er own speech and look at it. "That's a word I
hae been wanting the morn!--The Kelpie's Pool, with the moor sae green
and purple around it." She sat bent forward, her wrinkled hands in her
lap, her eyes, rather wide, fixed upon the ash-tree.

"We have not heard from the laird," said Strickland, "this long time."

"The laird--now there! What ye want further comes when the mind
strains and then waits! I see in one ring the day and Glenfernie and
yonder water. Wherever the laird be, he thinks to-day of Scotland."

"I wish that he would think to returning," said Strickland. He had
been leaning against the doorpost. Now he straightened himself. "I
will go on as far as the pool."

Mother Binning loosed her hands. "Did ye have that thought when ye
left hame?"

"No, I believe not."

"Gae on, then! The day's bonny, and the Lord's gude has a wide ring!"

Strickland walking on, left the stream and the glen head. Now he was
upon the moor. It dipped and rose like a Titan wave of a Titan sea.
Its long, long unbroken crest, clean line against clean space,
brought a sense of quiet, distance, might. Here solitude was at home.
Now Strickland moved, and now he stood and watched the quiet. Turning
at last a shoulder of the moor, he saw at some distance below him the
pool, like a small mirror. He descended toward it, without noise over
the springy earth.

A horse appeared between him and the water. Strickland felt a most
involuntary startling and thrill--then half laughed to think that he
had feared that he saw the water-steed, the kelpie. The horse was
fastened to a stake that once had been the bole of an ancient willow.
It grazed around--somewhere would be a master.... Presently
Strickland's eye found the latter--a man lying upon the moorside, just
above the water. Again with a shock and thrill--though not like the
first--it came to him who it was.

The laird of Glenfernie lay very still, his eyes upon the Kelpie's
Pool. His old tutor, long his friend, quiet and stanch, gazed unseen.
When he had moved a few feet an outcropping of rock hid his form, but
his eyes could still dwell upon the pool and the man its visitor. He
turned to go away, then he stood still.

"What if he means a closer going yet?" Strickland settled back against
the rock. "He would loose his horse first--he would not leave it
fastened here. If he does that then I will go down to him."

Glenfernie lay still. There was no wind to-day. The reeds stood
straight