eyes and life of a
bird, between those swift sweeps of darkness. This great uncanny spirit,
brooding malevolent over the high leagues of moon-wan grass, seemed
waiting to swoop, and pluck up in its talons, and devour, all that
intruded on the wild loneness of these far-up plains of freedom. Barbara
almost expected to hear coming from it the lost whistle of the buzzard
hawks. And her dream came back to her. Where were her wings-the wings
that in sleep had borne her to the stars; the wings that would never
lift her--waking--from the ground? Where too were Miltoun's wings? She
crouched back into her corner; a tear stole up and trickled out between
her closed lids-another and another followed. Faster and faster they
came. Then she felt Miltoun's arm round her, and heard him say: "Don't
cry, Babs!" Instinct telling her what to do, she laid her head against
his chest, and sobbed bitterly. Struggling with those sobs, she grew
less and less unhappy--knowing that he could never again feel quite
so desolate, as before he tried to give her comfort. It was all a bad
dream, and they would soon wake from it! And they would be happy;
as happy as they had been before--before these last months! And she
whispered:

"Only a little while, Eusty!"

CHAPTER XXIX

Old Lady Harbinger dying in the early February of the following year,
the marriage of Barbara with her son was postponed till June.

Much of the wild sweetness of Spring still clung to the high moor
borders of Monkland on the early morning of the wedding day.

Barbara was already up and dressed for riding when her maid came to call
her; and noting Stacey's astonished eyes fix themselves on her boots,
she said:

"Well, Stacey?"

"It'll tire you."

"Nonsense; I'm not going to be hung."

Refusing the company of a groom, she made her way towards the stretch of
high moor where she had ridden with Courtier a year ago. Here over the
short, as yet unflowering, heather, there was a mile or more of level
galloping ground. She mounted steadily, and her spirit rode, as it were,
before her, longing to get up there among the peewits and curlew, to
feel the crisp, peaty earth slip away under her, and the wind drive
in her face, under that deep blue sky. Carried by this warm-blooded
sweetheart of hers, ready to jump out of his smooth hide with pleasure,
snuffling and sneezing in sheer joy, whose eye she could see straying
round to catch a glimpse of her intentions, from whose lip