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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?
"Let us go home," whispered Miss Mary, pulling gently at Gilian's coat. "Wait, wait, no hurry for cold kail hot again," said the Paymaster, every instinct for gossip alert and eager. "And you showed him the qualities of a Highland riposte! Good lad! Good lad! I'm glad that Sandy and you learned something of the art of fence before they tried you in the Stirling fashion," General Turner was saying.
Long after he was gone he could see him, black against the sky, on the backbone of the mountain, not very active for a man in search of sheep. But what he could not see so far was Gilian's rapture as he looked upon the two glens severed by so many weary miles of roadway, but close together at his feet.
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."
He leaned upon the crenelated parapet and hummed a strain of song as Gilian came up to him with a swinging step, now on the footway. Young Islay started at this approach without warning, but he was not afraid. He peered into Gilian's face when he had come up to him. "Oh, you!" said he. "I got quite a start, I thought at first it was Drimmin dorran's ghost."
She pushed him before her into the room; her brothers were seated at the fire, and they only turned when her voice, in a very unaccustomed excitement, broke the quietness of the chamber. "Do you hear this?" she cried, and her hand on Gilian's shoulder; "a vessel's sunk on the Ealan Dubh." "I knew there would be tales to tell of this," said the General. "The wind came too close on the frost.
"We will try it again," said he, and this time led the voices all in unison. Such a storm was in Gilian's mind that he could not for a little listen to hear what he expected.
For once a slumber seemed to lie upon the place for ordinary so throng and cheerful; the quay was Gilian's alone as he stepped wonderingly upon it and turned an eye to the square ports open for an airing to the dens. In all the company of the ships thus swaying at the quay-side there was no sign of life beyond the smoke that rose from the stunted funnels.
Dress!... What's that piper doing out there? MacVurich, come in! This is not a reel at a Skye wedding.... Let me see, I have the name on the tip of my tongue what could it be, now? Steady, men!" The door of the chamber was pushed in a little, and to Gilian's mouth his heart rose up at the manifestation, for what was this with no footstep on the wooden stair?
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.
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