f in raillery, but half in a flood of kindness.
If what had stirred had been ancient betrayal, alive and vital one
knew not when, now again it was dead, dead. He rose, he put his arm
again about Alexander's shoulder. "Glenfernie! Glenfernie! you're in
deep! Well, I hope the world will stay heaven, e'en for your sake!"

They left the old room with its hauntings of a boy's search for gold,
with, back of that, who might know what hauntings of ancient times and
fortress doings, violences and agonies, subduings, revivings, cark and
care and light struggling through, dark nights and waited-for dawns!
They went down the stair and out of the keep. Late June flamed around
them.

Ian stayed another hour or two ere he rode back to Black Hill. With
Glenfernie he went over Glenfernie House, the known, familiar rooms.
They went to the school-room together and out through the breach in
the old castle wall, and sat among the pine roots, and looked down
through leafy tree-tops to the glint of water. When, in the sun-washed
house and narrow garden and grassy court, they came upon men and women
they stopped and spoke, and all was friendly and merry as it should be
in a land of good folk. Ian had his crack with Davie, with Eppie and
Phemie and old Lauchlinson and others. They sat for a few minutes with
Mrs. Grizel where, in a most housewifely corner, she measured currants
and bargained with pickers of cherries. Strickland they came upon in
the book-room. With the Jardines and this gentleman the sense of
employed and employee had long ago passed into a larger inclusion. He
and the young laird talked and worked together as members of one
family. Now there was some converse among the three, and then the two
left Strickland in the cool, dusky room. Outside the house June flamed
again. For a while they paced up and down under the trees in the
narrow garden atop the craggy height. Then Ian mounted Fatima, who all
these years was kept for him at Black Hill.

"You'll come over to-morrow?"

"Yes."

Glenfernie watched him down the steep-descending, winding road, and
thought of many roads that, good company, he and Ian had traveled
together.

This was the middle of the day. In the afternoon he walked to White
Farm.... It was sunset when he turned his face homeward. He looked
back and saw Elspeth at the stepping-stones, in a clear flame of
golden sky and golden water. She had seemed kind; he walked on air,
his hand in Hope's. Hope had well-nig