and if he has plans
for the helping of his fellow men, let him come where he can get his
work and his labourers.

"No, I do not repent leaving the Glen, for the Divine Hand thrust me
forth and has given me work to do, and I am not ungrateful to the
friends I have made in the city; but God created me a countryman,
and"--here Carmichael turned his back to me--"my heart goes back to
Drumtochty, and the sight of you fills me with . . . longing.

"Ah, how this desiderium, as the Rabbi would have said, comes over one
with the seasons as they come and go. In spring they send me the first
snowdrops from the Glen, but it is a cruel kindness, for I want to be
where they are growing in Clashiegar den. When summer comes people
praise the varied flower-beds of the costly city parks, but they have
not seen Tochty woods in their glory. Each autumn carries me to the
harvest field, till in my study I hear the swish of the scythe and feel
the fragrance of the dry, ripe grain. And in winter I see the sun
shining on the white sides of Glen Urtach, and can hardly keep pen to
paper in this dreary room.

"What nonsense this is," pulling himself together; "yes, that is the
very chair you sat in, and this is the table we stuck between us with
our humble flask of Moselle of a winter's night . . . let's go to bed;
we 'll have no more good talk to-night."

When he had left me, I flung open my window in search of air, for it
seemed as if the city were choking me. A lamp was flaring across the
street, two cabs rattled past with revellers singing a music-hall song,
a heavy odour from many drains floated in, the multitude of houses
oppressed one as with a weight. How sweet and pure it was now at the
pool above Tochty mill, where the trout were lying below the stones and
the ash boughs dipping into the water.

Carmichael once, however, lost all love of the Glen, and that was after
Kate flung herself out of the Free Kirk and went on a visit to Muirtown
Castle. He was completely disenchanted and saw everything at its
poorest. Why did they build the manse so low that an able-bodied man
could touch the ceiling of the lower rooms with an effort and the upper
rooms easily? What possessed his predecessor to put such an impossible
paper on the study and to stuff the room with book-shelves? A row of
Puritan divines offended him--a wooden, obsolete theology--but he also
pitched a defence of Queen Mary into a cupboard--she had done enough
mischie