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 w.i.l.l.y 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 compa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion--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 pa.s.sion 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed 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 x.x.xIV

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.