one, make this terrible and happy
furnace!" He thought, "I will speak now," and then delayed over the
words.

"This is a bonny, wee place!" said Elspeth. "Did you never hear the
old folks tell that your great-grandmother, that was among the
persecuted, loved it? When your father was a laddie they often used to
sit here, the two of them. They were great wanderers together."

"I never heard it," said Alexander. "Almost it seems too bright...."

They sat in silence, but the train of thought started went on with
Glenfernie:

"But perhaps she never went so far as the Kelpie's Pool."

"The Kelpie's Pool!... I do not like that place! Tell me, Glenfernie,
wonders of travel."

"What shall I tell you?"

"Tell me of the East. Tell me what like is the Sea of Galilee."

Glenfernie talked, since Elspeth bade him talk. He talked of what he
had seen and known, and that brought him, with the aid of questions
from the woman listening, to talk of himself. "I had a strange kind of
youth.... So many dim, struggling longings, dreams, aspirings!--but I
think they may be always there with youth."

"Yes, they are," said Elspeth.

"We talked of the Kelpie's Pool. Something like that was the
strangeness with me. Black rifts and whirlpools and dead tarns within
me, opening up now and again, lifted as by a trembling of the earth,
coming up from the past! Angers and broodings, and things seen in
flashes--then all gone as the lightning goes, and the mind does not
hold what was shown.... I became a man and it ceased. Sometimes I know
that in sleep or dream I have been beside a kelpie pool. But I think
the better part of me has drained them where they lay under open sky."
He laughed, put his hands over his face for a moment, then, dropping
them, whistled to the blackbirds aloft in the oak-tree.

"And now?"

"Now there is clean fire in me!" He turned to her; he drew himself
nearer over the sward. "Elspeth, Elspeth, Elspeth! do not tell me that
you do not know that I love you!"

"Love me--love me?" answered Elspeth. She rose from her earthen chair;
she moved as if to leave the place; then she stood still. "Perhaps a
part of me knew and a part did not know.... I will try to be honest,
for you are honest, Glenfernie! Yes, I knew, but I would not let
myself perceive and think and say that I knew.... And now what will I
say?"

"Say that you love me! Say that you love and will marry me!"

"I like you and I trust you, but I feel no more, Gl