t scanted nor its misery denied!
It, too, was, or had been, of Elspeth. Deep through ages, again and
again, something like that might have worked forth. But it was not all
nor most of that nature--had not been and would not be--would not
be--would not be. The sister of Elspeth spoke with pure, convinced
passion as to that. Who denied the dark? There were the dark and the
light, and the million million tones of each! And there was the
eternal space where differences trembled into harmony.

With the sunset they moved over the great, clean slope to where it ran
down to fields and trees. Before them was White Farm, below them the
glistening stream, coral and gold between and around the
stepping-stones. They parted here, Gilian going on to the house, the
laird turning again over the moor.

He passed the village; he came by the white kirk and the yew-trees and
the kirkyard. All were lifted upon the hilltop, all wore the color of
sunset and the color of dawn. The laird of Glenfernie moved beside the
kirkyard wall. He seemed to hold in his hand marigolds, pinks, and
pansies. He saw a green mound, and he seemed to put the flowers there,
out of old custom and tenderness. But no longer did he feel that
Elspeth was beneath the mound. A wide tapering cloud, golden-feathered,
like a wing of glory, stretched half across the sky. He looked at it;
he looked at that in which it rested. His lips moved, he spoke aloud.

"_O Death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory?_"

CHAPTER XXXIV

Days and weeks went by. Autumn came and stepped in russet toward
winter. Yet it was not cold and the mists and winds delayed. The
homecoming of the laird of Glenfernie slipped into received fact--a
fact rather large, acceptable, bringing into the neighborhood
situation of things in general a perceptible amount of expansion and
depth, but settling now, for the general run, into comfortable
every-day. They were used--until these late years--to seeing a laird
of Glenfernie about. When he was not there it was a missed part of the
landscape. When he was in presence Nature showed herself correctly
filled out. This laird was like and not like the old lairds. Big like
the one before him in outward frame and seeming, there were certainly
inner differences. Dale and village pondered these differences. It
came at last to a judgment that this Glenfernie was larger and kinder.
The neighborhood considered that he would make a good home body, and