"Yes, I have had visions ... outward facts!... Do you know the inner,
+northern ocean, where sleep all the wrecks?"
+
+"As I have watched you since you were a boy, it is improbable that I
+should not have some divining power. In Inverness, too, while you were
+fevered, you talked and talked.... You have walked with Tragedy, felt
+her net and her strong whip." Strickland lifted his eyes from the
+bowl, pushed back his chair a little, and looked full at the laird of
+Glenfernie. "What then? Rise, Glenfernie, and leave her behind! And if
+you do not now, it will soon be hard for you to do so! Remember, too,
+that I watched your father--"
+
+"After I find Ian Rullock in Holland or Lisbon or America--"
+
+Strickland made a movement of deep concern. "You have met and fought
+this man. Do you mean so to nourish vengeance--"
+
+"I mean so to aid and vindicate distressed Justice."
+
+"Is it the way?"
+
+"I think that it is the way."
+
+Strickland was silent, seeing the uselessness. Glenfernie was one to
+whom conviction must come from within. A stillness held in the room,
+broken by the laird in the voice that was growing like his father's.
+"Nothing lacks now but strength, and I am gaining that--will gain it
+the faster now! Travel--travel!... All my travel was preparatory to
+this."
+
+"Do you mean," asked Strickland, "to kill him when you find him?"
+
+"I like your directness. But I do not know--I do not know!... I mean
+to be his following fiend. To have him ever feel me--when he turns his
+head ever to see me!"
+
+The other sighed sharply. He thought to himself, "Oh, mind, thy
+abysses!"
+
+Indeed, Glenfernie looked at this moment stronger. He folded Jamie's
+letter and put it by. He drew the bowl of flowers to him and picked
+forth a rose. "A week--two at most--and I shall be wholly recovered!"
+His voice had fiber, decision, even a kind of cheer.
+
+Strickland thought, "It is his fancied remedy, at which he snatches!"
+
+Glenfernie continued: "We'll set to work to-morrow upon long
+arrangements! With you to manage here, I will not be missed." Without
+waiting for the morrow he took quill and paper and began to figure.
+
+Strickland watched him. At last he said, "Will you go at once in three
+ships to Holland, Portugal, and America?"
+
+"Has the onlooker room for irony, while to me it looks so simple? I
+shall ship first to the likeliest land.... In ten days--in two weeks
+at most--to Edinburgh--"
+
+Strickland left him figuring and, rising, went to the window. He saw
+the great cedar, and in mind the pilgrim who planted it there. All the
+pilgrims--all the crusaders--all the men in Plutarch; the long frieze
+of them, the full ocean of them ... all the self-search, dressed as
+search of another. "I, too, I doubt not--I, too!" Buried scenes in his
+own life rose before Strickland. Behind him scratched Glenfernie's
+pen, sounded Glenfernie's voice:
+
+"I am going to see presently if I can walk as far as the keep. In two
+or three days I shall ride. There are things that I shall know when I
+get to Edinburgh. He would take, if he could, the ship that would land
+him at the door of France."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Alexander rode across the moors to the glen head. Two or three
+solitary farers that he met gave him eager good day.
+
+"Are ye getting sae weel, laird? I am glad o' that!"
+
+"Good day, Mr. Jardine! I rejoice to see you recovered. Well, they
+hung more of them yesterday!"
+
+"Gude day, Glenfernie! It's a bonny morn, and sweet to be living!"
+
+At noon he looked down on the Kelpie's Pool. The air was sweet and
+fine, bird sounds came from the purple heather. The great blue arch of
+the sky smiled; even the pool, reflecting day, seemed to have
+forgotten cold and dread. But for Glenfernie a dull, cold, sick horror
+overspread the place. He and Black Alan stood still upon the moor
+brow. Large against the long, clean, horizon sweep, they looked the
+sun-bathed, stone figures of horse and man, set there long ago,
+guarding the moor, giving warning of the kelpie.
+
+"None has been found to warn. There is none but the kelpie waits
+for.... But punish--punish!"
+
+He and Black Alan pushed on to the head of the glen. Here was Mother
+Binning's cot, and here he dismounted, fastening the horse to the
+ash-tree. Mother Binning was outdoors, gathering herbs in her apron.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She straightened herself as he stepped toward her. "Eh, laird of
+Glenfernie, ye gave me a start! I thought ye came out of the ground by
+the ash-tree!... Wound is healed, and life runs on to another
+springtime?"
+
+"Yes, it's another springtime.... I do not think that I believe in
+scrying, Mother Binning. But I'm where I pick up all straws with which
+to build me a nest! Sit down and scry for me, will you?"
+
+"I canna scry every day, nor every noon, nor every year. What are you
+wanting to see, Glenfernie?"
+
+"Oh, just my soul's desire!"
+
+Mother Binning turned to her door. She put down the herbs, then
+brought a pan of water and set it down upon the door-step, and herself
+beside it. "It helps--onything that's still and clear! Wait till the
+ripple's gane, and then dinna speak to me. But gin I see onything, it
+will na be sae great a thing as a soul's desire."
+
+She sat still and he stood still, leaning against the side of her
+house. Mother Binning sat with fixed gaze. Her lips moved. "There's
+the white mist. It's clearing."
+
+"Tell me if you see a ship."
+
+"Yes, I see it...."
+
+"Tell me if you see its port."
+
+"Yes, I see."
+
+"Describe it--the houses, the country, the dress and look of the
+people--"
+
+Mother Binning did so.
+
+"That's not Holland--that would be Lisbon. Look at the ship again,
+Mother. Look at the sailors. Look at the passengers if there are any.
+Whom do you see?"
+
+"Ah!" said Mother Binning. "There's a braw wrong-doer for you, sitting
+drinking Spanish wine!"
+
+"Say his name."
+
+"It's he that once, when you were a lad, you brought alive from the
+Kelpie's Pool."
+
+"Thank you, Mother! That's what I wanted. _Scrying!_ Who gives to
+whom--who gives back to whom? The underneath great I, I suppose. Left
+hand giving to right--and no brand-new news! All the same, other
+drifts concurring, I think that he fled by the Lisbon ship!"
+
+Mother Binning pushed aside the pan of water and rubbed her hand
+across her eyes. She took up her bundle of herbs. "Hoot, Glenfernie!
+do ye think that's your soul's desire?"
+
+Jock came limping around the house. Alexander could not now abide the
+sight of this cripple who had spied, and had not shot some fashion of
+arrow! He said good-by and loosed Black Alan from the ash-tree and
+rode away. He would not tread the glen. His memory recoiled from it as
+from some Eastern glen of serpents. He and Black Alan went over the
+moors. And still it was early and he had his body strength back. He
+rode to Littlefarm.
+
+Robin Greenlaw was in the field, coat off in the gay, warm weather.
+He came to Glenfernie's side, and the latter dismounted and sat with
+him under a tree. Greenlaw brought a stone jug and tankard and poured
+ale.
+
+The laird drank. "That's good, Robin!" He put down the tankard. "Are
+you still a poet?"
+
+"If I was so once upon a time, I hope I am so still. At any rate, I
+still make verses. And I see poems that I can never write."
+
+"'Never'--how long a word that is!"
+
+Greenlaw gazed at the workers in the field. "I met Mr. Strickland the
+other day. He says that you will travel again."
+
+"'Travel'--yes."
+
+"The Jardine Arms gets it from the Edinburgh road that Ian Rullock
+made a daring escape."
+
+"He had always ingenuity and a certain sort of physical bravery."
+
+"So has Lucifer, Milton says. But he's not Lucifer."
+
+"No. He is weak and small."
+
+"Well, look Glenfernie! I would not waste my soul chasing him!"
+
+"How dead are you all! You, too, Greenlaw!"
+
+Robin flushed. "No! I hate all that he did that is vile! If all his
+escaping leads him to violent death, I shall not find it in me to
+grieve! But all the same, I would not see you narrowed to the
+wolf-hunter that will never make the wolf less than the wolf! I don't
+know. I've always thought of you as one who would serve Wisdom and
+show us her beauty--"
+
+"To me this is now wisdom--this is now beauty. Poets may stay and
+make poetry, but I go after Ian Rullock!"
+
+"Oh, there's poetry in that, too," said Greenlaw, "because there's
+nothing in which there isn't poetry! But you're choosing the kind
+you're not best in, or so it seems to me."
+
+Glenfernie rode from Littlefarm homeward. But the next day he and
+Black Alan went to Black Hill. Here he saw Mr. Touris alone. That
+gentleman sat with a shrunken and shriveled look.
+
+"Eh, Glenfernie! I am glad to see that you are yourself again! Well,
+my sister's son has broken prison."
+
+"Yes, one prison."
+
+"God knows they were all mad! But I could not wish to see him in my
+dreams, hanging dark from the King's gallows!"
+
+"From the King's gallows and for old, mad, Stewart hopes? I find,"
+said Glenfernie, "that I do not wish that, either. He would have gone
+for the lesser thing--and the long true, right vengeance been
+delayed!"
+
+"What is that?" asked Mr. Touris, dully.
+
+"His wrong shall be ever in his mind, and I the painter's brush to
+paint it there! Give me, O God, the power of genius!"
+
+"Are you going to follow him and kill him?"
+
+"I am going to follow him. At first I thought that I would kill him.
+But my mind is changing as to that."
+
+Mr. Touris sighed heavily. "I don't know what is the matter with the
+world.... One does one's best, but all goes wrong. All kinds of hopes
+and plans.... When I look back to when I was a young man, I
+wonder.... I set myself an aim in life, to lift me and mine from
+poverty. I saved for it, denied for it, was faithful. It came about
+and it's ashes in my mouth! Yet I took it as a trust, and was
+faithful. What does the Bible say, 'Vanity of vanities'? But I say
+that the world's made wrong."
+
+Glenfernie left him at last, wrinkled and shrunken and shriveled, cold
+on a summer day, plying himself with wine, a serving-man mending the
+fire upon the hearth. Alexander went to Mrs. Alison's parlor. He found
+her deep chair placed in the garden without, and she herself sitting
+there, a book in hand, but not read, her form very still, her eyes
+upon a shaft of light that was making vivid a row of flowers. The book
+dropped beside her on the grass; she rose quickly. The last time they
+had met was before Culloden, before Prestonpans.
+
+She came to him. "You're well, Alexander! Thanks be! Sit down, my
+dear, sit down!" She would have made him take her chair, but he
+laughed and brought one for himself from the room. "I bless my
+ancestors for a physical body that will not keep wounds!"
+
+She sank into her chair again and sat in silence, gazing at him. Her
+clear eyes filled with tears, but she shook them away. At last she
+spoke: "Oh, I see the other sort of wounds! Alexander! lay hold of the
+nature that will make them, too, to heal!"
+
+"Saint Alison," he answered, "look full at what went on. Now tell me
+if those are wounds easy to heal. And tell me if he were not less than
+a man who pocketed the injury, who said to the injurer, 'Go in
+peace!'"
+
+She looked at him mournfully. "Is it to pocket the injury? Will not
+all combine--silently, silently--to teach him at last? Less than
+man--man--more than man, than to-day's appearing man?... I am not
+wise. For yourself and the ring of your moment you may be judging
+inevitably, rightly.... But with what will you overcome--and in
+overcoming what will you overcome?"
+
+He made a gesture of impatience. "Oh, friend, once I, too, could be
+metaphysical! I cannot now."
+
+Speech failed between them. They sat with eyes upon the garden, the
+old tree, the August blue sky, but perhaps they hardly saw these. At
+last she turned. She had a slender, still youthful figure, an oval,
+lovely, still young face. Now there was a smile upon her lips, and in
+her eyes a light deep, touching, maternal.
+
+"Go as you will, hunt him as you will, do what you will! And he,
+too--Ian! Ian and his sins. Grapes in the wine-press--wheat beneath
+the flail--ore in the ardent fire, and over all the clouds of wrath!
+Suffering and making to suffer--sinning and making to sin.... And yet
+will the dawn come, and yet will you be reconciled!"
+
+"Not while memory holds!"
+
+"Ah, there is so much to remember! Ian has so much and you have so
+much.... When the great memory comes you will see. But not now, it is
+apparent, not now! So go if you will and must, Alexander, with the net
+and the spear!"
+
+"Did he not sin?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I also sin. But my sin does not match his! God makes use of
+instruments, and He shall make use of me!"
+
+"If He 'shall,' then He shall. Let us leave talk of this. Where you go
+may love and light go, too--and work it out, and work it out!"
+
+He did not stay long in her garden. All Black Hill oppressed him now.
+The dark crept in upon the light. She saw that it was so.
+
+"He can be friends now with none. He sees in each one a partisan--his
+own or Ian's." She did not detain him, but when he rose to say good-by
+helped him to say it without delay.
+
+He went, and she paced her garden, thinking of Ian who had done so
+great wrong, and Alexander who cried, "My enemy!" She stayed in the
+garden an hour, and then she turned and went to play piquet with the
+lonely, shriveled man, her brother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Two days after this Glenfernie rode to White Farm. Jenny Barrow met
+him with exclamations.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Alexander! Oh, Glenfernie! And they say that you are amaist
+as weel as ever--but to me you look twelve years older! Eh, and this
+warld has brought gray into _my_ hair! Father's gane to kirk session,
+and Gilian's awa'."
+
+He sat down beside her. Her hands went on paring apples, while her
+eyes and tongue were busy elsewhere.
+
+"They say you're gaeing to travel."
+
+"Yes. I'm starting very soon."
+
+"It's na _said oot_--but a kind of whisper's been gaeing around." She
+hesitated, then, "Are you gaeing after him, Glenfernie?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Jenny put down her knife and apple. She drew a long breath, so that
+her bosom heaved under her striped gown. A bright color came into her
+cheeks. She laughed. "Aweel, I wadna spare him if I were you!"
+
+He sat with her longer than he had done with Mrs. Alison. He felt
+nearer to her. He could be friends with her, while he moved from the
+other as from a bloodless wraith. Here breathed freely all the strong
+vindications! He sat, sincere and strong, and sincere and strong was
+the countrywoman beside him.
+
+"Oh aye!" said Jenny. "He's a villain, and I wad gie him all that he
+gave of villainy!"
+
+"That is right," said Alexander, "to look at it simply!" He felt that
+those were his friends who felt in this as did he.
+
+On the moor, riding homeward, he saw before him Jarvis Barrow.
+Dismounting, he met the old man beside a cairn, placed there so long
+ago that there was only an elfin story for the deeds it commemorated.
+
+"Gude day, Glenfernie! So that Hieland traitor did not slay ye?"
+
+"No."
+
+Jarvis Barrow, white-headed, strong-featured, far yet, it seemed, from
+incapacitating old age, took his seat upon a great stone loosened from
+the mass. He leaned upon his staff; his collie lay at his feet. "Many
+wad say a lang time, with the healing in it of lang time, since a
+fause lover sang in the ear of my granddaughter, in the glen there!"
+
+"Aye, many would say it."
+
+"I say 'a fause lover.' But the ane to whom she truly listened is an
+aulder serpent than he ... wae to her!"
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"But I say 'aye!' I am na weak! She that worked evil and looseness,
+harlotry, strife, and shame, shall she na have her hire? As, Sunday by
+Sunday, I wad ha' set her in kirk, before the congregation, for the
+stern rebuking of her sin, so, mak no doubt, the Lord pursues her now!
+Aye, He shakes His wrath before her eyes! Wherever she turns she sees
+'Fornicatress' writ in flames!"
+
+"No!"
+
+"But aye!"
+
+"Where she was mistaken--where, maybe, she was wilfully blind--she
+must learn. Not the learning better, but the old mistake until it is
+lost in knowledge, will clothe itself in suffering! But that is but a
+part of her! If there is error within, there is also Michael within to
+make it of naught! She releases herself. It is horrible to me to see
+you angered against her, for you do not discriminate--and you are your
+Michael, but not hers!"
+
+"Adam is speaking--still the woman's lover! I'm not for contending
+with you. She tore my heart working folly in my house, and an ill
+example, and for herself condemnation!"
+
+"Leave her alone! She has had great unhappiness!" He moved the small
+stones of the cairn with his fingers. "I am going away from
+Glenfernie."
+
+"Aye. It was in mind that ye would! You and he were great friends."
+
+"The greater foes now."
+
+"I gie ye full understanding there!"
+
+"With my father, those he hated were beyond his touch. So he walked
+among shadows only. But to me this world is a not unknown wood where
+roves, alive and insolent, my utter enemy! I can touch him and I will
+touch him!"
+
+"Not you, but the Lord Wha abides not evil!... How sune will ye be
+gaeing, Glenfernie?"
+
+"As soon as I can ride far. As soon as everything is in order here. I
+know that I am going, but I do not know if I am returning."
+
+"I haud na with dueling. It's un-Christian. But mony's the ancient
+gude man that Jehovah used for sword! Aye, and approved the sword that
+he used--calling him faithful servant and man after His heart! I am na
+judging."
+
+From the moor Glenfernie rode through the village. Folk spoke to him,
+looked after him; children about the doors called to others, "It's tha
+laird on Black Alan!" Old and young women, distaff or pan or pot or
+pitcher in hand, turned head, gazed, spoke to themselves or to one
+another. The Jardine Arms looked out of doors. "He's unco like tha
+auld laird!" Auld Willy, that was over a hundred, raised a piping
+voice, "Did ye young things remember Gawin Elliot that was his
+great-grandfather ye'd be saying, 'Ye might think it was Gawin Elliot
+that was hangit!'" Mrs. Macmurdo came to her shop door. "Eh, the
+laird, wi' all the straw of all that's past alight in his heart!"
+
+Alexander answered the "good days," but he did not draw rein. He rode
+slowly up the steep village street and over the bare waste bit of hill
+until here was the manse, with the kirk beyond it. Coming out of the
+manse gate was the minister. Glenfernie checked his mare. All around
+spread a bare and lonely hilltop. The manse and the kirk and the
+minister's figure buttressed each the others with a grim strength. The
+wind swept around them and around Glenfernie.
+
+Mr. M'Nab, standing beside the laird, spoke earnestly. "We rejoice,
+Glenfernie, that you are about once more! There is the making in you
+of a grand man, like your father. It would have been down-spiriting if
+that son of Belial had again triumphed in mischief. The weak would
+have found it so."
+
+"What is triumph?"
+
+"Ye may well ask that! And yet," said M'Nab, "I know. It is the
+warm-feeling cloak that Good when it hath been naked wraps around it,
+seeing the spoiler spoiled and the wicked fallen into the pit that he
+digged!"
+
+"Aye, the naked Good."
+
+The minister looked afar, a dark glow and energy in his thin face.
+"They are in prison, and the scaffolds groan--they who would out with
+the Kirk and a Protestant king and in with the French and popery!"
+
+"Your general wrong," said Glenfernie, "barbed and feathered also for
+a Scots minister's own inmost nerve! And is not my wrong general
+likewise? Who hates and punishes falsity, though it were found in his
+own self, acts for the common good!"
+
+"Aye!" said the minister. "But there must be assurance that God calls
+you and that you hate the sin and not the sinner!"
+
+"Who assures the assurances? Still it is I!"
+
+Glenfernie rode on. Mr. M'Nab looked after him with a darkling brow.
+"That was heathenish--!"
+
+Alexander passed kirk and kirkyard. He went home and sat in the room
+in the keep, under his hand paper upon which he made figures,
+diagrams, words, and sentences. When the next day came he did not
+ride, but walked. He walked over the hills, with the kirk spire before
+him lifting toward a vast, blue serenity. Presently he came in sight
+of the kirkyard, its gravestones and yew-trees. He had met few persons
+upon the road, and here on the hilltop held to-day a balmy silence and
+solitude. As he approached the gate, to which there mounted five
+ancient, rounded steps of stone, he saw sitting on one of these a
+woman with a basket of flowers. Nearer still, he found that it was
+Gilian Barrow.
+
+She waited for him to come up to her. He took his place upon the
+steps. All around hung still and sunny space. The basket of flowers
+between them was heaped with marigolds, pinks, and pansies.
+
+"For Elspeth," said Gilian.
+
+"It is almost two years. You have ceased to grieve?"
+
+"Ah no! But one learns how to marry grief and gladness."
+
+"Have you learned that? That is a long lesson. But some are quicker
+than others or had learned much beforehand.... Where is Elspeth?"
+
+"Oh, she is safe, Glenfernie!"
+
+"I wanted her body safe--safe, warm, in my arms!"
+
+"Spirit and spirit. Meet spirit with spirit!"
+
+"No! I crave and hunger and am cold. Unless I warm myself--unless I
+warm myself--with anger and hatred!"
+
+"I wish it were not so!"
+
+"I had a friend.... I warm myself now in the hunt of a foe--in his
+look when he sees me!"
+
+Gilian smote her hands together. "So Elspeth would have loved that!
+So the smothered God in you loves that!"
+
+"It is the God in me that will punish him!"
+
+"Is it--is it, Glenfernie?"
+
+He made a wide gesture of impatience. "Cold--languid--pithless! You,
+Robin, Strickland, Alison Touris--"
+
+Gilian looked at her basket of marigolds, pinks, and pansies. "That
+word death.... I bring these here, but Elspeth is with me everywhere!
+There is a riddle--there is a strange, huge mistake. She must solve
+it, she must make that port of all ports--and you and I must make
+it.... It is a hard, heroic, long adventure!"
+
+"I speak of the pine-tree in the blast, and such as you would give me
+pansies! I speak of the eagle at the crag-top in the storm, and you
+offer butterflies!"
+
+"Ah, then, go and kill her lover and the man who was your friend!"
+
+Glenfernie rose from the step, in his face strong anger and denial. He
+stood, seeking for words, looking down upon the seated woman and her
+flowers. She met him with parted lips and a straight, fearless look.
+
+"Will you take half the flowers, Glenfernie, and put them for
+Elspeth?"
+
+"No. I cannot go there now!"
+
+"I thought you would not. Now I am Elspeth. I love her. I would give
+her gladness--serve her. She says, 'Let him alone! Do you not know
+that his own weird will bring him into dark countries and light
+countries, and where he is to go? Is your own tree to be made thwart
+and misshapen, that his may be reminded that there is rightness of
+growth? He is a tree--he is not a stone, nor will he become a stone.
+There is a law a little larger than your fretfulness that will take
+care of him! I like Glenfernie better when he is not a busybody!'"
+
+Alexander stared at her in anger. "Differences where I thought to find
+likeness--likenesses where I thought to find differences! He deceived
+me, fooled me, played upon me as upon a pipe; took my own--"
+
+"Ha!" said Gilian. "So you are going a-hunting for more reasons than
+one?--Elspeth, Elspeth! come out of it!--for Glenfernie, after all,
+avenges himself!"
+
+Alexander, looking like his father, spoke slowly, with laboring
+breath. "Had one asked me, I should have said that you above all might
+understand. But you, too, betray!" With a sweep of his arms abroad, a
+gesture abrupt and desolate, he turned. He quitted the sunny bare
+space, the kirkyard and the woman sitting with her basket of marigolds
+and pansies.
+
+But two nights later he came to this place alone.
+
+The moon was full. It hung like a wonder lantern above the hill and
+the kirk; it made the kirkyard cloth of silver. The yews stood unreal,
+or with a delicate, other reality. It was neither warm nor cold. The
+moving air neither struck nor caressed, but there breathed a sense of
+coming and going, unhurried and unperplexed, from far away to far
+away. The laird of Glenfernie crossed long grass to where, for a
+hundred years, had been laid the dead from White Farm. There was a
+mound bare to the sunlight thrown from the moon. He saw the flowers
+that Gilian had brought.
+
+The flowers were colorless in the moonlight--and yet they could be,
+and were, clothed with a hue of anger from himself. They lay before
+him purple-crimson. They were withered, but suddenly they had sap,
+life, fullness--but a distasteful, reminding life, a life in
+opposition! He took them and threw them away.
+
+Now the mound rested bare. He lay down beside it. He stretched his
+arms over it. "Elspeth!"--and "Elspeth!"--and "Elspeth!" But Elspeth
+did not answer--only the cool sunlight thrown back from the moon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+Ian traveled toward a pass through the Pyrenees. Behind him stretched
+difficult, hazardous, slow travel--weeks of it. Behind those weeks lay
+the voyage to Lisbon, and from Lisbon in a second boat north to Vigo.
+From Vigo to this day of forested slopes and brawling streams,
+steadily worsening road, ruder dwellings, more primitive, impoverished
+folk, rolled a time of difficulties small and great, like the mountain
+pebbles for number. It took will and wit at strain to dissolve them
+all, and so make way out of Spain into France--through France--to
+Paris, where were friends.
+
+Spanish travel was difficult at best--Spanish travel with scarcely any
+gold to travel on found the "best" quite winnowed out. Slow at all
+times, it grew, lacking money, to be like one of those dreams of
+retardation. Ian gathered and blew upon his philosophy, and took
+matters at last with some amusement, at times, even, with a sense of
+the enjoyable.
+
+He was not quite penniless. Those who had helped in his escape from
+Edinburgh had provided him gold. But, his voyage paid for, he must buy
+at Vigo fresh apparel and a horse. When at last he rode eastward and
+northward he was poor enough! Food and lodging must be bought for
+himself and his steed. Inns and innkeepers, chance folk applied to for
+guidance, petty officials in perennially suspicious towns--twenty
+people a day stood ready to present a spectral aspect of leech and
+gold-sucker! He was expert in traveling, but usually he had borne a
+purse quite like that of Fortunatus. Now he must consider that he
+might presently have to sell his horse--and it was not a steed of
+Roland's, to bring a great price! He might be compelled to go afoot
+into France. He might be sufficiently blessed if the millennium did
+not find him yet living by his wits in Spain. It was Spanish, that
+prospect! Turn what? Ian asked himself. Bull-fighter--fencing-master--
+gipsy--or brigand? He played with the notion of fencing-master. But he
+would have to sell his horse to provide room and equipment, and he
+must turn aside to some considerable town. Brigand would be easier, in
+these wild forests and rock fortresses that climbed and stood upon the
+sky-line. Matter enough for perplexity! But the sweep of forest and
+mountain wall was admirable--admirable the air, the freedom from the
+Edinburgh prison. Except occasionally, in the midst of some
+intensification of annoyance, he rode and maneuvered undetected.
+
+Past happenings might and did come across him in waves. He remembered,
+he regretted; he pursued a dialectic with various convenient divisions
+of himself. But all that would be lost for long times in the general
+miraculous variety of things! On the whole, going through Spain in the
+autumn weather, even with poverty making mouths alongside, was not a
+sorry business! Zest lived in pitting vigor and wit against mole hills
+threatening an aggregation into mountains! As for time, what was it,
+anyhow, to matter so much? He owned time and a wide world.
+
+Delay and delay and delay. In one town the alcalde kept him a week,
+denying him the road beyond while inquiries were made as to his
+identity or non-identity with some famed outlaw escaping from justice.
+Further on, his horse fell badly lame and he stayed day after day in a
+miserable village, lounging under a cork-tree, learning patois. There
+was a girl with great black eyes. He watched her, two or three times
+spoke to her. But when she saw how he must haggle over the price of
+food and lodging she laughed, and returned to the side of a muleteer
+with a sash and little bells upon his hat.
+
+All along the road fell these retardations. Then as the mountains
+loomed higher, the spirit of contradiction apparently grew tired and
+fell behind. For several days he traveled quite easily. "My Lady
+Fortune," asked Ian, "what is up your sleeve?"
+
+The air stayed smiling and sweet. In a town half mountain, half plain,
+he made friends at the inn with Don Fernando, son of an ancient,
+proud, decaying house, poor as poverty. Don Fernando had been in
+Paris, knew by hearsay England, and had heard Scotland mentioned.
+Spaniard and Scot drank together. The former was drawn into almost
+love of Ian. Here was a help against boundless ennui! Ian and his
+horse, and the small mail strapped behind the saddle, finally went off
+with Don Fernando to spend a week in his old house on the hillside
+just without the town. Here was poverty also, but yet sufficient acres
+to set a table and pour good wine and to make the horse forget the
+famine road behind him. Here were lounging and siesta, rest for body
+and mind, sweet "do well a very little!" Don Fernando would have kept
+the guest a second week and then a third.
+
+But Ian shook his head, laughed, embraced him, promised a return of
+good when the great stream made it possible, and set forth upon his
+further travel. The horse looked sleek, almost fat. The Scot's jaded
+wardrobe was cleaned, mended, refreshed. Living with Don Fernando were
+an elder sister and an ancient cousin who had fallen in love with the
+big, handsome Don, traveling so oddly. These had set hand-maidens to
+work, with the result that Ian felt himself spruce as a newly opened
+pink. And Don Fernando gave him a traveling-cloak--very fine--a last
+year's gift, it seemed, from a grandee he had obliged. Cold weather
+was approaching and its warmth would be grateful. Ian's great need was
+for money in purse. These new friends had so little of that that he
+chose not to ask for a loan. After all, he could sell the cloak!
+
+The day was fine, the country mounting as it were by stairs toward the
+mountains. Before him climbed a string of pack-mules. The merchant
+owning them and their lading traveled with a guard of stout young men.
+For some hours Ian had the merchant for companion and heard much of
+the woes of the region and the times, the miseries of travel, the
+cursed inns, bandits licensed and unlicensed, craft, violence, and
+robbery! The merchant bewailed all life and kept a hawk eye upon his
+treasure on the Spanish road. At last he and his guard, his mules and
+muleteers, turned aside into a skirting way that would bring him to a
+town visible at no great distance. Left alone, Ian viewed from a
+hilltop the roofs of this place, with a tower or two starting up like
+warning fingers. But his road led on through a mountain pass.
+
+The earth itself seemed to be climbing. The mountain shapes, little
+and big, gathered in herds. Cliffs, ravines, the hoarse song of water,
+the faces of few human folk, and on these written "Mountains,
+mountains! Live as we can! Catch who catch can!" After a time the road
+was deprived of even these faces. The Scot thought of home mountains.
+He thought of the Highlands. Above him and at some distance to the
+right appeared a distribution of cliffs that reminded him of that
+hiding-place after Culloden. He looked to see the birchwood, the
+wheeling eagle. The sun was at noon. Riding in a solitude, he almost
+dozed in the warm light. The Highlands and the eagle wheeling above
+the crag.... Black Hill and Glenfernie and White Farm and
+Alexander.... Life generally, and all the funny little figures running
+full tilt, one against another....
+
+His horse sprang violently aside, then stood trembling. Forms, some
+ragged, some attired with a violent picturesqueness, had started from
+without a fissure in the wood and from behind a huge wayside rock. Ian
+knew them at a glance for those brigands of whom he had heard mention
+and warning enough. Don Fernando had once described their practices.
+
+Resistance was idle. He chose instead a genial patience for his
+tower, and within it keen wits to keep watch. With his horse he was
+taken by the fierce, bedizened dozen up a gorge to so complete and
+secure a robber hold that Nature, when she made it, must have been in
+robber mood. Here were found yet others of the band, with a bedecked
+and mustached chief. He was aware that property, not life, answered to
+their desires. His horse, his fine cloak, his weapons, the small mail
+and its contents, with any article of his actual wearing they might
+fancy, and the little, little, little money within his purse--all
+would be taken. All in the luck! To-day to thee, to-morrow to me. What
+puzzled him was that evidently more was expected.
+
+When they condescended to direct speech he could understand their
+language well enough. Nor did they indulge in over-brutal handling;
+they kept a measure and reminded him sufficiently of old England's own
+highwaymen. Of course, like old England's own, they would become
+atrocious if they thought that circumstances indicated it. But they
+did not seem inclined to go out of their way to be murderous or
+tormenting. The only sensible course was to take things good-naturedly
+and as all in the song! The worst that might happen would be that he
+must proceed to France afoot, without a penny, lacking weapons, Don
+Fernando's cloak--all things, in short, but the bare clothing he stood
+in. To make loss as small as possible there were in order suavity,
+coolness, even gaiety!
+
+And still appeared the perplexing something he could not resolve. The
+over-fine cloak, the horse now in good condition, might have something
+to do with it, contrasting as they certainly did with the purse in
+the last stages of emaciation. And there seemed a studying of his
+general appearance, of his features, even. Two men in especial
+appeared detailed to do this. At last his ear caught the word
+"ransom."
+
+Now there was nobody in Spain knowing enough or caring enough of or
+for Ian Rullock to entertain the idea of parting with gold pieces in
+order to save his life. Don Fernando might be glad to see him live,
+but certainly had not the gold pieces! Moreover, it presently leaked
+fantastically out that the bandits expected a large ransom. He began
+to suspect a mistake in identity. That assumption, increasing in
+weight, became certainty. They looked him all around, they compared
+notes, they regarded the fine cloak, the refreshed steed. "English,
+senor, English?"
+
+"Scots. You do not understand that? Cousin to English."
+
+"English. We had word of your traveling--with plenty of gold."
+
+"It is a world of mistakes. I travel, but I have no gold."
+
+"It is a usual lack of memory of the truth. We find it often. You are
+traveling with escort--with another of your nation, your brother, we
+suppose. There are servants. You are rich. For some great freak you
+leave all in the town down there and ride on alone. Foreigners often
+act like madmen. Perhaps you meant to return to the town. Perhaps to
+wait for them in the inn below the pass. You have not gold in your
+purse because there is bountiful gold just behind you. Why hurt the
+beautiful truth? Sancho and Pedro here were in the inn-yard last
+night."
+
+Sancho's hoarse voice emerged from the generality. "It was dusk, but
+we saw you plainly enough, we are sure, senor! In your fine cloak,
+speaking English, discussing with a big tall man who rode in with you
+and sat down to supper with you and was of your rank and evidently, we
+think, your brother or close kinsman!"
+
+The chief nodded. "It is to him that we apply for your ransom. You,
+senor, shall write the letter, and Sancho and Pedro shall carry it
+down. It will be placed, without danger to us, in your brother's hand.
+We have our ways.... Then, in turn, your brother shall ride forth,
+with a single companion, from the town, and in a clear space that we
+shall indicate, put the ransom beneath a certain rock, turning his
+horse at once and returning the way he came. If the gold is put there,
+as much as we ask, and according to our conditions, you shall go free
+as a bird, senor, though perhaps with as little luggage as a bird. If
+we do not receive the ransom--why, then, the life of a bird is a
+little thing! We shall put you to death."
+
+Ian combated the profound mistake. What was the use? They did not
+expect him to speak truth, but they were convinced that they had the
+truth themselves. At last it came, on his part, to a titanic
+whimsicalness of assent. At least, assenting, he would not die in the
+immediate hour! Stubbornly refuse to do their bidding, and his thread
+of life would be cut here and now.
+
+"All events grow to seem unintelligible masks! So why quarrel with
+one mask more? Pen, ink, and paper?"
+
+All were produced.
+
+"I must write in English?"
+
+"That is understood, senor. Now this--and this--is what you are to
+write in English."
+
+The captive made a correct guess that not more than one or two of the
+captors could read Spanish, and none at all English.
+
+"Nevertheless, senor," said the chief, "you will know that if the gold
+is not put in that place and after that fashion that I tell you, we
+shall let you die, and that not easily! So we think that you will not
+make English mistakes any more than Spanish ones."
+
+Ian nodded. He wrote the letter. Sancho put it in his bosom and with
+Pedro disappeared from the dark ravine. The situation relaxed.
+
+"You shall eat, drink, sleep, and be entirely comfortable, senor,
+until they return. If they bring the gold you shall pursue your road
+at your pleasure even with a piece for yourself, for we are nothing if
+not generous! If they do not bring it, why, then, of course--!"
+
+Ian had long been bedfellow of wild adventure. He thought that he knew
+the mood in which it was best met. The mood represented the grist of
+much subtle effort, comparing, adjustment, and readjustment. He
+cultivated it now. The banditti admired courage, coolness, and good
+humor. They had provision of food and wine, the sun still shone warm.
+The robber hold was set amid dark, gipsy beauty.
+
+The sun went down, the moon came up. Ian, lying upon shaggy skins,
+knew well that to-morrow night--the night after at most--he might not
+see the sun descend, the moon arise. What then?
+
+Alexander Jardine, sailing from Scotland, came to Lisbon a month after
+Ian Rullock. He knew the name of the ship that had carried the
+fugitive, and fortune had it that she was yet in this port, waiting
+for her return lading. He found the captain, learned that Ian had
+transhipped north to Vigo. He followed. At Vigo he picked up a further
+trace and began again to follow. He followed across Spain on the long
+road to France. He had money, horses, servants when he needed them,
+skill in travel, a tireless, great frame, a consuming purpose. He made
+mistakes in roads and rectified them; followed false clues, then
+turned squarely from them and obtained another leading. He squandered
+upon the great task of dogging Ian, facing Ian, showing Ian, again and
+again showing Ian, the wrong that had been done, patience, wealth of
+kinds, a discovering and prophetic imagination. He traveled until at
+last here was the earth, climbing, climbing, and before him the
+forested slopes, the mountain walls, the great partition between Spain
+and France. An eagle would fly over it, and another eagle would follow
+him, for a nest had been robbed and a friendship destroyed!
+
+As the mountains enlarged he fell in with an Englishman of rank, a
+nobleman given to the study of literature and peoples, amateur on the
+way to connoisseurship, and now traveling in Spain. He journeyed _en
+prince_ with his secretary and his physician, servants and
+pack-horses, and, in addition, for at least this part of Spain, an
+armed escort furnished by the authorities, at his proper cost, against
+just those banditti dangers that haunted this strip of the globe. This
+noble found in the laird of Glenfernie a chance-met gentleman worth
+cultivating and detaining at his side as long as might be. They had
+been together three or four days when at eve they came to the largest
+inn of a town set at a short distance from the mountain pass through
+which ran their further road. Here, at dusk, they dismounted in the
+inn-yard, about them a staring, commenting crowd. Presently they went
+to supper together. The Englishman meant to tarry a while in this town
+to observe certain antiquities. He might stay a week. He urged that
+his companion of the last few days stay as well. But the laird of
+Glenfernie could not.
+
+"I have an errand, you see. I am to find something. I must go on."
+
+"Two days, then. You say yourself that your horses need rest."
+
+"They do.... I will stay two days."
+
+But when morning came the secretary and the physician alone appeared
+at table. The nobleman lay abed with a touch of fever. The physician
+reported that the trouble was slight--fatigue and a chill taken. A
+couple of days' repose and his lordship would be himself again.
+
+Glenfernie walked through the town. Returning to the inn, he found
+that the Englishman had asked for him. For an hour or two he talked or
+listened, sitting by the nobleman's bed. Leaving him at last, he went
+below to the inn's great room, half open to the courtyard and all the
+come and go of the place. It was late afternoon. He sat by a table
+placed before the window, and the river seemed to flow by him, and now
+he looked at it from a rocky island, and now he looked elsewhere. The
+room grew ruddy from the setting sun. An inn servant entered and
+busied himself about the place. After him came an aged woman, half
+gipsy, it seemed. She approached the seat by the window. Her worn
+mantle, her wide sleeve, seemed to touch the deep stone sill. She was
+gone like a moth. Glenfernie's eye discovered a folded paper lying in
+the window. It had not been there five minutes earlier. Now it lay
+before him like a sudden outgrowth from the stone. He put out a hand
+and took it up. The woman was gone, the serving-man was gone. Outside
+flowed the river. Alexander unfolded the paper. It was addressed to
+_Senor Nobody_. It lay upon his knee, and it was Ian's hand. His lips
+moved, his vision blurred. Then came steadiness and he read.
+
+What he read was a statement, at once tense and whimsical, of the
+predicament of the writer. The latter, recognizing the confusion of
+thought among his captors, wrote because he must, but did not truly
+expect any aid from Senor Nobody. The writing would, however, prolong
+life for two days, perhaps for three. If at the end of that time
+ransom were not forthcoming death would forthcome. Release would
+follow ransom. But Senor Nobody truly could not be expected to take
+interest! Most conceivably the stranger's lot must remain the
+stranger's lot. In that case pardon for the annoyance! If,
+miraculously, the bearer did find Senor Nobody--if Senor Nobody read
+this letter--if strangers were not strangers to Senor Nobody--if gold
+and mercy lay alike in Senor Nobody's keeping--then so and so must be
+done. Followed three or four lines of explicit directions. Did all the
+above come about, then truly would the undersigned, living, and
+pursuing his journey into France, and making return to Senor Nobody
+when he might, rest the latter's slave! Followed the signature, _Ian
+Rullock_.
+
+Alexander sat by the window, in the rocky island, and the Spanish
+river flowed by. It was dusk. Then came lights, and the English
+secretary and physician, with servants to lay the table and bring
+supper. Glenfernie ate and drank with the two men. His lordship was
+reported better, would doubtless be up to-morrow. The talk fell upon
+Greece, to which country the nobleman was, in the end, bound. Greek
+art, Greek literature, Greek myth. Here the secretary proved scholar
+and enthusiast, a liker especially of the byways of myth. He and
+Alexander voyaged here and there among them. "And you remember, too,"
+said the secretary, "the Cranes of Ibycus--"
+
+They rose at last from table. Secretary and physician must return to
+their patron. "I am going to hunt bed and sleep," said Glenfernie.
+"To-morrow, if his lordship is recovered, we'll go see that church."
+
+In the rude, small bedchamber he found his Spanish servant. Presently
+he would dismiss him, but first, "Tell me, Gil, of the banditti in
+these mountains."
+
+Gil told. The foreigner who employed him asked questions, referred
+intelligently from answer to answer, and at last had in hand a compact
+body of information. He bade Gil good night. Ways of banditti in any
+age or place were much the same!
+
+The room was small, with a rude and narrow bed. There was a window,
+small, too, but open to the night. Pouring through this there entered
+a vagrant procession of sound, with, in the interstices, a silence
+that had its own voice. As the night deepened the procession thinned,
+at last died away.
+
+When he undressed he had taken the letter to Senor Nobody and put it
+upon the table. Now, lying still and straight upon the bed in the dark
+room, there seemed a blacker darkness where it lay, four feet from
+him, a little above the level of his eyes. There it was, a square, a
+cube, of Egyptian night, hard, fierce, black, impenetrable.
+
+For a long time he kept a fixed gaze upon it. Beyond and above it
+glimmered the window. The larger square at last drew his eyes. He lay
+another long while, very still, with the window before him. Lying so,
+thought at last grew quiet, hushed, subdued. Very quietly, very
+sweetly, like one long gone, loved in the past, returning home, there
+slipped into view, borne upon the stream of consciousness, an old mood
+of stillness, repose, dawn-light by which the underneath of things was
+seen. Once it had come not infrequently, then blackness and hardness
+had whelmed it and it came no more. He had almost forgotten the feel
+of it.
+
+Presently it would go.... It did so, finding at this time a climate
+in which it could not long live. But it was powerfully a modifier....
+Glenfernie, dropping his eyes from the window, found the square that
+was the letter, a square of iron gray.
+
+A part of the night he lay still upon the narrow bed, a part he spent
+in slow walking up and down the narrow room, a part he stood
+motionless by the window. The dawn was faintly in the sky when at last
+he took from beneath the pillow his purse and a belt filled with gold
+pieces and sat down to count them over and compare the total with the
+figures upon a piece of paper. This done, he dressed, the light now
+gray around him. The letter to Senor Nobody lay yet upon the table. At
+last, dressed, he took it up and put it in the purse with the gold.
+Leaving the room, he waked his servant where he lay and gave him
+directions. A faint yellow light gleamed in the lowest east.
+
+He waited an hour, then went to the room where slept the secretary and
+the physician. They were both up and dressing. The physician had been
+to his patron's room. "Yes, his lordship was better--was awake--meant
+after a while to rise." Glenfernie would send in a request. Something
+had occurred which made him very desirous to see his lordship. If he
+might have a few minutes--? The secretary agreed to make the inquiry,
+went and returned with the desired invitation. Glenfernie followed him
+to the nobleman's chamber and was greeted with geniality. Seated by
+the Englishman's bed, he made his explanation and request. He had so
+much gold with him--he showed the contents of the belt and purse--and
+he had funds with an agent in Paris and again funds in Amsterdam. Here
+were letters of indication. With a total unexpectedness there had come
+to him in this town a call that he could not ignore. He could not
+explain the nature of it, but a man of honor would feel it imperative.
+But it would take nicely all his gold and so many pieces besides. He
+asked the loan of these, together with an additional amount sufficient
+to bring him through to Paris. Once there he could make repayment. In
+the mean time his personal note and word--The Englishman made no
+trouble at all.
+
+"I'll take your countenance and bearing, Mr. Jardine. But I'll make
+condition that we do travel together, after all, as far, at least, as
+Tours, where I mean to stop awhile."
+
+"I agree to that," said Glenfernie.
+
+The secretary counted out for him the needed gold. In the narrow room
+in which he had slept he put this with his own in a bag. He put with
+it no writing. There was nothing but the bare gold. Carrying it with
+him, he went out to find the horses saddled and waiting. With Gil
+behind him, he went from the inn and out of the town. The letter to
+Senor Nobody had given explicit enough direction. Clear of all
+buildings, he drew rein and took bearings. Here was the stream, the
+stump of a burned mill, the mountain-going road, narrower and rougher
+than the way of main travel. He followed this road; the horses fell
+into a plodding deliberateness of pace. The sunshine streamed warm
+around, but there was little human life here to feel its rays. After
+a time there came emergence into a bare, houseless, almost treeless
+plain or plateau. The narrow, little-traveled road went on upon the
+edge of this, but a bridle-path led into and across the bareness.
+Alexander followed it. Before him, across the waste, sprang cliffs
+with forest at their feet. But the waste was wide, and in the sun they
+showed like nothing more than a burnished, distant wall. His path
+would turn before he reached them. The plain's name might have been
+Solitariness. It lay naked of anything more than small scattered
+stones and bushes. There upgrew before him the tree to which he was
+bound. A solitary, twisted oak it shot out of the plain, its
+protruding roots holding stones in their grasp. Around was shelterless
+and bare, but the heightening wall of cliff seemed to be watching.
+Alexander rode nearer, dismounted, left Gil with the two horses, and,
+the bag of gold in his hand, walked to the tree. Here was the stone
+shaped like a closed hand. He put the ransom between the stone fingers
+and the stone palm. There was no word with it. Senor Nobody had no
+name. He turned and strode back to the horses, mounted, and with Gil
+rode from the naked, sunny plain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle lay a year in the future. Yet in Paris,
+under certain conditions and auspices, Scot or Englishman might dwell
+in security enough. The Jacobite remnant, foe to the British
+government, found France its best harbor. A quietly moving Scots
+laird, not Jacobite, yet might be lumped by the generality with those
+forfeited Scots gentlemen who, having lost all in a cause urged and
+supported by France, now, without scruple, took from King Louis a
+pension that put food in their mouths, coats on their backs, roofs
+over their heads. Alexander Jardine, knowing the city, finding quiet
+lodgings in a quiet street, established himself in Paris. It was
+winter now, cold, bright weather.
+
+In old days he had possessed not a few acquaintances in this city. A
+circle of thinkers, writers, painters, had powerfully attracted him.
+Circumstances brought him now again into relation with one or two of
+this group. He did not seek them as formerly he had done. But neither
+could he be said to avoid companionship when it came his way. It was
+not his wish to become singular or solitary. But he was much alone,
+and while he waited for Ian he wandered in the rich Paris of old,
+packed life. Street and Seine-side and market knew him; he stood in
+churches, and before old altarpieces smoked by candles. Booksellers
+remarked him. Where he might he heard music; sometimes he would go to
+the play. He carried books to his lodging. He sat late at night over
+volumes new and old. The lamp burned dim, the fire sank; he put aside
+reading and knowledge gained through reading, and sat, sunk deep into
+a dim desert within himself; at last got to bed and fell to sleep and
+to dreams that fatigued, that took him nowhere. When the next day was
+here he wandered again through the streets.
+
+One of his old acquaintances he saw oftener than he did others. This
+was a scholar, a writer, an encyclopedist of to-morrow who liked the
+big Scot and to be in his company. One day, chance met, they leaned
+together upon the parapet of a bridge, and watched the crossing
+throng. "One's own particles in transit! Can you grasp that,
+Deschamps?"
+
+"I have heard it advanced. No. It is hard to hold."
+
+"It is like a mighty serpent. You would think you had it and then it
+is gone.... If one could hold it it would transform the world."
+
+"Yes, it would. At what are you staring?"
+
+"The serpent is gone. I thought that I saw one whom I do not hold to
+be art and part with me." He gazed after a crossing horseman. "No!
+There was merely a trick of him. It is some other."
+
+"The man for whom you are waiting?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Deschamps returned to the subject of a moment before. "It is likely
+that language bewrays much more than we think it does. I say 'the
+man.' You echo it. And I am 'man.' And you are 'man.' 'Man'--'Man'!
+Every instant it is said. Yet the identity that we state we never
+assume!"
+
+"I said that we could not hold the serpent."
+
+Ten days afterward he did see Ian. The latter, after a slow and
+difficult progress through France, came afoot into Paris. He sought,
+and was glad enough to find, an old acquaintance and sometime
+fellow-conspirator--Warburton.
+
+"Blessed friendship!" he said, and warmed himself by Warburton's fire.
+Something within him winced, and would, if it could, have put forward
+a different phrase.
+
+Warburton poured wine for him. "Now tell your tale! For months those
+of us who remained in Paris have heard nothing but Trojan woes!"
+
+Ian told. Culloden and after--Edinburgh--Lisbon--Vigo--travel in
+Spain--Senor Nobody--
+
+"That was a curious adventure! And you don't know the ransomer's
+name?"
+
+"Not I! Senor Nobody he rests."
+
+"Well, and after that?"
+
+Ian related his wanderings from the Pyrenees up to Paris. Scotland,
+Spain, and France, the artist in him painted pictures for
+Warburton--painted with old ableness and abandon, and, Warburton
+thought, with a new subtlety. The friend hugged his knees and enjoyed
+it like a well-done play. Here was Rullock's ancient spirit, grown
+more richly appealing! Trouble at least had not downed him. Warburton,
+who in the past year had been thrown in contact with a number whom it
+had downed, and who had suffered depression thereby, felt gratitude to
+Ian Rullock for being larger, not smaller, than usual.
+
+At last, the fire still burning, Ian warmed and refreshed, they
+wheeled from retrospect into the present. Warburton revealed how
+thoroughly shattered were Stewart hopes.
+
+"I begin to see, Rullock, that we've simply passed those things by. We
+can't go back to that state of mind and affairs."
+
+"I don't want to go back."
+
+"I like to hear you say that. I hear so much whining the other way!
+Well, as a movement it's over.... And the dead are dead, and the
+scarred and impoverished will have to pick themselves up."
+
+"Quite so. Is there any immediate helping hand?"
+
+"King Louis gives a pension. It's not much, but it keeps one from
+starving. And as for you, I've in keeping a packet for you from
+England. It reached me through Goodworth, the India merchant. I've a
+notion that your family will manage to put in your hand some annual
+amount. Of course your own fortune is sequestered and you can return
+neither to England nor to Scotland."
+
+"My aunt may have had faith that I was living. She would do all that
+she could to help.... No, I'll not go back."
+
+"Your chance would lie in some post here. Take up old acquaintances
+where they have power, and recommend yourself to new ones with power.
+Great ladies in especial," said Warburton.
+
+"We haven't passed that by?"
+
+"Not yet, Rullock, not yet!"
+
+Ian dreamed over the fire. At last he stretched his arms. "Let us go
+sleep, Warburton! I have come miles...."
+
+"Yes, it is late. Oh, one thing more! Alexander Jardine is in Paris."
+
+"Alexander!"
+
+"I don't know what he is doing here. In with the writing, studying
+crew, I suppose. I came upon him by accident, near the Sorbonne. He
+did not see me and I did not speak."
+
+"I'll not avoid him!"
+
+"I remember your telling me that you had quarreled. That was the eve
+of your leaving Paris in the springtime, before the Prince went to
+Scotland. You haven't made it up?"
+
+"No. I suppose we'll never make it up."
+
+"What was it over?"
+
+"I can't tell you that.... It had a double thread. Did he come to
+Paris, I wonder, because he guessed that I would bring up here?" He
+rose and stood staring down into the fire. "I think that he did so.
+Well, if he means to follow me through the world, let him follow! And
+now no more to-night, Warburton! I want sleep--sleep--sleep!"
+
+The next day and the next and the next began a new French life. He had
+luck, or he had the large momentum of a personality not negligible, an
+orb covered with a fine network of enchanter's symbols. The packet
+from England held money, with an engagement to forward a like sum
+twice a year. It was not a great sum, but such as it was he did not in
+the least scorn it. It had come, after all, from Archibald
+Touris--but Ian knew the influence behind that.
+
+Warburton presented his name to the Minister who dispensed King
+Louis's fund for Scots gentlemen concerned in the late attempt, losers
+of all, and now destitute in France. So much would come out of that!
+The two together waited upon monseigneur in whose coach they had once
+crossed the Seine. He had blood ties with Stewart kings of yesterday,
+and in addition to that evidenced a queer, romantic fondness for lost
+causes, and a willingness to ferry across rivers those who had been
+engaged in them. Now he displayed toward the Englishman and the Scot a
+kind of eery, distant graciousness. Ah yes! he would speak here and
+there of Monsieur Ian Rullock--he would speak to the King. If there
+were things going _ces messieurs_ might as well have some good of
+them! Out of old acquaintances in Paris Ian gathered not a few who
+were in position to further new fortunes. Some of these were men and
+some were women. He took a lodging, neither so good nor so bad.
+Warburton found him a servant. He obtained fine clothes, necessary
+working-garb where one pushed one's fortune among fine folk. The more
+uncertain and hazardous looked his fortunes the more he walked and
+spoke as though he were a golden favorite of the woman with the wheel.
+
+All this moved rapidly. He had not been in Paris a week ere again, as
+many times before, he had the stage all set for Success to walk forth
+upon it! But it had come December--December--December, and he looked
+forward to that month's passing.
+
+He had not seen Alexander. Then, in the middle of the month he found
+himself one evening in a peacock cluster of fine folk, at the
+theater--a famous actress to be viewed in a comedy grown the rage. The
+play was nearly over when he saw Alexander in the pit, turned from the
+stage, gazing steadily upon him. Ian placed himself where he might
+still see him, and returned the gaze.
+
+Going out when the play was over, the two met face to face in the
+lighted space between the doors. Each was in company of others--Ian
+with a courtier, decked and somewhat loudly laughing group, Glenfernie
+with a painter of landscape, Deschamps, and an Oriental, member of
+some mission to the West. Meeting so, they stopped short. Their
+nostrils dilated, there seemed to come a stirring over their bodies.
+Inwardly they felt a painful constriction, a contraction to something
+hard, intent, and fanged. This was the more strongly felt by
+Alexander, but Ian felt it, too. Did Glenfernie mean to dog him
+through life--think that he would be let to do so? Alone in a forest,
+very far back, they might, at this point, have flown at each other's
+throat. But they had felled many forests since the day when just that
+was possible.... The thing conventionally in order for such a moment
+as the present was to act as though that annihilation which each
+wished upon the other had been achieved. All that they had shared
+since the day when first they met, boys on a heath in Scotland, should
+be instantaneously blotted out. Two strangers, jostled face to face in
+a playhouse, should turn without sign that there had ever been that
+heath. So, symbolically, annihilation might be secured! For a moment
+each sought for the blank eyes, the unmoved stone face.
+
+As from a compartment above sifted down a dry light with great power
+of lighting. It came into Alexander's mind, into that, too, of Ian....
+How absurd was the human animal! All this saying the opposite left the
+truth intact. They were not strangers, each was quite securely seated
+in the other. Self-annihilation--self-oblivion!... All these farcical
+high horses!... Men went to see comedies and did not see their own
+comedy.
+
+The laird of Glenfernie and Ian Rullock each very slightly and coldly
+acknowledged the other's presence. No words passed. But the slow
+amenity of life bent by a fraction the head of each, just parted the
+lips of each. Then Alexander turned with an abrupt movement of his
+great body and with his companions was swallowed by the crowd.
+
+On his bed that night, lying straight with his hands upon his breast,
+he had for the space of one deep breath an overmastering sense of the
+suaveness of reality. Crudity, angularity, harshness, seemed to
+vanish, to dissolve. He knew dry beds of ancient torrents that were a
+long and somewhat wide wilderness of mere broken rock, stone piece by
+stone piece, and only the more jagged edges lost and only the surface
+worn by the action, through ages, of water. It was as though such a
+bed grew beneath his eyes meadow smooth--smoother than that--smooth as
+air, air that lost nothing by yielding--smooth as ether that, yielding
+all, yielded nothing.... The moment went, but left its memory. As the
+moment was large so was its memory.
+
+He fought against it with tribes of memories, lower and dwarfish, but
+myriads strong. The bells from some convent rang, the December stars
+blazed beyond his window, he put out his arms to the December cold.
+
+Ian, despite that moment in the playhouse, looked for the arrival of a
+second challenge from Glenfernie. For an instant it might be that they
+had seen that things couldn't be so separate, after all! That there
+was, as it were, some universal cement. But instants passed, and,
+indubitably, the world was a broken field! Enmity still existed,
+full-veined. It would be like this Alexander, who had overshot another
+Alexander, to send challenge after challenge, never to rest satisfied
+with one crossing of weapons, with blood drawn once! Or if there was
+no challenge, no formal duel, still there would be duel. He would
+pursue--he would cry, "Turn!"--there would be perpetuity of encounter.
+To the world's end there was to be the face of menace, of old
+reproach--the arrows dropped of pain of many sorts. "In short,
+vengeance," said Ian. "Vengeance deep as China! When he used to deny
+himself revenge in small things it was all piling up for this!... What
+I did slipped the leash for him! Well, aren't we evened?"
+
+What he looked for came, brought by Deschamps. The two met in a field
+outside Paris, with seconds, with all the conventionally correct
+paraphernalia. The setting differed from that of their lonely fight on
+a Highland mountain-side. But again Ian, still the better swordsman,
+wounded Alexander. This time he gave--willed perhaps to give--a slight
+hurt.
+
+"That is nothing!" said Glenfernie. "Continue--" But the seconds,
+coming between them, would not have it so. It was understood that
+their principals had met before, and upon the same count. Blood had
+been drawn. It was France--and mere ugly tooth-and-claw business not
+in favor. Blood had flowed--now part!
+
+"'Must' drives then to-day," said Alexander. "But it is December
+still, Ian Rullock!"
+
+"Turn the world so, if you will, Glenfernie!" answered the other. "And
+yet there is June somewhere!"
+
+They left the field. Alexander, going home in a hired coach with
+Deschamps, sat in silence, looking out of the window. His arm was
+bandaged and held in a sling.
+
+"They breed determined foes in Scotland," said Deschamps.
+
+"That Scotland is in me," Glenfernie answered. "That Scotland and that
+December."
+
+Three days later he wandered alone in Paris, came at last to old stone
+steps leading down to the river, in an unpopulous quarter. A few boats
+lay fastened to piles, but the landing-place hung deserted in the
+winter sunlight. There lacked not a week of Christmas. But the season
+had been mild. To-day was not cold, and stiller than still.
+Glenfernie, his cloak about him, sat upon the river steps and watched
+the stream. It went by, and still it stood there before him. It came
+from afar, and it went to afar, and still it shone where his hand
+might touch it. It turned like a wheel, from the gulf to the height
+and around again. He followed its round--ocean and climbing vapor,
+cloud, rain, and far mountain springs, descent and the mother sea. The
+mind, expanding, ceased to examine radius by radius, but held the
+whole wheel. Alexander sat in inner quiet, forgetting December.
+
+Turning from that contemplation, he yet remained still, looking now at
+the sunshine on the steps.... There seemed to reach him, within and
+from within, rays of color and fragrance, the soul of spice pinks,
+marigolds, and pansies.... Then, within and from within, Elspeth was
+with him.
+
+Dead! She was not dead.... Of all idle words--!
+
+It was not as a shade--it was not as a memory, or not as the poor
+things that were called memory! But she came in the authority and
+integrity of herself, that was also, most dearly, most marvelously,
+himself as well--permeative, penetrative, real, a subtle breath named
+Elspeth! So subtle, so wide and deep, elastic, universal, with no
+horizons that he could see.... To and fro played the tides of
+knowledge.
+
+Elspeth all along--sunshines and shadows--Elspeth a wide, living
+life--not crushed into the two moments upon which he had brooded--not
+the momentary Elspeth who had walked the glen with him, not the
+momentary Elspeth lifted from the Kelpie's Pool, borne in his arms,
+cold, rigid, drowned, a long, long way! But Elspeth, integral,
+vibrant, living--Elspeth of centillions of moments--Elspeth a
+beautiful power moving strongly in abundant space....
+
+His form stayed moveless upon the river steps while the wave of
+realization played.
+
+The experience linked itself with that of the other night when the
+stony bed of existence, broken, harsh, irregular, had suddenly
+dissolved into connections myriad wide, deep, and fine.... He had
+prated with philosophers of oneness. Then what he had prated of had
+been true! There was a great difference between talking of and
+touching truth....
+
+But he could not hold the touch. The wings flagged, he fell into the
+jungle of words. His body turned upon the steps. The caves and dens of
+his being began to echo with cries and counter-cries.
+
+Hurt? Had she not been hurt at all? But she _was_ hurt--poisoned,
+ruined, drawn to death! Had she long and wide and living power to heal
+her own harm? Still was it not there--he would have it there!
+
+Ian Rullock! With a long, inward, violent recoil Alexander shrank into
+the old caves of himself. All, the magic web of color and fragrance
+dwindled, came to be a willow basket filled with White Farm flowers
+placed upon the kirkyard steps.
+
+Ian Rullock had stolen her--Ian, not Alexander, had been her lover,
+kissed her, clasped her, there in the glen! Ian, the Judas of
+friendship--thief of a comrade's bliss--cheat, murderer, mocker, and
+injurer!
+
+The wave of oneness fled.
+
+Glenfernie, looking like the old laird his father, his cloak wrapped
+around him, feeling the December air, left the river steps, wandered
+away through Paris.
+
+But when he was alone with the night he tried to recover the wave. It
+had been so wonderful. Even the faint, faint echo, the ghostly
+afterglow, were exquisite; were worth more than anything he yet had
+owned. He tried to recover the earlier part of the wave, separating it
+from the later flood that had seemed critical of righteous wrath, just
+punishment. But it would not come back on those terms.... But yet he
+wanted it, wanted it, longed for it even while he warred against it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+That was one December. The year made twelve steps and here was
+December again. With it came to Ian a proffer from the nobleman of the
+coach across the Seine. Some ancient business, whether of soul or
+sense, carried him to Rome. Monsieur Ian Rullock--said to be for the
+moment banished from a certain paradise--might find it in his interest
+to come with him--say as traveling companion. Ian found it so.
+Monseigneur was starting at once. Good! let us start.
+
+Ian despatched his servant to the lodging known to be occupied by the
+laird of Glenfernie. The man had a note to deliver. Alexander took it
+and read:
+
+     GLENFERNIE,--I am quitting Paris with the Duc
+     de ----, for Rome.--IAN RULLOCK.
+
+The man gone, Alexander put fire to the missive and burned it, after
+which he walked up and down, up and down the wide, bare room. When
+some time had passed he came back to chair and table, inkwell and pen,
+and a half-written letter. The quill drove on:
+
+     ... None could do better by the estate than you--not I nor
+     any other. So I beg of you to stay, dear Strickland, who
+     have stayed by us so long!
+
+There followed a page of business detail--inquiries--expressed
+wishes. Glenfernie paused. Before him, propped against a volume of old
+lore, stood a small picture;--Orestes asleep in the grove of the
+Furies. He sat leaning back in his chair, regarding it. He had found
+it and purchased it months before, and still he studied it. His eyes
+fell to the page; he wrote on:
+
+     You ask no questions, and yet I know that you question.
+     Well, I will tell you--knowing that you will strain out and
+     give to others only what should be given.... He has been,
+     and I have been, in Paris a year. He and I have fought three
+     times--fought, that is, as men call fighting. Once upon that
+     mountain-side at home, twice here. Now he is going--and I am
+     going--to Rome. Shall I fight him again--with metal digged
+     from the earth, fashioned and sharpened in some red-lighted
+     shop of the earth? I am not sure that I shall--rather, I
+     think that I shall not.... Is there ever a place where a
+     kind of growth does not go on? There is a moonrise in me
+     that tells me that that fighting is to be scorned. But what
+     shall I do, seeing that he is my foe?... Ah, I do not
+     know--save haunt him, save bring and bring again my inner
+     man, to clinch and wrestle with and throw, if may be, his
+     inner man. And to see that he knows that I do this--that it
+     tells back upon him--through and through tells back!... It
+     has been a strange year. Now and then I am aware of curious
+     far tides, effects from some giant orb of being. But I go
+     on.... For my daily life in Paris--here it is, your open
+     page!... You see, I still seek knowledge, for all your gibe
+     that I sought darkness. And now, as I go to Rome--
+
+He wrote on, changing now to details as to communication, placing of
+moneys, and such matters. At length came references to the last home
+news, expressions of trust and affection. He signed his name, folded,
+superscribed and sealed the letter, then sat on, studying the picture
+before him.
+
+Monseigneur, with gold, with fine horses, with an eery, swooping,
+steadiness of direction, journeyed fast. He and his traveling
+companion reached Rome early in February. There was a villa, there
+were attendants, there was the Frenchman's especial circle, set with
+bizarre jewels, princes of the Church, Italian nobles of his
+acquaintance, exiles, a charlatan of immense note, certain ladies. He
+only asked of his guest, Monsieur Rullock, that he help him to
+entertain the whole chaplet, giving to his residence in Rome a certain
+splendid virility.
+
+February showed skies like sapphire. There drew on carnival week.
+Masks and a wildness of riot--childish, too--
+
+Ian leaned against the broken base of an ancient statue, set in the
+villa garden, at a point that gave a famous view. Around, the
+almond-trees were in bloom. The marble Diana had gazed hence for so
+many years, had seen so much that might make the dewy greenwood
+forgotten! It was mid-afternoon and flooding light. Here Rome basked,
+half-asleep in a dream of sense; here the ant city worked and worked.
+
+Ian stood between tides, behind him a forenoon, before him an evening
+of carnival participation. In the morning he had been with a stream of
+persons; presently, with the declining sun, would be with another.
+Here was an hour or two of pause, time of day for rest with
+half-closed eyes. He looked over the pale rose wave of the almonds, he
+saw Peter's dome and St. Angelo. He was conscious of a fatigue of his
+powers, a melancholy that they gave him no more than they did. "How it
+is all tinsel and falsetto!... I want a clean, cold, searching
+wave--desert and night--not life all choked with wax tapers and
+harlequins! I want something.... I don't know what I want. I only know
+I haven't got it!"
+
+His arm moved upon the base of the statue. He looked up at the white
+form with the arrow in its hands. "Self-containment.... What, goddess,
+you would call chastity all around?... All the spilled self somehow
+centered. But just that is difficult--difficult--more difficult than
+anything Hercules attempted. Oh me!" He sat down beneath the cypress
+that stood behind the statue and rested his head within his hands.
+From Rome, on all sides, broke into the still light trumpets and
+bell-ringing, pipes and drums, shout and singing. It sounded like a
+thousand giant cicadae. A group of masks went through the garden, by
+the Diana figure. They threw pine cones and confetti at the gold-brown
+foreigner seated there. One wore an ass's head, another was dressed as
+a demon with horns and tail, a third rolled as Bacchus, a fourth,
+fifth, and sixth were his maenads. All went wildly by, the clamor of
+the city swelled.
+
+This was first day of carnival. Succeeding days, succeeding nights,
+mounted each a stage to heights of folly. Starred all through was
+innocent merrymaking, license held in leash. But the gross, the
+whirling, and the sinister elements came continuously and more
+strongly into play. Measured sound grew racket, camaraderie turned
+into impudence. Came at last pandemonium. All without Rome--Campagna
+and mountains--were in Rome. Peasant men and women slept, when they
+slept, in and beneath carts and huge wine-wagons camped and parked in
+stone forests of imperial ruins. Artisan, mechanic, and merchant Rome
+lightened toil and went upon the hunt for pleasure, dropping servility
+in the first ditch. Foreigners, artists, men from everywhere, roved,
+gazed, and listened, shared. The great made displays, some with
+beauty, some of a perverted and monstrous taste. The lords of the
+Church nodded, looked sleepily or alertly benevolent. At times all
+alike turned mere populace. Courtesans thronged, the robber and the
+assassin found their prey. All men and women who might entertain, ever
+so coarsely, ever so poorly, were here at market. Mummers and players,
+musicians, dancers, jugglers, gipsies, and fortune-tellers floated
+thick as May-flies. Voices, voices, and every musical instrument--but
+all set in a certain range, and that not the deep nor the sweet. So it
+seemed, and yet, doubtless, by searching might have been found the
+deep and the sweet. Certainly the air of heaven was sweet, and it went
+in and between.
+
+All who might or who chose went masked. So few did not choose that
+street and piazza seemed filled with all orders of being and moments
+of time. Terrible, grotesque, fantastic, pleasing, went the rout, and
+now the hugest crowd was here and now it was there, and now there were
+moments of even diffusion. At night the lights were in multitude, and
+in multitude the flaring and strange decorations. Day and night swung
+processions, stood spectacles, huge symbolic movements and attitudes,
+grown obscure and molded to the letter, now mere stage effects. Day
+by day through carnival week the noise increased, restraint lessened.
+
+At times Ian was in company with monseigneur and those who came to the
+villa; at times he sought or was sought by others that he knew in
+Rome, fared into carnival with them. Much more rarely he dipped into
+the swirl alone.
+
+The saturnalia drew toward its close. Ash Wednesday, like a great
+gray-sailed ship, was seen coming large into port. The noise grew
+wild, license general. All available oil must be poured into the fire
+of the last day of pleasures. Ian was to have been with monseigneur's
+party gathered to view a pageant lit by torches of wax, then to drink
+wine, then, in choice masks, to break in upon a dance of nymphs, whirl
+away with black or brown eyes.... It was the program, but at the last
+he evaded it, slipped from the villa, chose solitary going. Why, he
+did not know, save that he felt aching satiety.
+
+Here in the streets were half-lights, afterglow from the sunken sun
+and smoky torches. The latter increased in number, the oil-lamps,
+great and small, were lit, the tapers of various qualities and
+thicknesses. Where there were open spaces vast heaps of seasoned wood
+now flaming caused processions of light and shadow among ruins,
+against old triumphal arches, against churches and dwellings old,
+half-old, and new, lived in, chanted in still, intact and usable.
+Above was star-sown night, but Rome lay under a kobold roof of her own
+lighting. Noise held grating sway, mere restless motion enthroned with
+her. Worlds of drunken grasshoppers in endless scorched plains! The
+masks seemed now demoniac, less beauty than ugliness.
+
+Ian found himself on the Quirinal, in the great ragged space dominated
+by the Colossi. Here burned a bonfire huge enough to make Plutonian
+day, and here upon the fringes of that light he encountered a carnival
+brawl, and became presently involved in it. He wore a domino striped
+black and silver, and a small black mask, a black hat with wide brim
+and a long, curling silver feather. He was tall, broad-shouldered,
+noticeable.... The quarrel had started among unmasked peasants, then
+had swooped in a numerous band dressed as ravens. Light-fingered
+gentry, inconspicuously clad, aided in provoking misunderstanding that
+should shake for them the orchard trees. A company of wine-bibbers
+with monstrous, leering masks, staggering from a side-street, fell
+into the whirlpool. With vociferation and blows the whole pulled here
+and there, the original cause of the falling out buried now in a host
+of new causes. Ian, caught in an eddy, turned to make way out of it. A
+peasant woman, there with a group from some rock village, received a
+chance buffet, so heavy that she cried out, staggered, then, pushed
+against in the melee, fell upon the earth. The raven crew threatened
+trampling. "_Jesu Maria!_" she cried, and tried to raise herself, but
+could not. Ian, very near her, took a step farther in and, stooping,
+lifted her. But now the ravens chose to fall foul of him. The woman
+was presently gone, and her peasant fellows.... He was beating off a
+drunken Comus crew, with some of active ill-will. His dress was
+rich--he was not Roman, evidently--the surge had foamed and dragged
+across from the bonfire and the open place to the dark mouth of a poor
+street. Many a thing besides light-hearted gaieties happened in
+carnival season.
+
+He became aware that a friendly person had come up, was with him
+beating off raven, gorgon, and satyr. He saw that this person was very
+big, and caught an old, oft-noted trick in the swing of his arm.
+To-night, in carnival time, when there was trouble, it seemed quite
+natural and with a touch of home that Old Steadfast should loom forth.
+
+A clang of music, shouting, and an oncoming array of lights helped to
+daunt band of ravens and drunken masks. A procession of fishermen with
+nets and monsters of the sea approached, went by. The attackers merged
+in the throng that attended or followed, went away with innocent
+shouts and songs. A second push followed the first, a great crowd of
+masks and spectators bound for a piazza through which was to pass one
+of the final large pageants. This wave carried with it Ian and
+Alexander. On such a night, where every sea was tumult, one
+indication, one propelling touch, was as good as another. The two went
+on in company. Alexander was not masked. Ian was, but that did not
+to-night hide him from the other. They came into the flaringly lighted
+place. Around stood old ruins, piers, broken arches and columns, and
+among these modern houses. For the better viewing of the spectacle
+banks of seats had been built, tier upon tier rising high, propped
+against what had been ancient bath or temple. The crowd surged to
+these, filling every stretch and cranny not yet seized upon. There
+issued that the tiers were packed; dark, curving, mounting rows where
+foot touched shoulder. The piazza turned amphitheater.
+
+Still, in this carnival night, Ian and Alexander found themselves
+together. They were sitting side by side, a third of the way between
+pavement and the topmost row. They sat still, broodingly, in a cloud
+of things rememberable, no distinct images, but all their common past,
+good and bad, and the progress from one to the other, making as it
+were one chord, or a mist of one color. They did not reason about this
+momentary oneness, but took it as it came. It was carnival season.
+
+Yet the cloud dripped honey, the color was clear and not unrestful,
+the chord sweet and resounding.
+
+The pageant, fantastic, towering, red and purple lighted, passed by.
+The throng upon the seats moved, rose, struck heavily with their feet,
+going down the narrow ways. Many torches had been extinguished, many
+that were carried had gone on, following the last triumphal car. Here
+were semi-darkness, great noise and confusion--weight, too, pressing
+upon ground that long ago had been honeycombed; where the crypt of a
+three-hundred-year-old church touched through an archway old priest
+paths beneath a vanished temple, that in turn gave into a mixed ruin
+of dungeons and cellars opening at last to day or night upon a
+hillside at some distance from the place of raised benches. Now, the
+crowd pressing thickly, the earth crust at one point trembled,
+cracked, gave way. Scaffolding and throng came with groans and cries
+into a very cavern. Those that were left above, high on narrow,
+overswaying platforms, with shouts of terror pushed back from the pit
+mouth, managed with accidents, injuries enough, to get to firmer
+earth. Then began, among the braver sort, rescue of those who had gone
+down with soil and timbers. What with the darkness and the confused
+and sunken ruin, this was difficult enough.
+
+Ian and Alexander, unhurt, clambered down the standing part and by the
+light of congregated and improvised torches helped in that rescue, and
+helped strongly. Many were pinned beneath wood, smothered by the
+caving earth. The rent was wide and in places the ruin afire. Groans,
+cries, appeals shook the hearts of the carnival crowd. All would now
+have helped, but it was not possible for many. There must be strength
+to descend into the pit and work there.
+
+A beam pinned a man more than near a creeping flame. The two Scots
+beat out that fire. Glenfernie heaved away the beam, Ian drew out the
+man, badly hurt, moaning of wife and child. Glenfernie lifted him,
+mounted with him, over heaped debris, by uncertain ledge and step,
+until other arms, outstretched, could take him. Turning back, he took
+from Ian a woman's form, lifted it forth. Down again, the two worked
+on. Others were with them, there was made a one-minded ring, folly
+forgot.
+
+At last it seemed that all were rescued. A few men only moved now in
+the hollow, peering here and there. The fire had taken headway; the
+gulf, it was evident, would presently be filled with flame. The heat
+beat back those at the rim. "Come out! Come out, every one!" The
+rescuers began to clamber forth.
+
+Came down a roaring pile of red-lit timbers, with smoke and sparks. It
+blocked the way for Alexander and Ian. Turning, here threatened a
+pillar of choking murk, red-tongued. Behind them was a gaping, narrow
+archway. Involuntary recoil before that stinging push of smoke brought
+them in under this. They were in a passageway, but when again they
+would have made forth and across to the side of the pit, and so, by
+climbing, out of it, they found that they could not. Before them lay
+now a mere field of fire, and the blowing air drove a biting smoke
+against them.
+
+"Move back, until this burns itself out! The earth gave into some kind
+of underground room. This is a passage."
+
+It stretched black behind them. Glenfernie caught up a thick, arm-long
+piece of lighted wood that would answer for brand. They worked through
+a long vaulted tunnel, turned at right angles, and came into what
+their torch showed to have been an ancient chapel. In a niche stood a
+broken statue, on the wall spread a painting of St. Christopher in
+midstream.
+
+"Shall we go on? There must be a way out of this maze."
+
+"If the torch will last us through."
+
+They passed out of the chapel into a place where of old the dead had
+been buried. They moved between massy pillars, by the shelves of stone
+where the bones lay in the dust. It seemed a great enough hall. At the
+end of this they discovered an upward-going stair, but it was old and
+broken, and when they mounted it they found that it ended flat against
+thick stone, roof to it, pavement, perhaps, to some old church. They
+saw by a difference in the flags where had been space, the stair
+opening into the hollow of the church; but now was only stone, solid
+and thick. They struck against it, but it was moveless, and in the
+church, if church there were above, none in the dead night to hear
+them. They came down the stair, and through a small, half-blocked
+doorway stumbled into a labyrinth of passages and narrow chambers.
+They found old pieces of wood--what had been a wine-cask, what might
+have had other uses. They broke these into torch lengths, lighting one
+from another as that burned down. These underways did not seem wholly
+neglected, buried, and forgotten. There lacked any total blocking or
+demolition, and there was air. But intricacy and uncertainty reigned.
+
+The mood of the amphitheater when they had sat side by side claimed
+them still. There had been a reversion or a coming into fresh space
+where quarrel faded like a shadow before light. The light was a
+golden, hazy one, made up of myriads of sublimed memories,
+associations, judgments, conclusions. Nothing defined emerged from it;
+it was simply somewhat golden, somewhat warm light, as from a sun well
+under the horizon--a kind of dreamy well-being as of old Together,
+unquestioning Acceptance. Suddenly aroused, each might have cried,
+"For the moment--it was for a moment only!" Then, for the moment,
+there was return, with addition. It came like a winged force from the
+bounds of doing or undoing. While it lasted it imposed upon them
+quieted minds, withdrew any seeming need for question. They sought for
+egress from this place where their bodies moved, explanation of this
+material labyrinth. But they did not seek explanation of this mood,
+fallen among pride and anger, wrong and revenge. It came from at
+large, with the power of largeness. They were back, "for the moment,"
+in a simplicity of ancient, firm companionship.
+
+They spoke scarcely at all. It had been a habit of old, in their much
+adventuring together, to do so in long silences. Alexander had set the
+pace there, Ian learning to follow.... It was as if this were an
+adventure of, say, five years ago, and it was as if it were a dream
+adventure. Or it was as if some part of themselves, quietly and with a
+hidden will separating itself, had sailed away from the huge storm and
+cloud and red lightnings.... What they did say had wholly and only to
+do with immediate exigencies. Behind, in pure feeling, was the unity.
+
+Down in this underground place the air began to come more freshly.
+
+"Look at the flame," said Ian. "It is bending."
+
+They had left behind rooms and passages lined with unbroken masonry.
+Here were newer chambers and excavations, softer walled.
+
+"They have been opening from this side. That was dug not so long ago."
+
+Another minute and they came into a ragged, cavern-like space filled
+with fresh night air. Presently they were forth upon a low hillside,
+and at their feet Tiber mirrored the stars. Rome lay around. The
+carnival lights yet flared, the carnival noise beat, beat. This was a
+deserted strip, an islet between restless seas.
+
+Ian and Alexander stood upon trodden earth and grass, about them the
+yet encumbering ruins of an ancient building, pillars and architraves
+and capitals, broken friezes and headless caryatids. Here was the
+river, here the ancient street. They breathed in the air, they looked
+at the sky, but then at Rome. Somewhere a trumpet was fiercely crying.
+Like an impatient hand, like a spurred foot, it tore the magician's
+fabric of the past few hours.
+
+Ian laughed. "We had best rub our eyes!" To the fine hearing there was
+a catch of the breath, a small dancing hope in his laughter. "_Or,
+Glenfernie, shall we dream on?_"
+
+But the other opened his eyes upon things like the Kelpie's Pool and
+the old room in the keep where a figure like himself read letters that
+lied. He saw in many places a figure like himself, injured and fooled,
+stuck full of poisoned arrows. The figure grew as he watched it, until
+it overloomed him, until he was passionately its partisan. He said no
+word, but he flung the smoking torch yet held in hand among the ruins,
+and, leaving Ian and his black and silver, plunged down the slope to
+the old, old street along which now poured a wave of carnival.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+The laird of Glenfernie lay in the flowering grass, beneath a
+pine-tree, rising lonely from the Roman Campagna. The grass flowed for
+miles, a multitudinous green speculating upon other colors, here and
+there clearly donning a gold, an amethyst, a blue. The pine-tree
+looked afar to other pine-trees. Each seemed solitary. Yet all had the
+oneness of the great stage, and if it could comprehend the stage might
+swim with its little solitariness into a wider uniqueness. In the
+distance lay Rome. He could see St. Peter's dome. But around streamed
+the ocean of grass and the ocean of air. Lifted from the one, bathed
+in the other, strewed afar, appeared the wreckage of an older Rome.
+There was no moving in Rome or its Campagna without moving among
+time-cleansed bones and vestiges. Rome and its Campagna were like
+Sargasso Seas and held the hulks of what had been great galleons. The
+air swam above endless grass, endless minute flowers. In long
+perspective traveled the arches of an Aqueduct.
+
+He lay in the shadow of a broken tomb. It was midspring. The bland
+stillness of this world was grateful to him, after long inner storm.
+He lay motionless, not far from the skirts of Contemplation.
+
+The long line of the Aqueduct, arch after arch, succession fixed,
+sequence which the gaze made unitary, toled on his thought. He was
+regarding span after span of imagery held together, a very wide and
+deep landscape of numerous sequences, more planes than one. He was
+seeing, around the cells, the shadowy force lines of the organ, around
+the organ the luminous mist of the organism. He passed calmly from one
+great landscape to another.
+
+Rome. To-day and yesterday and the day before, and to-morrow. The
+"to-morrow" put in the life, guaranteeing an endless present, endless
+breathing. He saw Rome the giant, the stone and earth of her, the vast
+animal life of her, the vast passional, the mental clutch and
+hammer-blow. The spiritual Rome? He sought it--it must be there. At
+last, among the far arches, it rose, a light, a leaven, an ether....
+Rome.
+
+If there were boundaries in this ocean of air they were gauze-thin and
+floating. He looked here and there, into landscapes Rome led to. Like
+and like, and synthesis of syntheses! Images, finding that of which
+they were images, lost their grotesqueness or meaninglessness of line,
+their quality of caricature, lost unripeness, lost the dull annoy of
+riddles never meant to be answered.... He had a great fund of images,
+material so full that it must begin to build higher. Building higher
+meant arrival in a fluid world where all aggregates were penetrable.
+
+He lay still among the grasses, and it was as though he lay also amid
+the wide, simple, first growths of a larger, more potent living. Now
+and again, through years, he had been aware of approaches, always
+momentary, to this condition, to a country that lay behind time and
+space, cause and effect, as he ordinarily knew them. The lightning
+went--but always left something transforming. And then for three years
+all gleams stopped, a leaden wall that they could not pierce rearing
+itself.
+
+Latterly they had begun to return.... The proud will might rise
+against them, but they came. Then it must be so, he would have said of
+another, that the will was divided. Part of it must still have kept
+its seat before the door whence the lights came, stayed there with its
+face in its hands, waiting its season. And a part that had said no
+must be coming to say yes, going and taking its place beside the other
+by the door. And together they were strong enough to bring the
+gleaming back, watching the propitious moment. But still there was the
+opposed will, and it was strong.... When the light came it sought out
+old traces of itself, and these became revivified. Then all joined
+together to make a flood against the abundant darkness. A day like
+this joined itself through likeness to others on the other side of the
+three years, and also to moments of the months just passed and
+passing. Union was made with a sleepless night in an inn of Spain,
+with the hours after his encounter with Ian in the Paris theater, with
+that time he sat upon the river steps and saw that the dead were
+living and the prisoners free, with the hour in the amphitheater and
+after, in carnival.
+
+He saw and heard, felt and tasted, life in greater lengths and
+breadths. He comprehended more of the pattern. The tones and
+semi-tones fell into the long scale. Such moments brought always
+elevation, deep satisfaction.... More of the will particles traveled
+from below to the center by the door.
+
+The soul turned the mind and directed it upon Alexander Jardine's own
+history. It spread like a landscape, like a continent viewed from the
+air, and here it sang with attainment and here it had not attained;
+and here it was light, and here there were darknesses; right-doing
+here and wrong-doing there and every shade between. He saw that there
+was right- and wrong-doing quite outside of conventional standards.
+
+Where were frontiers? The edges of the continent were merely spectral.
+Where did others end and he begin, or he end and others begin? He saw
+that his history was very wide and very deep and very high. Through
+him faintly, by nerve paths in the making, traveled the touch of
+oneness.
+
+Alexander Jardine--Elspeth Barrow--Ian Rullock. And all others--and
+all others.
+
+There swam upon him another great perspective. He saw Christ in light,
+Buddha in light. The glorified--the unified. _Union._
+
+Alexander Jardine--Elspeth Barrow--Ian Rullock. And all others--and
+all others. _For we are members, one of another._
+
+The feathered, flowered grass, miles of it, and the sea of air.... By
+degrees the level of consciousness sank. The splendid, steadfast
+moment could not be long sustained. Consciousness drew difficult
+breath in the pure ether, it felt weight, it sank. Alexander moved
+against the old tomb, turned, and buried his face in his arms. The
+completer moment went by, here was the torn self again. But he strove
+to find footing on the thickening impressions of all such moments.
+
+Moving back to Rome, along the old way where had marched all the
+legions, by the ruins, under the blue sky, he had a sense of going
+with Caesar's legions, step by step, targe by targe, and then of his
+footstep halting, turning out, breaking rhythm.... From this it was
+suddenly a winter night and at Glenfernie, and he sat by the fire in
+his father's death-room. His father spoke to him from the bed and he
+went to his side and listened to dying words, distilled from a wide
+garden that had relaxed into bitterness, growths, and trails of ideal
+hatred.... _What was it, setting one's foot upon an adder?... What was
+the adder?_
+
+He entered the city. His lodging was above the workroom and shop of a
+recoverer of ancient coins and intaglios, skilful cleanser and mender
+of these and merchant to whom would buy. The man was artist besides,
+maker of strange drawings whom few ever understood or bought.
+
+Glenfernie liked him--an elderly, fine, thin, hook-nosed, dark-eyed,
+subtle-lipped, little-speaking personage. No great custom came to the
+shop in front; the owner of it might work all day in the room behind,
+with only two or three peals of a small silvery summoning bell. The
+lodger acquired the habit of sitting for perhaps an hour out of each
+twenty-four in this workroom. He might study at the window gem or coin
+and the finish of old designs, or he might lift and look at sheet
+after sheet of the man's drawings, or watch him at his work, or have
+with him some talk.
+
+The drawings had a fascination for him. "What did you mean behind this
+outward meaning? Now here I see this, and I see that, but here I don't
+penetrate." The man laid down his mending a broken Eros and came and
+stood by the table and spoke. Glenfernie listened, the wood propping
+elbow, the hand propping chin, the eyes upon the drawing. Or he leaned
+back in the great visitor's chair and looked instead at the draftsman.
+They were strange drawings, and the draftsman's models were not
+materially visible.
+
+To-day Glenfernie came from the noise of Rome without into this room.
+His host was sitting before a drawing-board. Alexander stood and
+looked.
+
+"Are you trying to bring the world of the plane up a dimension? Then
+you work from an idea above the world of the solid?"
+
+"_Si._ Up a dimension."
+
+"What are these forms?"
+
+"I am dreaming the new eye, the new ear, the new hand."
+
+Glenfernie watched the moving and the resting hand. Later in the day
+he returned to the room.
+
+"It has been a fertile season," said the artist. "Look!"
+
+At the top of a sheet of paper was written large in Latin, LOVE IS
+BLIND. Beneath stood a figure filled with eyes. "It is the same
+thing," said the man.
+
+The next day, at sunset, going up to his room after restless wandering
+in this city, he found there from Ian another intimation of the
+latter's movements:
+
+     GLENFERNIE,--I am going northward. There will be a
+     month spent at monseigneur's villa upon the Lake of Como.
+     Then France again.--IAN RULLOCK.
+
+Alexander laid the paper upon the table before him, and now he stared
+at it, and now he gazed at space beyond, and where he gazed seemed
+dark and empty. It was deep night when finally he dipped quill into
+ink and wrote:
+
+     IAN RULLOCK,--Stay or go as you will! I do not
+     follow you now as I did before. I come to see the crudeness,
+     the barrenness, of that. But within--oh, are you not my
+     enemy still? I ask Justice that, and what can she do but
+     echo back my words? "Within" is a universe.--ALEXANDER
+     JARDINE.
+
+Five days later he knew that Ian with the Frenchman in whose company
+he was had departed Rome. On that morning he went again without the
+city and lay among the grasses. But the sky to-day was closed, and all
+dead Rome that had been proud or violent or a lover of self seemed to
+move around him multitudinous. He fought the shapes down, but the sea
+in storm then turned sluggish, dead and weary.... What was he going to
+do? Scotland? Was he going back to Scotland? The glen, the moor, White
+Farm and the kirk, Black Hill and his own house--all seemed cold and
+without tint, gray, small, and withered, and yet oppressive. All that
+would be importunate, officious. He cried out, "O my God, I want
+healing!" For a long time he lay there still, then, rising, went
+wandering by arches and broken columns, choked doorways, graved slabs
+sunken in fairy jungles. Into his mind came a journey years before
+when he had just brushed a desert. The East, the Out-of-Europe, called
+to him now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+Ian guided the boat to the water steps. Above, over the wall, streamed
+roses, a great, soundless fall of them, reflected, mass and color, in
+the lake. Above the roses sprang deep trees, shade behind shade, and
+here sang nightingales. Facing him sat the Milanese song-bird, the
+singer Antonia Castinelli. She had the throat of the nightingale and
+the beauty of the velvety open rose.
+
+"Why land?" she said. "Why climb the steps to the chatter in the
+villa?"
+
+"Why indeed?"
+
+"They are not singing! They are talking. There is deep, sweet shadow
+around that point."
+
+The boat turned glidingly. Now it was under tall rock, parapeted with
+trees.
+
+"Let Giovanni have the boat. Come and sit beside me! You are too far
+away for singing together."
+
+Old Giovanni at the helm, boatman upon this lake since youth, used
+long since to murmuring words, to touching hands, stayed brown and
+wrinkled and silent and unspeculative as a walnut. Perhaps his mind
+was sunk in his own stone hut behind vine leaves. The two under the
+rose-and-white-fringed canopy leaned toward each other.
+
+"Tell me of your strange, foreign land! Have you roses
+there--roses--roses? And nightingales that sing out your heart under
+the moon?"
+
+"I will tell you of the heather, the lark, and the mavis."
+
+She listened. "Oh, it does not taste as tastes this lake! Give me
+pain! Tell me of women you have loved.... Oh, hear! The nightingales
+stop singing."
+
+"Do you ever listen to the silence?"
+
+"Of course ... when a friend dies--or I go to Mass--and sometimes when
+I am singing very passionately. But this lake--"
+
+She began to sing. The contralto throbbed, painted, told, brought
+delight and melancholy. He sat with his hand loosened from hers, his
+eyes upon the lake's blue-green depths. At last she stopped.
+
+"Oh--h!... Let us go back to the talking shore and the chattering
+villa! Somebody else is singing--somebody or something! I hear
+silence--I hear it in the silence.... Some things I can sing against,
+and some things I can't."
+
+They went underneath the wall of roses. Her arm, sleeved as with mist,
+touched his; her low, wide brow and great liquid eyes were at his
+shoulder, at his breast. "O foreigner--and yet not at all foreign!
+Tell me your English words for roses--walls of roses--and music that
+never ceases in the night--and pleasing, pleasing, pleasing love!"
+
+The boat came to the water steps. The two left it, climbing between
+flowers. Down to them came a wave of laughter and hand-clapping.
+
+"Celestina recites--but I do not think she does it so well!... That
+is my window--see, where the roses mount!"
+
+The company, flowing forth, caught them upon the terrace. "Lo, the
+truants!"
+
+But that night, instead of climbing where the roses climbed, he took a
+boat from the number moored by the steps and rowed himself across the
+lake to a piece of shore, bare of houses, lifting by steep slope and
+crag into the mountain masses. He fastened the boat and climbed here.
+The moon was round, the night merely a paler day. He went up among low
+trees and bushes until he came to naked rock. He climbed here as far
+as he might, found some manner of platform, and threw himself down,
+below him the lake, around him the mountains.
+
+He lay still until the expended energy was replaced. At last the mind
+moved and, apprentice-bound to feeling, began again a hot and heavy
+and bitter work, laid aside at times and then renewed. It was upon the
+vindication to himself of Ian Rullock.
+
+It was made to work hard.... Its old task used to be to keep asleep
+upon the subject. But now for a considerable time this had been its
+task. Old feeling, old egoism, awakened up and down, drove it hard! It
+had to make bricks without straw. It had to fetch and carry from the
+ends of the earth.
+
+Emotion, when it must rest, provided for it a dull place of
+listlessness and discontent. But the taskmaster now would have it up
+at all hours, fashioning reasons and justifications. The soonest found
+straw in the fields lay in the faults of others--of the world in
+general and Alexander Jardine in particular. Feeling got its anodyne
+in gloating over these. It had the pounce of a panther for such a
+bitter berry, such a weed, such a shameful form. It did not always
+gloat, but it always held up and said, _Who could be weaker here--more
+open to question?_ It made constant, sore comparison.
+
+The lake gleamed below him, the herded mountains slept in a gray
+silver light. How many were the faults of the laird of Glenfernie!
+Faults! He looked at the dark old plains of the moon. That was a light
+word! He saw Alexander pitted and scarred.
+
+Pride! That had always been in the core of Glenfernie. That has been
+his old fortress, walled and moated against trespass. Pride so high
+that it was careless--that its possessor could seem peaceable and
+humble.... But find the quick and touch it--and you saw! What was his
+was his. What he deemed to be his, whether it was so or not! Touch him
+there and out jumped jealousy, hate, and implacableness--and all the
+time one had been thinking of him as a kind of seer!
+
+Ian turned upon the rock above Como. And Glenfernie was ignorant! The
+seer had seen very little, after all. His touch had not been precisely
+permeative when it came to the world, Ian Rullock. If liking meant
+understanding, there had not been much understanding--which left
+liking but a word. If liking was a degree of love, where then had been
+love, where the friend at all? After all, and all the time,
+Glenfernie's notion of friendship was a sieve. The notion that he had
+held up as though it were the North Star!
+
+The world, Ian Rullock, could not be so contemned....
+
+He felt with heat and pain the truth of that. It was a wrong that
+Glenfernie should not understand! The world, Ian Rullock, might be
+incomplete, imperfect--might have taken, more than once, wrong turns,
+left its path, so to speak, in the heavens. But what of the world,
+Alexander Jardine? Had it no memories? He brooded over what these
+memories might be--must be; he tried to taste and handle that other's
+faults in time and space. But he could not plunge into Alexander's
+depths of wrath. As he could not, he made himself contemptuous of all
+that--of Old Steadfast's power of reaction!
+
+A star shot across the moon-filled night, so large a meteor that it
+made light even against that silver. A mass within Ian made a slow
+turn, with effort, with thrilling, changed its inclination. He saw
+that disdain, that it was shallow and streaked with ebony. He moved
+with a kind of groan. "Was there--is there--wickedness?... What, O
+God, is wickedness?"
+
+He pressed the rock with his hand--sat up. The old taskmaster,
+alarmed, gathered his forces. "I say that it is just that--pride,
+vengefulness, hard misunderstanding!"
+
+A voice within him answered. "Even so, is it not still yourself?"
+
+He stared after the meteor track. There was a conception here that he
+had not dreamed of.
+
+It seemed best to keep still upon the rock. He sat in inner wonder.
+There was a sense of purity, of a fresh coolness not physical, of
+awe. He was in presence of something comprehensive, immortal.
+
+"Is it myself? Then let it pour out and make of naught the old poison
+of myself!"
+
+The perception could not hold. It flagged and sank, echoing down into
+the caves. He sat still and felt the old taskmaster stir. But this
+time he found strength to resist. There resulted, not the divine
+novelty and largeness of that one moment, but a kind of dim and bare
+desert waste of wide extent. And as it ate up all width, so it seemed
+timeless. Across this, like a person, unheralded, came and went two
+lines from "Richard III"
+
+    Clarence is come--false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,
+    That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury.
+
+It went and left awareness of the desert.
+"False--fleeting--perjured...."
+
+He saw himself as in mirrors.
+
+The desert ached and became a place of thorns and briers and
+bewilderment. Then rose, like Antaeus, the taskmaster. "_And what of
+all that--if I like life so?_"
+
+Sense of the villa and the roses and the nightingales in the
+coverts--sense of wide, mobile sweeps and flowing currents inwashing,
+indrawing, pleasure-crafts great and small--desire and desire for
+desire--lust for sweetness, lust for salt--the rose to be plucked, the
+grapes to be eaten--and all for self, all for Ian....
+
+He started up from the rock above Como, and turned to descend to the
+boat. That within him that set itself to make thin cloud of the
+taskmaster pulled him back as by the hair of the head and cast him
+down upon the rocky floor.
+
+He lay still, half upon his face buried in the bend of his arm. He
+felt misery.
+
+"My soul is sick--a beggar--like to become an outcast!"
+
+How long he lay here now he did not know. The nadir of night was
+passed, but there was cold and voidness, an abyss. He felt as one
+fallen from a great height long ago. "There is no help here! Let me
+only go to an eternal sleep--"
+
+A wind began. In the east the sky grew whiter than elsewhere. There
+came a sword-blow from an unseen hand, ripping and tearing veils.
+_Elspeth--Elspeth Barrow!_
+
+In a bitterness as of myrrh he came into touch with cleanness, purity,
+wholeness. Henceforth there was invisible light. Its first action was
+not to show him scorchingly the night of Egypt, but with the quietness
+of the whitening east to bring a larger understanding of Elspeth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+The caravan, having spent three days in a town the edge of the desert,
+set forth in the afternoon. The caravan was a considerable one. Three
+hundred camels, more than a hundred asses, went heavily laden. Twenty
+men rode excellent horses; ten, poorer steeds; the company of others
+mounted with the merchandise or, staff in hand, strode beside. In safe
+stretches occurred a long stringing out, with lagging at the rear; in
+stretches where robber bands or other dangers might be apprehended
+things became compact. Besides traders and their employ, there rode or
+walked a handful of chance folk who had occasion for the desert or for
+places beyond it. These paid some much, some little, but all something
+for the advantage of this convoy. The traders did not look to lose,
+whoever went with them. Altogether, several hundred men journeyed in
+company.
+
+The elected chief of the caravan was a tall Arab, Zeyn al-Din. Twelve
+of the camels were his; he was a merchant of spices, of wrought stuff,
+girdles, and gems--a man of forty, bold and with scope. He rode a fine
+horse and kept usually at the head of the caravan. But now and again
+he went up and down, seeing to things. Then there was talking, loud
+or low, between the head man and units of the march.
+
+Starting from its home city, this caravan had been for two days in
+good spirits. Then had become to creep in disaster, not excessive, but
+persistent. One thing and another befell, and at last a stealing
+sickness, none knew what, attacking both beast and man. They had made
+the town at the edge of the desert. Physicians were found and rest
+taken. Recuperation and trading proceeded amicably together. The day
+of departure wheeling round, the noontide prayer was made with an
+especial fervor and attention. Then from the _caravanserai_ forth
+stepped the camels.
+
+The sun descending, the caravan threw a giant shadow upon the sand.
+Ridge and wave of sterile earth broke it, confused it, made it an
+unintelligible, ragged, moving, and monstrous shade. The sun was red
+and huge. As it lowered to the desert rim Zeyn al-Din gave the order
+for the seven-hour halt. The orb touched the sand; prayer carpets were
+spread.
+
+Night of stars unnumbered, the ineffable tent, arched the desert. The
+caravan, a small thing in the world, lay at rest. The meal was over.
+Here was coolness after heat, repose after toil. The fires that had
+been kindled from scrub and waste lessened, died away. Zeyn al-Din
+appointed the guards for the night, went himself the rounds.
+
+Where one of the fires had burned he found certain of those men who
+were not merchants nor servants of merchants, yet traveled with the
+caravan. Here were Hassan the Scribe, and Ali the Wanderer, and the
+dervish Abdallah, and others. Here was the big Christian from some
+outlandish far-away country, who had dwelt for the better part of a
+year in the city whence the caravan started, who had money and a wish
+to reach the city toward which the caravan journeyed. In the first
+city he had become, it seemed, well liked by Yusuf the Physician, that
+was the man that Zeyn al-Din most admired in life. It was Yusuf who
+had recommended the Christian to Zeyn, who did not like infidel
+sojourners with caravans. Zeyn himself was liberal and did not so much
+mind, but he had had experience with troubles created along the way
+and in the column itself. The more ignorant or the stiffer sort
+thought it unpleasing to Allah. But Zeyn al-Din would do anything
+really that Yusuf the Physician wanted. So in the end the big
+Christian came along. Zeyn, interpreting fealty to Yusuf to mean care
+in some measure for this infidel's well-being, began at once with a
+few minutes' riding each day beside him. These insensibly expanded to
+more than a few. He presently liked the infidel. "He is a man!" said
+Zeyn and that was the praise that he considered highest. The big
+Christian rode strongly a strong horse; he did not fret over small
+troubles nor apparently fear great ones; he did not say, "This is my
+way," and infer that it was better than others; he liked the red
+camel, the white, and the brown. "Who dances with the sand is not
+stifled," said Zeyn.
+
+Now he found the Christian with Hassan, listening at ease, stretched
+upon the sand, to Ali the Wanderer. The head man, welcomed, listened,
+too, to Ali bringing his story to a close. "That is good, Ali the
+Wanderer! Just where grows the tree from which one gathers that
+fruit?"
+
+"It can't be told unless you already know," said Ali.
+
+"Allah my refuge! Then I would not be asking you!" answered Zeyn. "I
+should have shaken the tree and gathered the diamonds, rubies, and
+emeralds, and been off with them!"
+
+"You did not hear what was said. Ibn the Happy found that they could
+not be taken from the tree. He had tried what you propose. He broke
+off a great number and ran away with them. But they turned to black
+dust in his bosom. He put them all down, and when he looked back he
+saw them still shining on the tree."
+
+"What did Ibn the Happy do?"
+
+"He climbed into the tree and lived there."
+
+In the distance jackals were barking. "I like nothing better than
+listening to stories," said Zeyn al-Din. "But, Allah! Just now there
+are more important things to do! Yusuf the Red, I name you watcher
+here until moonrise. Then waken Melec, who already sleeps there!"
+
+His eyes touched in passing the big Christian. "Oh yes, you would be a
+good watcher," thought Zeyn. "But there's a folly in this caravan!
+Wait till good fortune has a steadier foot!"
+
+But good fortune continued a wavering, evanishing thing. Deep in the
+night, from behind a stiffened wave of earth, rose and dashed a
+mounted band of Bedouin robbers. Yusuf the Red and other watchers had
+and gave some warning. Zeyn al-Din's voice was presently heard like a
+trumpet. The caravan repelled the robbers. But five of its number were
+lost, some camels and mules driven off. The Bedouins departing with
+wild cries, there were left confusion and bewailing, slowly
+straightening, slowly sinking. The caravan, with a pang, recognized
+that ill luck was a traveler with it.
+
+The dead received burial; the wounded were looked to, at last hoisted,
+groaning, upon the camels, among the merchandise. Unrested, bemoaning
+loss, the trading company made their morning start three hours behind
+the set time. For stars in the sky, there was the yellow light and the
+sun at a bound, strewing heat. In the melee the robbers had thrust
+lance or knife into several of the water-skins. Yet there was, it was
+held, provision enough. The caravan went on. At midday the Bedouins
+returned, reinforced. Zeyn al-Din and his mustered force beat them
+off. No loss of goods or life, but much of time! The caravan went on,
+that with laden beasts must move at best much like a tortoise. That
+night the rest was shortened. Two hours after midnight and the strings
+of camels were moving again, the asses and mules so monstrously
+misshapen with bales of goods, the horses and horsemen and those
+afoot. At dawn, not these Bedouins, but another roving band, harassed
+them. Time was running like water from a cracked pitcher.
+
+This day they cleared the robber bands. There spread before them,
+around them, clean desert. Then returned that sickness.
+
+"_O Zeyn al-Din, what could we expect who travel with him who denies
+Allah?_"
+
+The stricken caravan crept under the blaze across the red waste.
+Camels fell and died. Their burdens were lifted from them and added to
+the packs of others; their bodies were left to light and heat and
+moving air.... It grew that an enchantment seemed to hold the feet of
+the caravan. Evils came upon them, sickness of men and beasts. And now
+it was seen that there was indeed little water.
+
+"O Zeyn al-Din, rid us of this infidel!"
+
+"The infidel is in you!" answered Zeyn al-Din. "Much speaking makes
+for thirst and impedes motion. Let us cross this desert."
+
+"O Zeyn al-Din, if you be no right head man we shall choose another!"
+
+"Choose!" said Zeyn al-Din, and went to the head of a camel who would
+not rise from the sand.
+
+Ill luck clung and clung. Twelve hours and there began to be cabals.
+These grew to factions. The larger of these swallowed the small fry,
+swelled and mounted, took the shape of practically the whole caravan.
+"Zeyn al-Din, if you do not harken to us it will be the worse for you!
+Drive away the Christian dog!"
+
+"Abu al-Salam, are you the chief, or I?--Now, companions, listen!
+These are the reasons in nature for our troubles--"
+
+But no! It was the noon halt. The desert swam in light and silence.
+The great majority of the traders and their company undertook to play
+divining, judging, determining Allah. The big Christian stood over
+against them and looked at them, his arms folded.
+
+"It is no such great matter!... Very good then! What do you want me
+to do?"
+
+"Turn your head and your eyes from us, and go to what fate Allah
+parcels out to you!"
+
+There arose a buzzing. "Better we slay him here and now! So Allah will
+know our side!"
+
+Zeyn al-Din stepped forth. "This is the friend of my friend and I am
+pledged. Slay, and you will have two to slay! O Allah! what a thing it
+is to stare at the west when the riders are in the east!"
+
+"Zeyn al-Din, we have chosen for head man Abu al-Salam."
+
+"Allah with you! I should say you had chosen well. I have twelve
+camels," said Zeyn al-Din. "I make another caravan! Mansur, Omar, and
+Melec, draw you forth my camels and mules!"
+
+With a weaker man there might have been interference, stoppage. But
+Zeyn's mass and force acquired clear space for his own movements. He
+made his caravan. He had with him so many men. Three of these stood by
+him; the others cowered into the great caravan, into the shadow of Abu
+al-Salam.
+
+Zeyn threw a withering look. "Oh, precious is the skin!"
+
+The big infidel came to him. "Zeyn al-Din, I do not want all this
+peril for me. I have ridden away alone before to-day. Now I shall go
+in that direction, and I shall find a garden."
+
+"Perhaps we shall find it," said Zeyn. "Does any other go with my
+caravan?"
+
+It seemed that Ali the Wanderer went, and the dervish Abdallah....
+There was more ado, but at last the caravan parted.... The great one,
+the long string of beads, drew with slow toil across the waste, along
+the old track. The very small one, the tiny string of beads, departed
+at right angles. Space grew between them. The dervish Abdallah turned
+upon his camel.
+
+"It seems that we part. But, O Allah! around 'We part' is drawn 'We
+are together!'"
+
+Zeyn al-Din made a gesture of assent. "O I shall meet in bazaars Abu
+al-Salam! 'Ha! Zeyn al-Din!'--'Ha! Abu al-Salam!'"
+
+The sun sank lower. The vastly larger caravan drew away, drew away,
+over the desert rim. Between the two was now a sea of desert waves.
+Where the great string of camels, the asses, the riders, the men could
+be seen, all were like little figures cut from dark paper, drawn by
+some invisible finger, slowly, slowly across a wide floor. Before long
+there were only dots, far in the distance. Around Zeyn al-Din's
+caravan swept a great solitude.
+
+"Halt!" said Zeyn. "Now they observe us no longer, and this is what we
+do!"
+
+All the merchant lading was taken from the camels. The bales of wealth
+strewed the sand. "Wealth is a comfortable garment," said Zeyn, "but
+life is a richer yet! That which gathers wealth is wealth. Now we
+shall go thrice as fast as Abu al-Salam!"
+
+"Far over there," said Ali the Wanderer, and nodded his head toward
+the quarter, "is the small oasis called the Garland."
+
+"I have heard of it, though I have not been there," answered Zeyn.
+"Well, we shall not rest to-night; we shall ride!"
+
+They rode in the desert beneath the stars, going fast, camels and
+horses, unencumbered by bales and packs unwieldy and heavy. But there
+were guarded, as though they were a train of the costliest
+merchandise, the shrunken water-skins....
+
+The laird of Glenfernie, riding in silence by Zeyn al-Din, whom he had
+thanked once with emphasis, and then had accepted as he himself was
+accepted, looked now at the desert and now at the stars and now at
+past things. A year and more--he had been a year and more in the East.
+If you had it in you to grow, the East was good growing-ground.... He
+looked toward the stars beneath which lay Scotland.
+
+The night passed. The yellow dawn came up, the sun and the heat of
+day. And they must still press on.... At last the horses could not do
+that. At eve they shot the horses, having no water for them. They went
+on upon camels. Great suffering came upon them. They went stoically,
+the Arabs and the Scot. The eternal waste, the sand, the arrows of the
+sun.... The most of the camels died. Day and night and morn, and,
+almost dead themselves, the men saw upon the verge the palms of the
+desert oasis called the Garland.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Seven men dwelt seven days in the Garland. Uninhabited it stood, a
+spring, date-palms, lesser verdure, a few birds and small beasts and
+winged insects. It was an emerald set in ashy gold.
+
+The dervish Abdallah sat in contemplation under a palm. Ali the
+Wanderer lay and dreamed. Zeyn al-Din and his men, Mansur, Omar, and
+Melec, were as active as time and place admitted. The camels tasted
+rich repose. Day went by in dry light, in a pleasant rustling and
+waving of palm fronds. Night sprang in starshine, wonderful soft lamps
+orbed in a blue vault. Presently was born and grew a white moon.
+
+Alexander Jardine, standing at the edge of the emerald, watched it. He
+could not sleep. The first nights in the Garland he with the others
+had slept profoundly. But now there was recuperation, strength again.
+Around swept the circle of the desert. Above him he saw Canopus.
+
+He ceased to look directly at the moon, or the desert, or Canopus. He
+stretched himself upon the clear sand and was back in the inner vast
+that searched for the upper vast. Since the grasses of the Campagna
+there had been a long search, and his bark had encountered many a
+wind, head winds and favoring winds, and had beaten from coast to
+coast.
+
+"O God, for the open, divine sea and Wisdom the compass--"
+
+He lay beneath the palm; he put his arm over his eyes. For an hour he
+had been whelmed in an old sense, bitter and stately, of the woe, the
+broken knowledge, the ailing and the pain of the world. All the
+world.... That other caravan, where was it?... Where were all
+caravans? And all the bewilderment and all the false hopes and all the
+fool's paradises. All the crying in the night. Children....
+
+Little by little he recognized that he was seeing it as panorama....
+None saw a panorama until one was out of the plane of its
+components--out of the immediate plane. Gotten out as all must get
+out, by the struggling Thought, which, the thing done, uses its
+eyes....
+
+He looked at his past. He did not beat his breast nor cry out in
+repentance, but he saw with a kind of wonder the plains of darkness.
+Oh, the deserts, and the slow-moving caravans in them!
+
+He lay very still beneath the palm. All the world.... _All._
+
+"_All is myself._"
+
+"Ian? Myself--myself--myself!"
+
+He heard a step upon the sand--the putting by of a branch. The Sufi
+Abdallah stood beside him. Alexander made a movement.
+
+"Lie still," said the other, "I will sit here, for sweet is the
+night." He took his place, white-robed, a gleaming upon the sand.
+Silent almost always, it was nothing that he should sit silent now,
+quiet, moveless, gone away apparently among the stars.
+
+The moments dropped, each a larger round. Glenfernie moved, sat up.
+
+"I've felt you and your calm in our caravaning. Let me see if my
+Arabic will carry me here!--What have you that I have not and that I
+long for?"
+
+"I have nought that you have not."
+
+"But you see the having, and I do not."
+
+"You are beginning to see."
+
+The wind breathed in the oasis palms. The earth turned, seeking the
+sun for her every chamber, the earth made pilgrimage around the sun,
+eying point after point of that excellence, the earth journeyed with
+the sun, held by the invisible cords.
+
+"I wish new sight--I wish new touch--I wish comprehension!"
+
+"You are beginning to have it."
+
+"I have more than I had.... Yes, I know it--"
+
+"There is birth.... Then comes the joy of birth. At last comes the
+knowledge of why there is joy. Strive to be fully born."
+
+"And if I were so--?"
+
+"Then life alters and there is strong embrace."
+
+A great stillness lay upon the oasis and the desert around. Men and
+beasts were sleeping, only these two waking, just here, just now.
+After a moment the dervish spoke again. "The holder-back is the sense
+of disunity. Sit fast and gather yourself to yourself.... Then will
+you find how large is your brood!"
+
+He rose, stood a moment above Glenfernie, then went away. The man whom
+he left sat on, struck from within by fresh shafts. Perception now
+came in this way, with inner beam. How huge was the landscape that it
+lighted up!... Alexander sat still. He bent his head--there was a
+sense, extending to the physical, of a broken shell, of escape,
+freedom.... He found that he was weeping. He lay upon the sand, and
+the tears came as they might from a young boy. When they were past,
+when he lifted himself again, the morning star was in the sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+Strickland, in the deep summer glen, saw before him the feather of
+smoke from Mother Binning's cot. The singing stream ran clearly, the
+sky arched blue above. The air held calm and fine, filled as it were
+with golden points. He met a white hen and her brood, he heard the
+slow drone of Mother Binning's wheel. She sat in the doorway, an old
+wise wife, active still.
+
+"Eh, mon, and it's you!--Wish, and afttimes ye'll get!" She pushed her
+wheel aside. "I've had a feeling a' the day!"
+
+Strickland leaned against her ash-tree. "It's high summer, Mother--one
+of the poised, blissful days."
+
+"Aye. I've a feeling.... Hae ye ony news at the House?"
+
+"Alice sings beautifully this summer. Jamie is marrying down in
+England--beauty and worth he says, and they say."
+
+"Miss Alice doesna marry?"
+
+"She's not the marrying kind, she says."
+
+"Eh, then! She's bonny and gude, juist the same! Did ye come by White
+Farm?"
+
+"Yes. Jarvis Barrow fails. He sits under his fir-tree, with his Bible
+beside him and his eyes on the hills. Littlefarm manages now for White
+Farm."
+
+"Robin's sunny and keen. But he aye irked Jarvis with his profane
+sangs." She drew out the adjective with a humorous downward drag of
+her lip.
+
+Strickland smiled. "The old man's softer now. You see that by the
+places at which his Bible opens."
+
+"Oh aye! We're journeyers--rock and tree and Kelpie's Pool with the
+rest of us."
+
+She seemed to catch her own speech and look at it. "That's a word I
+hae been wanting the morn!--The Kelpie's Pool, with the moor sae green
+and purple around it." She sat bent forward, her wrinkled hands in her
+lap, her eyes, rather wide, fixed upon the ash-tree.
+
+"We have not heard from the laird," said Strickland, "this long time."
+
+"The laird--now there! What ye want further comes when the mind
+strains and then waits! I see in one ring the day and Glenfernie and
+yonder water. Wherever the laird be, he thinks to-day of Scotland."
+
+"I wish that he would think to returning," said Strickland. He had
+been leaning against the doorpost. Now he straightened himself. "I
+will go on as far as the pool."
+
+Mother Binning loosed her hands. "Did ye have that thought when ye
+left hame?"
+
+"No, I believe not."
+
+"Gae on, then! The day's bonny, and the Lord's gude has a wide ring!"
+
+Strickland walking on, left the stream and the glen head. Now he was
+upon the moor. It dipped and rose like a Titan wave of a Titan sea.
+Its long, long unbroken crest, clean line against clean space,
+brought a sense of quiet, distance, might. Here solitude was at home.
+Now Strickland moved, and now he stood and watched the quiet. Turning
+at last a shoulder of the moor, he saw at some distance below him the
+pool, like a small mirror. He descended toward it, without noise over
+the springy earth.
+
+A horse appeared between him and the water. Strickland felt a most
+involuntary startling and thrill--then half laughed to think that he
+had feared that he saw the water-steed, the kelpie. The horse was
+fastened to a stake that once had been the bole of an ancient willow.
+It grazed around--somewhere would be a master.... Presently
+Strickland's eye found the latter--a man lying upon the moorside, just
+above the water. Again with a shock and thrill--though not like the
+first--it came to him who it was.
+
+The laird of Glenfernie lay very still, his eyes upon the Kelpie's
+Pool. His old tutor, long his friend, quiet and stanch, gazed unseen.
+When he had moved a few feet an outcropping of rock hid his form, but
+his eyes could still dwell upon the pool and the man its visitor. He
+turned to go away, then he stood still.
+
+"What if he means a closer going yet?" Strickland settled back against
+the rock. "He would loose his horse first--he would not leave it
+fastened here. If he does that then I will go down to him."
+
+Glenfernie lay still. There was no wind to-day. The reeds stood
+straight, the willow leaves slept, the water stayed like dusky glass.
+The air, pure and light, hung at rest in the ether. Minutes went by,
+an hour. He might, Strickland thought, have lain there a long time. At
+last he sat up, rose, began to walk around the pool. He went around it
+thrice. Then again he sat down, his arms upon his knees, watching the
+dusk water. He did not go nor sit like one overwrought or frenzied or
+despairing. His great frame, his bearing, the air of him, had
+quietude, but not listlessness; there seemed at once calm and
+intensity as of a still center that had flung off the storm. Time
+flowed. Thought Strickland:
+
+"He is as far as I am from death in that water. I'll cease to spy."
+
+He moved away, moss and ling muffling step, gained and dipped behind
+the shoulder of the moor. The horse grazed on. The laird sat still,
+his arms upon his knees, his head a little lifted, his eyes crossing
+the Kelpie's Pool to the wave-line against the sky.
+
+Strickland went to where the moor path ran by the outermost trees of
+the glen head. Here he sat down beneath an oak and waited. Another
+hour passed; then he heard the horse's hoofs. He rose and met
+Glenfernie home-returning.
+
+"It is good to see you, Strickland!"
+
+"I found you yonder by the Kelpie's Pool. Then I came here and
+waited."
+
+"I have spent hours there.... They were not unhappy. They were not at
+all unhappy."
+
+They moved together along the moor track, the horse following.
+
+"I am glad and glad again that you have come--"
+
+"I have been coming a good while. But there were preventions."
+
+"We have heard nothing direct for almost a year."
+
+"Then my letters did not reach you. I wrote, but knew that they might
+not. There is the smoke from Mother Binning's cot." He stood still to
+watch the mounting feather. "I remember when first I saw that, a
+six-year-old, climbing the glen with my father, carried on his
+shoulder when I was tired. I thought it was a hut in a fairy-tale....
+So it is!"
+
+To Strickland the remarkable thing lay in the lack of strain, the
+simplicity and fullness. Glenfernie was unfeignedly glad to see him,
+glad to see home shapes and colors. The blue feather among the trees
+had simply pleased him as it could not please a heart fastened to rage
+and sorrow. The stream of memories that it had beckoned--many others,
+it must be, besides that of the six-year-old's visit--seemed to have
+washed itself clear, to have disintegrated, dissolved venom and
+stinging. Strickland, pondering even while he talked, found the word
+he wanted: "Comprehensiveness.... He always tended to that."
+
+Said Glenfernie, "I've had another birth, Strickland, and all things
+are the same and yet not the same." He gave it as an explanation, but
+then left it. They were going the moorland way to Glenfernie House. He
+was looking from side to side, recovering old landscape in sweep and
+in detail. Bit by bit, as they came to it, Strickland gave him the
+country news. At last there was the house before them, among the firs
+and oaks, topping the crag. They came into the wood at the base of the
+hill. The stream--the trees--above, the broken, ancient wall, the
+roofs of the new house that was not so new, the old, outstanding keep.
+The whole rested, mellowed, lifted, still, against a serene and azure
+sky. Alexander stood and gazed.
+
+"The keep. The pine still knots and clings there by the school-room.
+Do you remember, Strickland, a day when you set me to read 'The Cranes
+of Ibycus'?"
+
+"I remember."
+
+"Life within life, and sky above sky!--I hear Bran!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They mounted the hill. It seemed to run before them that the laird had
+come home. Bran and Davie and the men and maids and Alice, a bonny
+woman, and Mrs. Grizel, very little withered, exclaimed and ran.
+Tibbie Ross was there that day, and Black Alan neighed from his stall.
+Even the waving trees--even the flowers in the garden--Home, and its
+taste and fragrance--its dear, close emanations....
+
+That evening at supper Mrs. Grizel made a remark. She leaned back in
+her chair and looked at Glenfernie. "I never thought you like your
+mother before! Oh aye! there's your father, too, and a kind of grand
+man he was, for all that he saw things dark. But will you look, Mr.
+Strickland, and see Margaret--"
+
+Much later, from his own room, Strickland, gazing forth, saw light in
+the keep. Alexander would be sitting there among the books and every
+ancient memorial. Strickland felt a touch of doubt and apprehension.
+Suppose that to-morrow should find not this Alexander, at once old and
+new, but only the Alexander who had ridden from Glenfernie, who had
+shipped to Lisbon, nearly three years ago? To-day's deep satisfaction
+only a dream! Strickland shook off the fear.
+
+"He breathed lasting growth.... O Christ! the help for all in winged
+men!"
+
+He turned to his bed. Lying awake he went in imagination to the
+desert, to the Eastern places, that in few words the laird had
+painted.
+
+And in the morning he found still the old-new Alexander. He saw that
+the new had always been in the old, the oak in the acorn.... There was
+a great, sane naturalness in the alteration, in the advance.
+Strickland caught glimpses of larger orders.
+
+"_I will make thee ruler over many things._"
+
+The day was deep and bright. The laird fell at once into the old
+routine. For none at Glenfernie was there restlessness; there was only
+ache gone, and a feeling of fulfilling. Mrs. Grizel pattered to and
+fro. Alice sang like a lark, gathering pansy seed from her garden.
+Phemie and Eppie sang. The men whistled at their work. Davie
+discoursed to himself. But Tibbie Ross was wild to get away early and
+to the village with the news. By the foot of the hill she began to
+meet wayfarers.
+
+"Oh, aye, this is the real weather! Did ye know--"
+
+Alexander did not leave home that day. In their old work-room he
+listened to Strickland's account of his stewardship.
+
+"Strickland, I love you!" he said, when it was all given.
+
+He wrote to Jamie; he sat in the garden seat built against the garden
+wall and watched Alice as she moved from plant to plant.
+
+"You do not say much," thought Alice, "but I like you--I like you--I
+like you!"
+
+In the afternoon Strickland met him coming from the little green
+beyond the school-room.
+
+"I have been out through the wall, under the old pine. I seemed to
+hold many things in the palm of the hand.... I believe that you know
+what it is to make essences."
+
+After bedtime Strickland saw again the light in the keep. But he had
+ceased to fear. "Oh All-Being, how rich and stately and various and
+surprising you are!" In the morning, outside in the court, he found
+Black Alan saddled.
+
+"The laird will be riding to Black Hill," said Tam Dickson.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+Mr. Archibald Touris put out a wrinkled hand to his wine-glass. "You
+have been in warm countries. I envy you! I wish that I could get
+warm."
+
+"Black Hill is looking finely. All the young trees--"
+
+"Yes. I took pride in planting.--But what for--what for--what for?" He
+shivered. "Glenfernie, please close that window!"
+
+Alexander, coming back, stood above the master of Black Hill. "Will
+you tell me, sir, where Ian is now?"
+
+Mr. Touris twitched back a little in his chair. "Don't you know? I
+thought perhaps that you did."
+
+"I ceased to follow him two years ago. I dived into the East, and I
+have been long where you do not hear from the West."
+
+The other fingered his wine-glass. "Well, I haven't heard myself, for
+quite a while.... You would think that he might come back to England
+now. But he can't. Doubtless he would never wish to come again to
+Black Hill. But England, now.... But they are ferocious yet against
+every head great and small of the attempt. And I am told there are
+aggravating circumstances. He had worn the King's coat. He was among
+the plotters and instigators. He broke prison. Impossible to show
+mercy!" Mr. Touris twitched again. "That's a phrase like a gravestone!
+If the Almighty uses it, then of course he can't be Almighty.... Well,
+the moral is that none named Ian Rullock can come again to Scotland or
+England."
+
+"Have you knowledge that he wishes to do so?"
+
+Mr. Touris moved again. "I don't know.... I told you that we hadn't
+heard. But--"
+
+He stopped and sat staring into his wine-glass. Alexander read on as
+by starlight: "_But I did hear--through old channels. And there is
+danger of his trying to return._"
+
+The master of Black Hill put the wine to his lips. "And so you have
+been everywhere?"
+
+"No. But in places where I had not been before."
+
+"The East India has ways of gathering information. Through Goodworth I
+can get at a good deal when I want to.... There is Wotherspoon, also.
+I am practically certain that Ian is in France."
+
+"When did he write?"
+
+"Alison has a letter maybe twice a year. One's overdue now."
+
+"How does he write?"
+
+"They are very short. He doesn't touch on old things--except, perhaps,
+back into boyhood. She likes to get them. When you see her, don't
+speak of anything save his staying in France, as he ought to." He
+dragged toward him a jar of snuff. "There are informers and seekers
+out everywhere. Do you remember a man in Edinburgh named Gleig?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, he's one of them. And for some reason he has a personal enmity
+toward Ian. So, you see--"
+
+He lapsed into silence, a small, aging, chilly, wrinkled, troubled
+man. Then with suddenness a wintry red crept into his cheek, a
+brightness into his eyes. "You've changed so, Glenfernie, you've
+cheated me! You are his foe yourself. Perhaps even--"
+
+"Perhaps even--?"
+
+The other gave a shriveled response to the smile. "No. I certainly did
+not mean that." He took his head in his hands and sighed. "What a
+world it is! As I go down the hill I wish sometimes that I had
+Alison's eyes.... Well, tell me about yourself."
+
+"The one thing that I want to tell you just now, Black Hill, is that I
+am not any longer bloodhound at the heels of Ian. What was done is
+done. Let us go on to better things. So at last will be unknit what
+was done."
+
+Black Hill both seemed and did not seem to pay attention. The man who
+sat before him was big and straight and gave forth warmth and light.
+He needed warmth and light; he needed a big tree to lean against. He
+vaguely hoped that Glenfernie was home to stay. He rubbed his hands
+and drank more wine.
+
+"No one has known for a long time where you were.... Goodworth has an
+agent in Paris who says that Ian tried once to find out that."
+
+"To find out where I was?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Alexander gazed out of window, beyond the terrace and the old trees
+to the long hill, purple with heath, sunny and clear atop.
+
+A servant came to the door. "Mrs. Alison has returned, sir."
+
+Glenfernie rose. "I will go find her then.--I will ride over often if
+I may."
+
+"I wish you would!" said Black Hill. "I was sorry about that quarrel
+with your father."
+
+The old laird's son walked down the matted corridor. The drawing-room
+door stood open; he saw one panel of the tall screen covered with
+pagodas, palms, and macaws. Further on was the room, clean and
+fragrant, known as Mrs. Alison's room. This door, too, was wide. He
+stood by his old friend. They put hands into hands; eyes met, eyes
+held in a long look.
+
+She said, "O God, I praise Thee!"
+
+They sat within the garden door, on one side the clear, still room, on
+the other the green and growing things, the great tree loved by birds.
+The place was like a cloister. He stayed with her an hour, and in all
+that time there was not a great deal said with the outer tongue. But
+each grew more happy, deeper and stronger.
+
+He talked to her of the Roman Campagna, of the East and the desert....
+
+As the hour closed he spoke directly of Ian. "That is myself now, as
+Elspeth is myself now. I falter, I fail, but I go on to profounder
+Oneness."
+
+"Christ is born, then he grows up."
+
+"May I see Ian's last letters?"
+
+She put them in his hands. "They are very short. They speak almost
+always of external things."
+
+He read, then sat musing, his eyes upon the tree. "This last one--You
+answered that it was not known where I was?"
+
+"Yes. But he says here at the last, 'I feel it somewhere that he is on
+his way to Scotland.'"
+
+"I'll have to think it out."
+
+"Every letter is objective like this. But for all that, I divine, in
+the dark, a ferment.... As you see, we have not heard for months."
+
+The laird of Glenfernie rode at last from Black Hill. It was
+afternoon, white drifts of clouds in the sky, light and shadow moving
+upon field and moor and distant, framing mountains. He rode by
+Littlefarm and he called at the house gate for Robin Greenlaw. It
+seemed that the latter was away in White Farm fields. The laird might
+meet him riding home. A mile farther on he saw the gray horse crossing
+the stream.
+
+Glenfernie and Greenlaw, meeting, left each the saddle, went near to
+embracing, sat at last by a stone wall in the late sunshine, and felt
+a tide of liking, stronger, not weaker, than that of old days.
+
+"You are looking after White Farm?"
+
+"Yes. The old man fails. Jenny has become a cripple. Gilian and I are
+the rulers."
+
+"Or servers?"
+
+"It amounts to the same.... Gilian has a splendid soul."
+
+"The poems, Robin. Do you make them yet?"
+
+"Oh yes! Now and then. All this helps.... And you, Glenfernie, I could
+make a poem of you!"
+
+The laird laughed. "I suppose you could of all men.... Gilian and you
+do not marry?"
+
+"We are not the marrying kind. But I shouldn't love beauty inside if I
+didn't love Gilian.... I see that something big has come to you,
+Glenfernie, and made itself at home. You'll be wanting it taken as a
+matter of course, and I take it that way.... No matter what you have
+seen, is not this vale fair?"
+
+"Fair as fair! Loved because of child and boy and man.... Robin,
+something beyond all years as we count them can be put into
+moments.... A moment can be as sizable as a sun."
+
+"I believe it. We are all treading toward the land of wonders."
+
+When he parted from Robin it was nearly sunset. He did not mean to
+stop to-day at White Farm, but he turned Black Alan in that direction.
+He would ride by the house and the shining stream with the
+stepping-stones. Coming beneath the bank thick with willow and aspen,
+he checked the horse and sat looking at the long, low house. It held
+there in a sunset stillness, a sunset glory, a dream of dawn. He
+dismounted, left the horse, and climbed to the strip of green before
+the place. None seemed about, all seemed within. Here was the fir-tree
+with the bench around--so old a tree, watching life so long!... Now he
+saw that Jarvis Barrow sat here. But the old man was asleep. He sat
+with closed eyes, and his Bible was under his hand. Beside him, tall
+and fair, wide-browed, gray-eyed, stood Gilian. Her head was turned
+toward the fringed bank; when she saw Alexander she put her finger
+against her lips. He made a gesture of understanding and went no
+nearer. For a moment he stood regarding all, then drew back into
+shadow of willow and aspen, descended the bank, and, mounting Black
+Alan, rode home through the purple light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+The countryside, the village--the Jardine Arms--Mrs. Macmurdo in her
+shop to all who entered--talked of the laird's homecoming. "He's a
+strange sort!"
+
+"Some do say he's been to America and found a gold-mine."
+
+"Na! He's just been journeying around in himself."
+
+"I am na spekalative. He's contentit, and sae am I. It's a mair
+natural warld than ye think."
+
+"Three year syne when he went away, he lookit like ane o' thae figures
+o' tragedy--"
+
+"Aweel, then, he's swallowed himself and digested it."
+
+"I ca' it fair miracle! The Lord touched him in the night."
+
+"Do ye haud that he'll gang to kirk the morn?"
+
+"I dinna precisely ken. He micht, and he micht not."
+
+He went, entering with Mrs. Grizel, Alice, and Strickland, sitting in
+the House pew. How many kirks he thought of, sitting there--what
+cathedrals, chapels; what rude, earnest places; what temples, mosques,
+caves, ancient groves; what fanes; what worshiped gods! One, one!
+Temple and image, worshiped and worshiper. Self helping self. "O my
+Self, daily and deeply help myself!"
+
+The little white stone building--the earnest, strenuous, narrow man in
+the pulpit, the Scots congregation--old, old, familiar, with an inner
+odor not unpungent, not unliked! Life Everlasting--Everlasting
+Life....
+
+"_That ye may have life and have it more abundantly._"
+
+White Farm sat in the White Farm place. Jarvis Barrow was there. But
+he did not sit erect as of yore; he leaned upon his staff. Jenny was
+missed. Lame now, she stayed at home and watched the passing, and
+talked to herself or talked to others. Gilian sat beside the old man.
+Behind were Menie and Merran, Thomas and Willy. Glenfernie's eyes
+dwelt quietly upon Jarvis and his granddaughter. When he willed he
+could see Elspeth beside Gilian.
+
+The prayers, the sermon, the hymns.... All through the world-body the
+straining toward the larger thing, the enveloping Person! As he sat
+there he felt blood-warmth, touch, with every foot that sought hold,
+with every hand that reached. He saw the backward-falling, and he saw
+that they did not fall forever, that they caught and held and climbed
+again. He saw that because he had done that, time and time again done
+that.
+
+Mr. M'Nab preached a courageous, if harsh, sermon. The old words of
+commination! They were not empty--but in among them, fine as ether,
+now ran a gloss.... The sermon ended, the final psalm was sung.
+
+    "When Zion's bondage God turned back,
+      As men that dreamed were we.
+    Then filled with laughter was our mouth.
+      Our tongue with melody--"
+
+But the Scots congregation went out, to the eye sober, stern, and
+staid. Glenfernie spoke to Jarvis Barrow. He meant to do no more than
+give a word of greeting. But the old man put forth an emaciated hand
+and held him.
+
+"Is it the auld laird? My eyes are na gude.--Eh, laird, I remember the
+sermons of your grandfather, Gawin Elliot! Aye, aye! he was a lion
+against sinners! I hae seen them cringe!... It is the auld laird,
+Gilian?"
+
+"No, Grandfather. You remember that the old laird was William. This is
+Mr. Alexander."
+
+"He that was always aff somewhere alane?" White Farm drew his mind
+together. "I see now! You're right. I remember."
+
+"I am coming to White Farm to-morrow, Mr. Barrow."
+
+"Come then.... Is Grierson slain?"
+
+"He's away in past time," said Gilian. "Grandfather, here's Willy to
+help you.--Don't say anything more to him now, Glenfernie."
+
+The next day he rode to White Farm. Jenny, through the window, saw him
+coming, but Jarvis Barrow, old bodily habits changing, lay sleeping on
+his own bed. Nor was Gilian at hand. The laird sat and talked with
+Jenny in the clean, spare living-room. All the story of her crippling
+was to be told, and a packed chest of country happenings gone over.
+Jenny had a happy, voluble half-hour. At last, the immediate bag
+exhausted, she began to cast her mind in a wider circle. Her words
+came at a slower pace, at last halted. She sat in silence, an apple
+red in her cheeks. She eyed askance the man over against her, and at
+last burst forth:
+
+"Gilian said I should na speir--but, eh, Glenfernie, I wad gie mair
+than a bawbee to ken what you did to him!"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Naething?"
+
+"Nothing that you would call anything."
+
+Jenny sat with open mouth. "They said you'd changed, even to look
+at--and sae you have!--_Naething!_"
+
+Jarvis Barrow entered the room, and with him came Gilian. The old man
+failed, failed. Now he knew Glenfernie and spoke to him of to-day and
+of yesterday--and now he addressed him as though he were his father,
+the old laird, or even his grandfather. And after a few minutes he
+said that he would go out to the fir-tree. Alexander helped him there.
+Gilian took the Bible and placed it beside him.
+
+"Open at eleventh Isaiah," he said. "'_And there shall come forth a
+rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his
+roots--_'"
+
+Gilian opened the book. "You read," and she sat down beside him.
+
+"I wish to talk to you," said Alexander to her. "When--?"
+
+"I am going to town to-morrow afternoon. I'll walk back over the
+moor."
+
+When he came upon the moor next day it was bathed by a sun half-way
+down the western quarter. The colors of it were lit, the vast slopes
+had alike tenderness and majesty. He moved over the moor; then he sat
+down by a furze-bush and waited. Gilian came at last, sat down near
+him in the dry, sweet growth. She put her arms over her knees; she
+held her head back and drank the ineffable rich compassion of the sky.
+She spoke at last.
+
+"Oh, laird, life's a marvel!"
+
+"I feel the soul now," he said, "of marigolds and pansies. That is the
+difference to me."
+
+"What shall you do? Stay here and grow--or travel again and grow?"
+
+"I do not yet know.... It depends."
+
+"It depends on Ian, does it not?"
+
+"Yes.... Now you speak as Gilian and now you speak as Elspeth."
+
+"That is the marvel of the world.... That Person whom we call Being
+has also a long name.--My name, her name, your name, his name, its
+name, all names! Side by side, one over another, one through
+another.... Who comes out but just that Person?"
+
+They sat and watched the orb that itself, with its members the
+planets, went a great journey. Gilian began to talk about Elspeth. She
+talked with quietness, with depth, insight, and love, sitting there on
+the golden moor. Elspeth--childhood and girlhood and womanhood. The
+sister of Elspeth spoke simply, but the sifted words came from a
+poet's granary. She made pictures, she made melodies for Alexander.
+Glints of vision, fugitive strains of music, echoes of a quaint and
+subtle mirth, something elemental, faylike--that was Elspeth. And
+lightning in the south in summer, just shown, swiftly withdrawn--power
+and passion--sudden similitudes with great love-women of old
+story--that also was Elspeth. And a crying and calling for the Star
+that gathers all stars--that likewise was Elspeth. Such and such did
+Elspeth show herself to Gilian. And that half-year that they knew
+about of grief and madness--it was not scanted nor its misery denied!
+It, too, was, or had been, of Elspeth. Deep through ages, again and
+again, something like that might have worked forth. But it was not all
+nor most of that nature--had not been and would not be--would not
+be--would not be. The sister of Elspeth spoke with pure, convinced
+passion as to that. Who denied the dark? There were the dark and the
+light, and the million million tones of each! And there was the
+eternal space where differences trembled into harmony.
+
+With the sunset they moved over the great, clean slope to where it ran
+down to fields and trees. Before them was White Farm, below them the
+glistening stream, coral and gold between and around the
+stepping-stones. They parted here, Gilian going on to the house, the
+laird turning again over the moor.
+
+He passed the village; he came by the white kirk and the yew-trees and
+the kirkyard. All were lifted upon the hilltop, all wore the color of
+sunset and the color of dawn. The laird of Glenfernie moved beside the
+kirkyard wall. He seemed to hold in his hand marigolds, pinks, and
+pansies. He saw a green mound, and he seemed to put the flowers there,
+out of old custom and tenderness. But no longer did he feel that
+Elspeth was beneath the mound. A wide tapering cloud, golden-feathered,
+like a wing of glory, stretched half across the sky. He looked at it;
+he looked at that in which it rested. His lips moved, he spoke aloud.
+
+"_O Death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory?_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+Days and weeks went by. Autumn came and stepped in russet toward
+winter. Yet it was not cold and the mists and winds delayed. The
+homecoming of the laird of Glenfernie slipped into received fact--a
+fact rather large, acceptable, bringing into the neighborhood
+situation of things in general a perceptible amount of expansion and
+depth, but settling now, for the general run, into comfortable
+every-day. They were used--until these late years--to seeing a laird
+of Glenfernie about. When he was not there it was a missed part of the
+landscape. When he was in presence Nature showed herself correctly
+filled out. This laird was like and not like the old lairds. Big like
+the one before him in outward frame and seeming, there were certainly
+inner differences. Dale and village pondered these differences. It
+came at last to a judgment that this Glenfernie was larger and kinder.
+The neighborhood considered that he would make a good home body, and
+if he was a scholar, sitting late in the old keep over great books,
+that harmed no one, redounded, indeed, to the dale's credit. His very
+wanderings might so redound now that they were over. "That's the laird
+of Glenfernie," the dale might say to strangers.
+
+It was dim, gray, late November weather. There poured rain, shrieked
+a wind. Then the sky cleared and the air stilled. There came three
+wonderful days, one after the other, and between them wonderful nights
+with a waxing moon. Alexander, riding home from Littlefarm, found
+waiting for him in the court Peter Lindsay, of Black Hill. This was a
+trusted man.
+
+"I hae a bit letter frae Mistress Alison, laird." Giving it to him,
+Peter came close, his eye upon the approaching stable-boy. "Dinna look
+at it here, but when ye're alone. I'll bide and tak the answer."
+
+Alexander nodded, turned, and crossed to the keep. Within its ancient,
+deep entrance he broke seal and opened the paper superscribed by Mrs.
+Alison. Within was not her handwriting. There ran but two lines, in a
+hand with which he was well acquainted:
+
+"_Will you meet one that you know in the cave to-night four hours
+after moonrise?_"
+
+He went back to the messenger. "The answer is, 'Yes.' Say just that,
+Peter Lindsay."
+
+The day went by. He worked with Strickland. The latter thought him a
+little absent, but the accounts were checked and decisions made. At
+the supper-table he was more quiet than usual.
+
+"Full moon to-night," said Alice. "What does it look like, Alexander,
+when it shines in Rome and when it comes up right out of the desert?"
+
+"It lights the ruins and it is pale day in the desert. What makes you
+think to-night of Rome and the desert?"
+
+"I do not know. I see the rim now out of window."
+
+The moon climbed. It shone with an intense silver behind leafless
+boughs and behind the dark-clad boughs of firs. It came above the
+trees. The night hung windless and deeply clear. A fire burned upon
+the hearth of the room in the keep. Alexander sat before it and he sat
+very still, and vast pictures came to the inner eye, and to the inner
+ear meanings of old words....
+
+He rose at last, took a cloak, and went down the stone stair into a
+night cold, still, and bright. The path by the school-house, the
+hand's-breadth of silvered earth, the broken, silvered wall, the pine,
+the rough descent.... He went through the dark wood where the shining
+fell broken like a shattered mirror. Beyond held open country until he
+came to the glen mouth. The moon was high. He heard faint sounds of
+the far night-time, and his own step upon the silver earth. He came to
+the glen and the sound of water streaming to the sea.
+
+How well he knew this place! Thick trees spread arms above, rock that
+leaned darkened the narrow path. But his foot knew where to tread. In
+some more open span down poured the twice-broken light; then came
+darkness. There was a great checkering of light and darkness and the
+slumbrous sound of water. The path grew steeper and rougher. He was
+approaching the middle of the place.
+
+At last he came to the cave mouth and the leafless briers that
+curtained it. Just before it was reached, the moonbeams struck through
+clear air. There was a silver lightness. A form moved from where it
+had rested against the rock. Ian's voice spoke.
+
+"Alexander?"
+
+"Yes, it is I."
+
+"The night is so still. I heard you coming a long way off. I have
+lighted a fire in the cave."
+
+They entered it--the old boyhood haunt. All the air was moted for them
+with memories. Ian had made the fire and had laid fagots for mending.
+The flame played and murmured and reddened the walls. The roof was
+high, and at one place the light smoke made hidden exit. It was dead
+night. Even in the daytime the glen was a solitary place.
+
+Alexander put down his cloak. He looked about the place, then,
+squarely turning, looked at Ian. Long time had passed since they had
+spoken each to other in Rome. Now they stood in that ancient haunt
+where the very making of the fire sang of the old always-done,
+never-to-be-omitted, here in the cave. The light was sufficient for
+each to study the other's face. Alexander spoke:
+
+"You have changed."
+
+"And you. Let us sit down. There is much that I want to say."
+
+They sat, and again it was as they used to do, with the fire between
+them, but out of plane, so that they might fully view each other. The
+cave kept stillness. Subtly and silently its walls became penetrable.
+They crumbled, dissolved. Around now was space and the two were men.
+
+Ian looked worn, with a lined face. But the old brown-gold splendor,
+though dusked over, drew yet. No one might feel him negligible. And
+something was there, quivering in the dusk.... He and Alexander rested
+without speech--or rather about them whirled inaudible speech--
+intuitions, divinations. At last words formed themselves. Ian spoke:
+
+"I came from France on the chance that you were here.... For a long
+time I have been driven, driven, by one with a scourge. Then that
+changed to a longing. At last I resolved.... The driving was
+within--as within as longing and determination. I have heard Aunt
+Alison say that every myth, all world stories, are but symbols,
+figures, of what goes on within. Well, I have found out about the
+Furies, and about some other myths."
+
+"Yes. They tried to tell inner things."
+
+"I came here to say that I wronged folk from whom a man within me
+cannot part. One is dead, and I have to seek her along another road.
+But you are living, breathing there! I made myself your foe, and now I
+wish that I could unmake what I made.... I was and am a sinful
+soul.... It is for you to say if it is anything to you, what I
+confess." He rose from the fire and moved once or twice the length of
+the place. At last he came and stood before the other. "It is no
+wonder if it be not given," he said. "But I ask your forgiveness,
+Alexander!"
+
+"Well, I give it to you," said Alexander. His face worked. He got to
+his feet and went to Ian. He put his hands upon the other's shoulders.
+"_Old Saracen!_" he said.
+
+Ian shook. With the dropping of Alexander's hands he went back a step;
+he sat down and hid his head in his arms.
+
+Said Alexander: "You did thus and thus, obeying inner weakness,
+calling it all the time strength. And do I not know that I, too, made
+myself a shadow going after shadows? My own make of selfishness,
+arrogance, and hatred.... Let us do better, you and I!" He mended the
+fire. "By understanding the past may be altered. Already it is altered
+with you and me.... I was here the other day. I stayed a long time.
+There seemed two boys in the cave and there seemed a girl beside them.
+The three felt with and understood and were one another." He came and
+knelt beside Ian. "Let us forge a stronger friendship!"
+
+Ian, face to the rock, was weeping, weeping. Alexander knelt beside
+him, lay beside him, arm over heaving shoulders. Old Steadfast--Old
+Saracen--and Elspeth Barrow, also, and around and through, pulsing,
+cohering, interpenetrating, healing, a sense of something greater....
+
+It passed--the torrent force, long pent, aching against its barriers.
+Ian lay still, at last sat up.
+
+"Come outside," said Alexander, "into the cold and the air."
+
+They left the cave for the moonlight night. They leaned against the
+rock, and about them hung the sleeping trees. The crag was silvered,
+the stream ran with a deep under-sound. The air struck pure and cold.
+The large stars shone down through all the flooding radiance of the
+moon. The familiar place, the strange place, the old-new place.... At
+last Ian spoke, "Have you been to the Kelpie's Pool?"
+
+"Yes. The day I came home I lay for hours beside it."
+
+"I was there to-night. I came here from there."
+
+"It is with us. But far beside it is also with us!"
+
+"The carnival at Rome. When I left Rome I went to the Lake of Como. I
+want to tell you of a night there--and of nights and days later,
+elsewhere--"
+
+"Come within, as we used to do, and talk the heart out."
+
+They went back to the fire. It played and sang. The minutes, poignant,
+full, went by.
+
+"So at last prison and scaffold risks ceased to count. I took what
+disguise I could and came."
+
+"All at Black Hill know?"
+
+"Yes. But they are not betrayers. I do not show myself and am not
+called by my name. I am Senor Nobody."
+
+"Senor Nobody."
+
+"When I broke Edinburgh gaol I fled to France through Spain. There in
+the mountains I fell among brigands. I had to find ransom. Senor
+Nobody provided it. I never saw him nor do I know his name....
+Alexander!"
+
+"Aye."
+
+"Was it you?"
+
+"Aye. I hated while I gave.... But I don't hate now. I don't hate
+myself. Ian!"
+
+The fire played, the fire sang.
+
+Alexander spoke: "Now your bodily danger again--You've put your head
+into the lion's mouth!"
+
+"That lion weighs nothing here."
+
+"I am glad that you came. But now I wish to see you go!"
+
+"Yes, I must go."
+
+"Is it back to France?"
+
+"Yes--or to America. I do not know. I have thought of that. But here,
+first, I thought that I should go to White Farm."
+
+"It would add risk. I do not think that it is needed."
+
+"Jarvis Barrow--"
+
+"The old man lies abed and his wits wander. He would hardly know you,
+I think--would not understand. Leave him now, except as you find him
+within."
+
+"Her sister?"
+
+"I will tell Gilian. That is a wide and wise spirit. She will
+understand."
+
+"Then it is come and gone--"
+
+"Disappear as you appeared! None here wants your peril, and the griefs
+and evils were you taken."
+
+"I expected to go back. The brig _Seawing_ brought me. It sails in a
+week's time."
+
+"You must be upon it, then."
+
+"Yes, I suppose so." He drew a long, impatient breath. "Let us leave
+all that! Sufficient to the day--I wander and wander, and there are
+stones and thorns--and Circe, too!... You have the steady light, but I
+have not! The wind blows it--it flickers!"
+
+"Ah, I know flickering, too!"
+
+"Is there a great Senor Somebody? Sometimes I feel it--and then there
+is only the wild ass in the desert! The dust blinds and the mire
+sticks."
+
+"Ah, Old Saracen--"
+
+The other pushed the embers together. "This cave--this glen.... Do you
+remember that time we were in Amsterdam and each dreamed one night the
+same dream?"
+
+"I remember."
+
+The fire was sinking for the night. The moon was down in the western
+sky. Around and around the cave and the glen and the night the inner
+ear heard, as it were, a long, faint, wordless cry for help. Alexander
+brooded, brooded, his eyes upon the lessening flame. At last, with a
+sudden movement, he rose. "I smell the morning air. Let us be going!"
+
+The two covered the embers and left the cave. The moon stood above the
+western rim of the glen, the sound of the water was deep and full,
+frost hung in the air, the trees great and small stood quiet, in a
+winter dream. Ian and Alexander climbed the glen-side, avoiding Mother
+Binning's cot. Now they were in open country, moving toward Black
+Hill.
+
+The walk was not a short one. Daybreak was just behind the east when
+they came to the long heath-grown hill that faced the house, the
+purple ridge where as boys they had met. They climbed it, and in the
+east was light. Beneath them, among the trees, Black Hill showed roof
+and chimney. Then up the path toward them came Peter Lindsay.
+
+He seemed to come in haste and a kind of fear. When he saw the two he
+threw up his hands, then violently gestured to them to go back upon
+their path, drop beneath the hilltop. They obeyed, and he came to them
+himself, panting, sweat upon him for all the chill night. "Mr.
+Ian--Laird! Sogers at the house--"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Twelve of them. They rade in an hour syne. The lieutenant swears
+ye're there, Mr. Ian, and they search the house. Didna ye see the
+lights? Mrs. Alison tauld me to gae warn ye--"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+The soldiers, having fruitlessly searched Black Hill, for the present
+set up quarters there, and searched the neighborhood. They gave a wide
+cast to that word. It seemed to include all this part of Scotland.
+Before long they appeared, not unforeseen, at Glenfernie.
+
+The lieutenant was a wiry, wide-nostriled man, determined to please
+superiors and win promotion. He had now men at the Jardine Arms no
+less than men at Black Hill. Face to face with the laird of Glenfernie
+in the latter's hall, he explained his errand.
+
+"Yes," said Glenfernie. "I saw you coming up the hill. Will you take
+wine?"
+
+"To your health, sir!"
+
+"To your health!"
+
+The lieutenant set down the glass and wiped his lips. "I have orders,
+Mr. Jardine, which I may not disobey."
+
+"Exactly so, Lieutenant."
+
+"My duty, therefore, brings me in at your door--though of course I may
+say that you and your household are hardly under suspicion of
+harboring a proscribed rebel! A good Whig"--he bowed stiffly--"a
+volunteer serving with the Duke in the late trouble, and, last but
+not least, a personal enemy of the man we seek--"
+
+"The catalogue is ample!" said Glenfernie. "But still, having your
+orders to make no exception, you must search my house. It is at your
+service. I will show you from room to room."
+
+Lieutenant and soldiers and laird went through the place, high and low
+and up and down. "Perfunctory!" said the lieutenant twice. "But we
+must do as we are told!"
+
+"Yes," said the laird. "This is my sister's garden. The small building
+there is an old school-room."
+
+They met Alice walking in the garden, in the winter sunshine.
+Strickland, too, joined them here. Presentations over, the lieutenant
+again repeated his story.
+
+"Perfunctory, of course, here--perfunctory! The only trace that we
+think we have we found in a glen near you. There is a cave there that
+I understand he used to haunt. We found ashes, still warm, where had
+been a fire. Pity is, the ground is so frozen no footstep shows!"
+
+"You are making escape difficult," said Strickland.
+
+"I flatter myself that we'll get him between here and the sea! I am
+going presently," said the lieutenant, "to a place called White Farm.
+But I am given to understand that there are good reasons--saving the
+lady's presence--why he'll find no shelter there."
+
+"Over yonder is the old keep," said Glenfernie. "When that is passed,
+I think you will have seen everything."
+
+They left Strickland and Alice and went to the keep. Their footsteps
+and those of the soldiers behind them rang upon the stone stairs.
+
+"Above is the room," said the laird of Glenfernie, "where as a boy I
+used to play at alchemy. I built a furnace. I had an intention of
+making lead into gold. I keep old treasures there still, and it is
+still my dear old lair--though with a difference as I travel on,
+though with a difference, Lieutenant, as we travel on!"
+
+They came into the room, quiet, filled with books and old apparatus,
+with a burning fire, with sunlight and shadow dappling floor and wall.
+"Well, he would hardly hide here!" said the lieutenant.
+
+"Not by received canons," answered Glenfernie.
+
+The lieutenant spoke to the soldiers. "Go about and look beneath and
+behind matters. There are no closets?"
+
+"There are only these presses built against the stone." The laird
+opened them as he spoke. "You see--blank space!" He moved toward a
+corner. "This structure is my ancient furnace of which I spoke. I
+still keep it fuel-filled for firing." As he spoke he opened a sizable
+door.
+
+The lieutenant, stooping, saw the piled wood. "I don't know much of
+alchemy," he said. "I've never had time to get around to those things.
+It's bringing out sleeping values isn't it?"
+
+"Something like that." He shut the furnace door, and they stood
+watching the soldiers search the room. In no long time this stood a
+completed process.
+
+"Perfunctory!" said again the lieutenant. "Now men, we'll to White
+Farm!"
+
+"There is food and drink for them below, on this chilly day," said
+the laird, "and perhaps in the hall you'll drink another glass of
+wine?"
+
+All went down the stairs and out of the keep. Another half-hour and
+the detail, lieutenant and men, mounted and rode away. Glenfernie and
+Strickland watched them down the winding road, clear of the hill, out
+upon the highway.
+
+Alexander went back alone to the keep that, also, from its widened
+loopholes, might watch the searchers ride away. He mounted the stair;
+he came into his old room. Ian stood beside the table. The sizable
+furnace door hung open, the screen of heaped wood was disarranged.
+
+"It was a good notion, that recess behind my old furnace!" said
+Glenfernie. "You took no harm beyond some cobwebs and ashes?"
+
+"None, Senor Nobody," said Ian.
+
+That day went by. The laird and Strickland talked together in low
+voices in the old school-room. Davie, too, appeared there once, and an
+old, trusted stableman. At sunset came Robin Greenlaw, and stayed an
+hour. The stars shone out, around drew a high, windy crystal night.
+
+Mrs. Grizel went to bed. Alexander, with Alice and Strickland, sat by
+the fire in the hall. There was much that the laird wished to say that
+he said. They spoke in low voices, leaning toward the burning logs,
+the light playing over their faces, the light laughing upon old armor,
+crossed weapons, upon the walls. Alice, a bonny woman with sense and
+courage, sat beside Glenfernie. Strickland, from his corner, saw how
+much she looked like her mother; how much, to-night, Alexander looked
+like her.
+
+They talked until late. They came to agreement, quiet, moved, but
+thorough. Glenfernie rose. He took Alice in his arms and kissed her
+thrice. Moisture was in the eyes of both.
+
+"Sleep, dear, sleep! So we understand, things grow easy!"
+
+"I think that you are right, and that is a long way to comfort," said
+Alice. "Good night, good night, Alexander!"
+
+When she was gone the two men talked yet a little longer, over the
+dying fire. Then they, too, wished each other good night. Strickland
+went to his room, but Alexander left the house and crossed the
+moon-filled night to the keep. It was now he and Ian.
+
+There was no strain. "Old Steadfast" and "Old Saracen," and a long
+pilgrimage together, and every difference granted, yet, in the
+background, a vast, an oceanic unity.... Ian rose from the settle. He
+and the laird of Glenfernie sat by the table and with pen and paper
+made a diagram of escape. They bent to the task in hand, and when it
+was done, and a few more words had been said, they turned to the
+pallets which Davie had spread on either side of the hearth. The moon
+and the low fire made a strange half-light in the room. The two lay
+still, addressed to sleep. They spoke and answered but once.
+
+Said Ian: "I felt just then the waves of the sea!--The waves of the
+sea and the roads of France.... The waves and roads of the days and
+nights and months and years. I there and you here. There is an ether,
+doubtless, that links, but I don't tread it firmly.... Be sure I'll
+turn to you, call to you, often, over the long roads, from out of the
+trough of the waves! _Senor Nobody! Senor Nobody!_" He laughed, but
+with a catch of the breath. "Good night!"
+
+"Good night, Old Saracen!" said Alexander.
+
+Morn came. That day Glenfernie House heard still that all that region
+was searched. The day went by, short, gray, with flurries of snow. By
+afternoon it settled to a great, down-drifting pall of white. It was
+falling thick and fast when Alexander Jardine and Ian Rullock passed
+through the broken wall beyond the school-room. The pine branches were
+whitening, the narrow, rugged path ran a zigzag of white.
+
+Strickland had parted from them at the wall, and yet Strickland seemed
+to be upon the path, following Glenfernie. Ian wore a dress of
+Strickland's, a hat and cloak that the countryside knew. He and
+Strickland were nearly of a height. Keeping silence and moving through
+a dimness of the descending day and the shaken veil of the snow,
+almost any chance-met neighbor would have said, in passing, "Good day,
+Mr. Strickland!"
+
+The path led into the wood. Trees rose about them, phantoms in the
+snowstorm. The snow fell in large flakes, straight, undriven by wind.
+Footprints made transient shapes. The snow obliterated them as in the
+desert moving sand obliterated. Ian and Alexander, leaving the wood,
+took a way that led by field and moor to Littlefarm.
+
+The earth seemed a Solitary, with no child nor lover of hers abroad.
+The day declined, the snow fell. Ian and Alexander moved on, hardly
+speaking. The outer landscape rolled dimmed, softened, withdrawn. The
+inner world moved among its own contours. The day flowed toward
+night, as the night would flow toward day.
+
+They came to the foot of the moor that stretched between White Farm
+and Littlefarm.
+
+"There is a woman standing by that tree," said Ian.
+
+"Yes. It is Gilian."
+
+They moved toward her. Tall, fair, wide-browed and gray-eyed, she
+leaned against the oak stem and seemed to be at home here, too. The
+wide falling snow, the mystic light and quietness, were hers for
+mantle. As they approached she stirred.
+
+"Good day, Glenfernie!--Good day, Ian Rullock!--Glenfernie, you cannot
+go this way! Soldiers are at Littlefarm."
+
+"Did Robin--"
+
+"He got word to me an hour since. They are chance-fallen, the second
+time. They will get no news and soon be gone. He trusted me to give
+you warning. He says wait for him at the cot that was old Skene's. It
+stands empty and folk say that it is haunted and go round about." She
+left the tree and took the path with them. "It lies between us and
+White Farm. This snow is friendly. It covers marks--it keeps folk
+within-doors--nor does it mean to fall too long or too heavily."
+
+They moved together through the falling snow.
+
+It was a mile to old Skene's cot. They walked it almost in
+silence--upon Ian's part in silence. The snow fell; it covered their
+footprints. All outlines showed vague and looming. The three seemed
+three vital points moving in a world dissolving or a world forming.
+
+The empty cot rose before them, the thatch whitened, the door-stone
+whitened. Glenfernie pushed the door. It opened; they found a clean,
+bare place, twilight now, still, with the falling snow without.
+
+Gilian spoke. "I'll go on now to White Farm. Robin will come. In no
+long time you'll be upon the farther road.... Now I will say Fare you
+well!"
+
+Alexander took her hands. "Farewell, Gilian!"
+
+Gray eyes met gray eyes. "Be it short time or be it long time--soon
+home to Glenfernie, or long, long gone--farewell, and God bless you,
+Glenfernie!"
+
+"And you, Gilian!"
+
+She turned to Ian. "Ian Rullock--farewell, too, and God bless you,
+too!"
+
+She was gone. They watched through the door her form moving amid
+falling snow. The veil between thickened; she vanished; there were
+only the white particles of the dissolving or the forming world. The
+two kept silence.
+
+Twilight deepened, night came, the snow ceased to fall for a time,
+then began again, but less thickly. One hour went by, two, three. Then
+came Robin Greenlaw and Peter Lindsay, riding, and with them horses
+for the two who waited at Skene's cot.
+
+Four men rode through the December night. At dawn they neared the sea.
+The snow fell no longer. When the purple bars came into the east they
+saw in the first light the huddled roofs of a small seaport. Beyond
+lay gray water, with shipping in the harbor.
+
+At a crossroads the party divided. Robin Greenlaw and Peter Lindsay
+took a way that should lead them far aside from this port, and then
+with circuitousness home. Before they reached it they would separate,
+coming singly into their own dale, back to Black Hill, back to
+Littlefarm. The laird of Glenfernie and Littlefarm, dismounting,
+moving aside, talked together for a few moments. Ian gave Peter
+Lindsay a message for Mrs. Alison.... Good-bys were said. Greenlaw
+remounted; he and Peter Lindsay moved slowly from the two bound to the
+port. A dip of the earth presently hid them. Alexander and Ian were
+left in the gray dawn.
+
+"Alexander, I know the safe house and the safe man and the safe ship.
+Why should you run further danger? Let us say good-by now!"
+
+"No, not now."
+
+"You have come to the edge of Scotland. Say farewell here, and danger
+saved, rather than on the water stairs in a little while--"
+
+"No. I will go farther, Ian. There is Mackenzie's house, over there."
+
+They rode through the winter dawn to the house at the edge of the
+port, where lived a quiet man and wife, under obligations to the
+Jardines. There visited them now the laird of Glenfernie and his
+secretary, Mr. Strickland.
+
+The latter, it seemed, was not well--kept his room that day. The laird
+of Glenfernie went about, indeed, but never once went near the
+waterside.... And yet, at eve, the master of the _Seawing_, riding in
+the harbor, took the resolution to sail by cockcrow.
+
+The sun went down with red and gold, in a winter splendor. Dark night
+followed, but, late, there rose a moon. Alexander and Ian, coming down
+to the harbor edge at a specified place, found there the waiting boat
+with two rowers. It hung before them on the just-lit water. "Now, Old
+Steadfast, farewell!" said Ian.
+
+"I am going a little farther. Step in, man!"
+
+The boat drove across, under the moon, to the _Seawing_. The two
+mounted the brig's side and, touching deck, found the captain, known
+to Ian, who had sailed before upon the _Seawing_, and known since
+yesterday to Glenfernie. The captain welcomed them, his only
+passengers, using not their own names, but others that had been
+chosen. In the cabin, under the swinging lantern, there followed a few
+words as to weather, ports, and sailing. The tide served, the
+_Seawing_ would be forth in an hour. The captain, work calling, left
+them in the small lighted place.
+
+"The boat is waiting. Now, Old Steadfast--Senor Nobody--"
+
+"Old Saracen, we used to say that we'd go one day to India--"
+
+"Yes--"
+
+"Well, let us go!"
+
+"_Us_--"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+They stood with the table between them. Alexander's hands moved toward
+Ian's. They took hands; there followed a strong, a convulsive
+pressure.
+
+"We sin in differing ways and at differing times," said Alexander,
+"but we all sin. And we all struggle with it and through it and
+onward! And there must be some kind of star upon our heights. Well,
+let us work toward it together, Old Saracen!"
+
+They went out of the cabin and upon the deck. The boat that had
+brought them was gone. They saw it in the moonlight, half-way back to
+the quay. On the _Seawing_, sailors were lifting anchor. They stood
+and watched. The moon was paling; there came the scent of morning; far
+upon the shore a cock crew. The _Seawing's_ crew were making sail. Out
+and up went her pinions, filled with a steady and favoring wind. She
+thrilled; she moved; she left the harbor for a new voyage, fresh
+wonder of the eternal world.
+
+
+
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