I came to conclude, after all, that much as a man may
learn of many women studied indifferently, there is something magical
about his personal regard for one, that sets up a barrier of mystery
between them. So long as I in former years went on the gay assumption
that every girl's character was on the surface, and I made no effort
to probe deeper, I was the confidant, the friend, of many a fine woman.
They all smiled at my douce sobriety, but in the end they preferred it
to the gaudy recklessness of more handsome men.

But here was the conclusion of my complacent belief in my knowledge of
the sex. The oftener I met her the worse my friendship progressed. She
became a problem behind a pretty mask, and I would sit down, as it were,
dumb before it and guess at the real woman within. Her step on the road
as we would come to an unexpected meeting, her handling of a flower I
might give her in a courtesy, her most indifferent word as we met or
parted, became a precious clue I must ponder on for hours. And the more
I weighed these things, the more confused thereafter I became in her
presence. "If I were in love with the girl," I had to say to myself at
last, "I could not be more engrossed on her mind."

The hill itself, with days of eager hunting after the red-deer, brought
not enough distraction, and to stand by the mountain tarns and fish the
dark trout was to hold a lonely carnival with discontent.

It happened sometimes that on the street of Inneraora I would meet Betty
convoying her cousin young Mac-Lachlan to his wherry (he now took care
to leave for home betimes), or with his sister going about the shops. It
would be but a bow in the bye-going, she passing on with equanimity and
I with a maddening sense of awkwardness, that was not much bettered
by the tattle of the plainstanes, where merchant lads and others made
audible comment on the cousinly ardour of young Lachie.

On Sundays, perhaps worst of all, I found my mind's torment. Our kirk
to-day is a building of substantiality and even grace; then it was
a somewhat squalid place of worship, in whose rafters the pigeon
trespassed and the swallow built her home. We sat in torturous
high-backed benches so narrow that our knees rasped the boards before
us, and sleep in Master Gordon's most dreary discourse was impossible.
Each good family in the neighbourhood had its own pew, and Elrigmore's,
as it is to this day, lay well in the rear among the shadows of the
loft, while