came to him, and a longing to go
back possessed him. He queried within himself if it were possible that
he could ever settle down to the common quiet of a Scottish parish, and
decided that, under certain conditions, the quiet might be far from
commonplace. So he threw his bundle over his shoulder, when the camp
broke up in the beginning of May, and took the first steamer home.

His first visit was to North Berwick, and there on the sands between the
East Terrace and the island promontory which looks towards the Bass,
where the salt water lies in the pools and the sea-pinks grow between
them, he found May Chisholm walking with a young man. Sylvanus Cobb
looked the young man over. He had a pretty moustache but a weak mouth.

"I can best that fellow, if I have a red head!" said Sylvanus, with some
of the old Euroclydon fervour.

And he did. Whether it was the red head, of which each individual hair
stood up automatically, the clear blue eyes, which were the first thing
and sometimes the only thing that most women saw in his face, or the
shoulders squared with the axe, that did it, May Chisholm only knows.
You can ask her, if you like. But most likely it was his plain,
determined way of asking for what he wanted--an excellent thing with
women. But, any way, it is a fact that, before eighteen months had gone
by, Sylvanus Cobb was settled in the western midlands of Scotland, with
the wife whose tangles of hair were only a trifle less distracting than
they used to be between the East Cliff and Tantallon. And this is a true
tale.

VII

THE CAIRN EDWARD KIRK MILITANT

_Out of the clinging valley mists I stray
Into the summer midnight clear and still,
And which the brighter is no man may say--
Whether the gold beyond the western hill_

_Where late the sun went down, or the faint tinge
Of lucent green, like sea wave's inner curve
Just ere it breaks, that gleams behind the fringe
Of eastern coast. So which doth most preserve_

_My wistful soul in hope and steadfastness
I know not--all that golden-memoried past
So sudden wonderful, when new life ran_

_First in my veins; or that clear hope, no less
Orient within me, for whose sake I cast
All meaner ends into these ground mists wan_.

"We've gotten a new kind o' minister the noo at Cairn Edward," said my
cousin, Andrew M'Quhirr, to me last Monday. I was down at the Mart, and
had done some little business on the H