ept the master from reading it aloud at the kirk door before the
service) accounts of the "remarkable playing" of Cameron, the brilliant
young "half-back" of the Academy in Edinburgh, the Glen settled down
into an assured conviction that it had reached the pinnacle of vicarious
glory, and that in all Scotland there was none to compare with their
young "chieftain" as, quite ignoring the Captain, they loved to call
him.

And there was more than pride in him, for on his holidays he came back
to the Glen unspoiled by all his honours and achievements, and went
about among them "jist like ain o' their ain sels," accepting their
homage as his right, but giving them in return, according to their
various stations, due respect and honour, and their love grew greater
than their pride.

But the "morrow's morn" he was leaving the Glen, and, worse than all, no
one knew for why. A mystery hung over the cause of his going, a mystery
deepened by his own bearing during the past twelve months, for all these
months a heavy gloom had shrouded him, and from all that had once been
his delight and their glory he had withdrawn. The challenge, indeed,
from the men of Glen Urquhart which he had accepted long ago, he refused
not, but even the overwhelming defeat which he had administered to his
haughty challengers, had apparently brought him no more than a passing
gleam of joy. The gloom remained unlifted and the cause the Glen knew
not, and no man of them would seek to know. Hence the grief of the
Glen was no common grief when the son of Mary Robertson, the son of the
House, the pride of the Glen, and the comrade and friend of them all,
was about to depart and never to return.

His last day in the Glen Allan spent making his painful way through
the cottages, leaving his farewell, and with each some slight gift of
remembrance. It was for him, indeed, a pilgrimage of woe. It was not
only that his heart roots were in the Glen and knit round every stick
and stone of it; it was not that he felt he was leaving behind him a
love and loyalty as deep and lasting as life itself. It was that in
tearing himself from them he could make no response to the dumb appeal
in the eyes that followed him with adoration and fidelity: "Wherefore
do you leave us at all?" and "Why do you make no promise of return?" To
that dumb appeal there was no answer possible from one who carried on
his heart for himself, and on his life for some few others, and among
these his own