conscious of a beginning of a readjustment of ideas. For a long
time now he had been pledged to personal daring, to thought forced to
become supple and concentrated, to hard, practical planning, physical
hardship and danger. In the midst of this had begun to grow up a
criticism of all the enterprises upon which he was engaged. Scope--in
many respects the Jacobite character, generally taken, was amiable and
brave, but its prime exhibit was not scope! Somewhat narrow, somewhat
obsolete; Ian's mind now saw Jacobitism in that light. As he sat
without his rock fortress, in the shadow of birch-trees, with lower
hills and glens at his feet, he had a pale vision of Europe, of the
world. Countries and times showed themselves contiguous. "Causes,"
dynastic wars, political life, life in other molds and hues, appeared
in chords and sequences and strokes of the eye, rather than in the old
way of innumerable, vivid, but faintly connected points. "I begin to
see," thought Ian, "how things travel together, like with like!" His
body was rested, recovered, his mind invigorated. He had had with him
for long days the very elixir of solitude. Relations and associations
that before had been banked in ignorance came forth and looked at him.
"You surely have known us before, though you had forgotten that you
knew us!" He found that he was taking delight in these expansions of
meaning. He thought, "If I can get abroad out of this danger, out of
old circles, I'll roam and study and go to school to wider plans!" He
suddenly thought, "This kind of thing is what Old Steadfast meant when
he used to say that I did not see widely enough." He moved sharply. A
hot and bitter flood seemed to well up within him. "He himself is
seeing narrowly now--Alexander Jardine!"

He left the crag and went for a scrambling and somewhat dangerous walk
along the mountain-side. There was peril in leaving that one
rock-curtained place. Two days before he had seen what he thought to
be signs of red-coated soldiers in the glen far below. But he must
walk--he must exercise his body, note old things, not give too much
time to new perceptions! He breathed the keen, sweet mountain air;
with a knife that he had he fell to making a staff from a young oak;
he watched the pass below and the shadows of the clouds; he climbed
fairly to the mountain-top and had a great view; he sang an old song,
not aloud, but under his breath; and at last he must come back with
solitude to his fastne