ay Fare you
well!"

Alexander took her hands. "Farewell, Gilian!"

Gray eyes met gray eyes. "Be it short time or be it long time--soon
home to Glenfernie, or long, long gone--farewell, and God bless you,
Glenfernie!"

"And you, Gilian!"

She turned to Ian. "Ian Rullock--farewell, too, and God bless you,
too!"

She was gone. They watched through the door her form moving amid
falling snow. The veil between thickened; she vanished; there were
only the white particles of the dissolving or the forming world. The
two kept silence.

Twilight deepened, night came, the snow ceased to fall for a time,
then began again, but less thickly. One hour went by, two, three. Then
came Robin Greenlaw and Peter Lindsay, riding, and with them horses
for the two who waited at Skene's cot.

Four men rode through the December night. At dawn they neared the sea.
The snow fell no longer. When the purple bars came into the east they
saw in the first light the huddled roofs of a small seaport. Beyond
lay gray water, with shipping in the harbor.

At a crossroads the party divided. Robin Greenlaw and Peter Lindsay
took a way that should lead them far aside from this port, and then
with circuitousness home. Before they reached it they would separate,
coming singly into their own dale, back to Black Hill, back to
Littlefarm. The laird of Glenfernie and Littlefarm, dismounting,
moving aside, talked together for a few moments. Ian gave Peter
Lindsay a message for Mrs. Alison.... Good-bys were said. Greenlaw
remounted; he and Peter Lindsay moved slowly from the two bound to the
port. A dip of the earth presently hid them. Alexander and Ian were
left in the gray dawn.

"Alexander, I know the safe house and the safe man and the safe ship.
Why should you run further danger? Let us say good-by now!"

"No, not now."

"You have come to the edge of Scotland. Say farewell here, and danger
saved, rather than on the water stairs in a little while--"

"No. I will go farther, Ian. There is Mackenzie's house, over there."

They rode through the winter dawn to the house at the edge of the
port, where lived a quiet man and wife, under obligations to the
Jardines. There visited them now the laird of Glenfernie and his
secretary, Mr. Strickland.

The latter, it seemed, was not well--kept his room that day. The laird
of Glenfernie went about, indeed, but never once went near the
waterside.... And yet, at eve, the master of the _Seawing_, riding in
the