s is! It looks like a quiet nest--a _home_
for a man's tired heart and brain. Tell me, friend, do you think one
could ever find such in this world?"

"A home!" she repeated, somewhat confusedly, for his voice had startled
her.--"You have often said that man needed none; that his life was in
himself--the life of intellect and of power. It is only we women who
have a longing after rest and home."

Harold made no immediate reply; but after a while he said,

"I want to have a quiet talk with you, Miss Rothesay. And I long to
see once more my favourite haunt, the Hermitage of Braid. 'Tis a sweet
place, and we can walk and converse there at our leisure. You will
come?"

She rarely said him nay in anything, and he somehow unconsciously used a
tone of command, like an elder brother;--but there was such sweetness in
being ruled by him! Olive obeyed at once; and soon, for the thousandth
time, she and Harold were walking out together arm-in-arm.

If ever there was a "lover's walk," it is that which winds along the
burn-side in the Hermitage of Braid. On either side

The braes ascend like lofty wa's,

shutting out all but the small blue rift of sky above. Even the sun
seems slow to peep in, as if his brightness were not needed by those who
walk in the light of their own hearts. And the little birds warble
and the little burnie runs, as if neither knew there was a weary world
outside, where many a heart, pure as either, grows dumb amidst its
singing, and freezes slowly as it flows.

Olive walked along by Harold's side in a happy dream. He looked so
cheerful, so "good"--a word she had often used, and he had smiled
at--meaning those times when, beneath her influence, the bitterness
melted from him. Such times there were--else she could never have
learned to love him as she did. Then, as now, his eyes were wont to
lighten, and his lips to smile, and there came an almost angelic beauty
over his face.

"I think," he said, "that my spirit is changing within me. I feel as if
I had never known life until now. In vain I say unto myself that this
must be a mere fantasy of mine; I, who am marked with the 'frost of
eild,' who will soon be--let me see--seven-and-thirty years old. What
think you of that age?"

His eyes, bent on her, spoke more than mere curiosity; but Olive,
unaware, looked up and smiled.

"Why, I am getting elderly myself; but I heed it not. One need mind
nothing if one's heart does not grow old."

"Does you