hat made me
glad--that he should know me so well and feel me so near. That was what
he felt when he was with his mother, that she understood and that at
times neither of them needed words.

Until we had reached the patch of gorse where we intended to end our
walk we did not speak at all. He was thinking of things which led him
far. I knew that, though I did not know what they were. When we reached
the golden blaze we had seen the evening before it was a flame of gold
again, because--it was only for a few moments--the mist had blown apart
and the sun was shining on it.

As we stood in the midst of it together--Oh! how strange and beautiful
it was!--Mr. MacNairn came back. That was what it seemed to me--that he
came back. He stood quite still a moment and looked about him, and then
he stretched out his arms as I had stretched out mine. But he did it
slowly, and a light came into his face.

"If, after it was over, a man awakened as you said and found
himself--the self he knew, but light, free, splendid--remembering all
the ages of dark, unknowing dread, of horror of some black, aimless
plunge, and suddenly seeing all the childish uselessness of it--how he
would stand and smile! How he would stand and SMILE!"

Never had I understood anything more clearly than I understood then.
Yes, yes! That would be it. Remembering all the waste of fear, how he
would stand and SMILE!

He was smiling himself, the golden gorse about him already losing its
flame in the light returning mist-wraiths closing again over it, when I
heard a sound far away and high up the moor. It sounded like the playing
of a piper. He did not seem to notice it.

"We shall be shut in again," he said. "How mysterious it is, this
opening and closing! I like it more than anything else. Let us sit down,
Ysobel."

He spread the plaid we had brought to sit on, and laid on it the little
strapped basket Jean had made ready for us. He shook the mist drops from
our own plaids, and as I was about to sit down I stopped a moment to
listen.

"That is a tune I never heard on the pipes before," I said. "What is a
piper doing out on the moor so early?"

He listened also. "It must be far away. I don't hear it," he said.
"Perhaps it is a bird whistling."

"It is far away," I answered, "but it is not a bird. It's the pipes, and
playing such a strange tune. There! It has stopped!"

But it was not silent long; I heard the tune begin again much nearer,
and the piper was p