"luff, luff, and come to win'ward and we'll give
you the weight o' the mainsail down the hill."

It would be doing a man's heart good to be hearing Bryde making a mock
of the old captain at these times, and the good laughter of him that
would start a houseful o' folk to laugh also. It was when he was for
McKinnon's that he fell in with Helen.

The stubble was white in the fields, and the leaves red and brown and
yellow, still holding here and there to the trees, a great night with a
touch of frost for the kail, and the half of a gale coming out the
nor'west.

Bryde was on his road for a crack with McGilp and Angus, and the road
was swept bare and dry and the night clear as a bell, when there came
that fine sound, the clatter and klop of riding-horse. They were on
him at the bend above the Waulk Mill, Helen on her black horse,
Hillman, and the serving-man hard put to keep with her. You see her
there--the black on his haunches and the breath of him like a white
cloud, and Bryde standing and his sea-coat flapping in the wind. There
was no greeting from her, but her arms stretched out.

"Take me down," she said, and he lifted her.

Then to the serving-man--

"Walk the horses; but no--your mother's cottage is at the burnside. Go
there and I will come soon," and the lad walked the horses away, and
these two stood watching. Then Helen turned to Bryde and looked at
him, her black eyes flashing, her cheeks wind-whipped, her hair a
disarray with the speed of her travelling, and her lips smiling. If
ever there would be beauty in a woman in the white night with a half
gale, it was in Helen. She took his two hands and stood back from him
a little and looked, and then from her white throat there came
laughter, bubbling laughter, like a little brook in summer, joy and
happiness and content was in her laughing.

"Dear," she cried, "dear," to the great dark man, and in her tones were
the sounds you will hear in the voice of a mother. "But God is kind
that I see you again before I am wife to your cousin. And you too,"
and her laughter came again, "your cousin will be wife to you. It is
droll," and she had always a taking way of that word. "Listen, my
friend, here is this good night with a great strong wind and the moon
clear like the fire of the Bon Dieu, and the little stars merry and
twinkling, and the great white road. Are not we the children of this
night? Are not we the frien's of the night peoples?"

Bryde