Strickland, pondering even while he talked, found the word
he wanted: "Comprehensiveness.... He always tended to that."

Said Glenfernie, "I've had another birth, Strickland, and all things
are the same and yet not the same." He gave it as an explanation, but
then left it. They were going the moorland way to Glenfernie House. He
was looking from side to side, recovering old landscape in sweep and
in detail. Bit by bit, as they came to it, Strickland gave him the
country news. At last there was the house before them, among the firs
and oaks, topping the crag. They came into the wood at the base of the
hill. The stream--the trees--above, the broken, ancient wall, the
roofs of the new house that was not so new, the old, outstanding keep.
The whole rested, mellowed, lifted, still, against a serene and azure
sky. Alexander stood and gazed.

"The keep. The pine still knots and clings there by the school-room.
Do you remember, Strickland, a day when you set me to read 'The Cranes
of Ibycus'?"

"I remember."

"Life within life, and sky above sky!--I hear Bran!"

* * * * *

They mounted the hill. It seemed to run before them that the laird had
come home. Bran and Davie and the men and maids and Alice, a bonny
woman, and Mrs. Grizel, very little withered, exclaimed and ran.
Tibbie Ross was there that day, and Black Alan neighed from his stall.
Even the waving trees--even the flowers in the garden--Home, and its
taste and fragrance--its dear, close emanations....

That evening at supper Mrs. Grizel made a remark. She leaned back in
her chair and looked at Glenfernie. "I never thought you like your
mother before! Oh aye! there's your father, too, and a kind of grand
man he was, for all that he saw things dark. But will you look, Mr.
Strickland, and see Margaret--"

Much later, from his own room, Strickland, gazing forth, saw light in
the keep. Alexander would be sitting there among the books and every
ancient memorial. Strickland felt a touch of doubt and apprehension.
Suppose that to-morrow should find not this Alexander, at once old and
new, but only the Alexander who had ridden from Glenfernie, who had
shipped to Lisbon, nearly three years ago? To-day's deep satisfaction
only a dream! Strickland shook off the fear.

"He breathed lasting growth.... O Christ! the help for all in winged
men!"

He turned to his bed. Lying awake he went in imagination to the
desert, to the Eastern places,