avourite spot from which the whole
village could be seen from under the leaves. It was a patch of firs on
the edge of the glebe, a useless rocky place let alone even by the cows.
Against the rough bark of a fir-tree Duncan had fastened a piece of
plank in order to form a rude seat.

As soon as he reached his favourite thinking stance, he forgot all about
ecclesiastical politics and the strifes of the Kers with the minister.
He stood alone in the wonder of the sunset. It glowed to the zenith.
But, as very frequently in his own water-colours, the colour had run
down to the horizon and flamed intensest crimson in the Nick of
Benarick. Broader and broader mounted the scarlet flame, till he seemed
in that still place to hear the sun's corona crackle, as observers think
they do when watching a great eclipse. The set of the sun affected him
like a still morning--that most mysterious thing in nature. He missed,
indeed, the diffused elation of the dawn; but it was infinitely sweet to
hear in that still place the softened sounds of the sweet village
life--for Howpaslet was a Paradise to those to whom its politics were
naught. He saw the blue smoke go up from the supper fires into the
windless air in pillars of cloud, then halt, and slowly dissipate into
lawny haze.

The cries of the playing children, the belated smith ringing the evening
chimes on his anvil in the smithy, the tits chirping among the firs, the
crackle of the rough scales on the red boughs of the Scotch fir above
him as they cooled--all fed his soul as though Peter's sheet had been
let down, and there was nothing common or unclean on all the earth.

"I beg your pardon--will you speak to me?"

The words stole upon him as from another sphere, startling him into
dropping his book. Duncan looked round. Some one was standing by the
rough stone dyke within a dozen yards of his summer-seat. It was Grace
Hutchison.

Duncan went towards the dyke, taking off his cap as he went--a new cap.

So they stood there, the wall of rough hill-stones between them, but
looking into one another's eyes.

There was no merriment now in the eyes that met his, no word of the
return of handkerchief or any maidenly coquetry. The mood of the day of
blowing leaves had passed away. She had a shawl over her head, drawn
close about her shoulders. Underneath it her eyes were like night. But
her lips showed on her pale face like a geranium growing alone and
looking westward in the twilight.