there may be gloom, but I shall watch my children's
children play upon the braes of Shira Glen."

"You are very joco," said John to me as I broke into a little laugh
of content with myself.

"It's the first time you ever charged me with jocosity, John," I said
"I'm just kind of happy thinking."

"Yon spectacle behind us is not humorous to my notion," said he,
"whatever it may be to yours. And perhaps the laugh may be on the other
side of your face before the night comes. We are here in a spider's
web."

"I cry pardon for my lightness, John," I answered; "I'll have time
enough to sorrow over the clan of Argile. But if you had the Sight of
your future, and it lay in other and happier scenes than these, would
you not feel something of a gaiety?"

He looked at me with an envy in every feature, from me to his
companions, from them to the country round about us, and then to himself
as to a stranger whose career was revealed in every rag of his clothing.

"So," said he; "you are the lucky man to be of the breed of the elect
of heaven, to get what you want for the mere desire of it, and perhaps
without deserve. Here am I at my prime and over it, and no glisk of the
future before me. I must be ever stumbling on, a carouser of life in a
mirk and sodden lane."

"You cannot know my meaning," I cried.

"I know it fine," said he. "You get what you want because you are the
bairn of content. And I'm but the child of hurry (it's the true word),
and I must be seeking and I must be trying to the bitter end."

He kicked, as he walked, at the knolls of snow in his way, and lashed at
the bushes with a hazel wand he had lifted from a tree.

"Not all I want, perhaps," said I; "for do you know that fleeing thus
from the disgrace of my countrymen, I could surrender every sorrow and
every desire to one notion about--about--about----"

"A girl of the middle height," said he, "and her name is----"

"Do not give it an utterance," I cried. "I would be sorry to breathe
her name in such a degradation. Degradation indeed, and yet if I had the
certainty that I was a not altogether hopeless suitor yonder, I would
feel a conqueror greater than Hector or Gilian-of-the-Axe."

"Ay, ay," said John. "I would not wonder. And I'll swear that a man
of your fate may have her if he wants her. I'll give ye my notion of
wooing; it's that with the woman free and the man with some style and
boldness, he may have whoever he will."

"I would be sorry to