pool upon
him was as nothing, and as he walked his face was still as a stone
face in a desert. So he came with Elspeth's body back to the glen, and
Mother Binning saw him coming.

"Hech, sirs! Hech, sirs! Will it hae been that way--will it hae been
that way?"

He stopped for a moment. He laid his burden down upon the boards just
within the door and smoothed back the streaming hair. "Even the shell
flung out by the ocean is beautiful!"

"Eh, man! Eh, man! It's wae sometimes to be a woman!"

"Give me," he said, "a plaid, dry and warm, to hap her in."

"Will ye na leave her here? Put her in my bed and gae tell White
Farm!"

"No, I will carry her home."

Mother Binning took from a chest a gray plaid. He lifted again the
dead woman, and she happed the plaid about her. "Ah, the lassie--the
lassie! Come to me, Glenfernie, and I will scry for you who it was!"

He looked at her as though he did not hear her. He lifted the body,
holding it against his shoulder like a child, and went forth. He knew
the path so absolutely, he was so strong and light of foot, that he
went without difficulty through the glen, by the loud crying water, by
the points of crag and the curving roots and the drifts of snow, by
the green patches of moss and the trees great and small. He did not
hasten nor drag, he did not think. He went like a bronze Talus, made
simply to find, to carry home.

Known feature after known feature of the place rose before him, passed
him, fell away. Here was the arm of the glen, and here was the pebbled
cape and the thorn-tree. The winter water swirled around it, sang of
cold and a hateful power. Here was the mouth of the glen. Here were
the fields which had been green and then golden with ripe corn. Here
were the White Farm roof and chimneys and windows, and blue smoke from
the chimney going straight up like a wraith to meet blue sky. Before
him was the open door.

He had thought of there being only Jenny and the two servant lasses.
But in the time he had been gone there had regathered to White Farm,
for learning each from each, for consultation, for mere rest and food,
a number of the searchers. Jarvis Barrow had returned from the
northward-stretching moor, Thomas and Willy from the southerly fields.
Men who had begun to drag deep places in the stream were here for some
provision. A handful of women, hooded and wrapped, had come from
neighboring farms or from the village. Among them talked Mrs.
Macmurdo, who ke