el. At the great stone basin Malcolm set
the swan spouting, but the sweet musical jargon of the falling water
seemed almost coarse in the soundless diapason of the moonlight. So he
stopped it again, and they strolled farther up the garden.

Clementina venturing to remind him of the sexton-like gardener's story
of the lady and the hermit's cave, which, because of its Scotch, she was
unable to follow, Malcolm told her now what John Jack had narrated,
adding that the lady was his own mother, and that from the gardener's
tale he learned that morning at length how to account for the horror
which had seized him on his first entering the cave, as also for his
father's peculiar carriage on that occasion: doubtless he then caught a
likeness in him to his mother. He then recounted the occurrence
circumstantially.

"I have ever since felt ashamed of the weakness," he concluded; "but at
this moment I believe I could walk in with perfect coolness."

"We won't try it to-night," said Clementina, and once more turned him
from the place, reverencing the shadow he had brought with him from the
spirit of his mother.

They walked and sat and talked in the moonlight, for how long neither
knew; and when the moon went behind the trees on the cliff, and the
valley was left in darkness, but a darkness that seemed alive with the
new day soon to be born, they sat yet, lost in a peaceful unveiling of
hearts, till a sudden gust of wind roused Malcolm, and looking up he saw
that the stars were clouded, and knew that the chill of the morning was
drawing near.

He kept that chamber just as it was ever after, and often retired to it
for meditation. He never restored the ruinous parts of the stair, and he
kept the door at the top carefully closed. But he cleared out the
rubbish that choked the place where the stair had led lower down, came
upon it again in tolerable preservation a little beneath, and followed
it into a passage that ran under the burn, appearing to lead in the
direction of the cave behind the Baillies' Barn. Doubtless there was
some foundation for the legend of Lord Gernon.

There, however, he abandoned the work, thinking of the possibility of a
time when employment would be scarce and his people in want of all he
could give them. And when such a time arrived, as arrive it did before
they had been two years married, a far more important undertaking was
found needful to employ the many who must earn or starve. Then it was
that Clem