ut
between Argile and him were no transactions; the pride of both would not
allow it, though it was well known that their affections were stronger
than ever they had been before, and that Gordon made more than one
attempt at a plan to bring them together.

It is likely, too, I had been down--leaving M'Iver out of consideration
altogether--had there not been the tales about MacLachlan, tales that
came to my ears in the most miraculous way, with no ill intention on the
part of the gossips--about his constant haunting of Inneraora and the
company of his cousin. He had been seen there with her on the road to
Carlunnan. That venue of all others! God! did the river sing for him too
among its reeds and shallows; did the sun tip Dunchuach like a thimble
and the wild beast dally on the way? That was the greatest blow of all!
It left plain (I thought in ray foolishness) the lady's coolness when
last I met her; for rae henceforth (so said bitterness) the serious
affairs of life, that in her notion set me more than courtship. I grew
solemn, so gloomy in spirit that even my father observed the ceasing of
my whistle and song, and the less readiness of my smile. And he, poor
man, thought it the melancholy of Inverlochy and the influence of this
ruined countryside.

When I went down to the town again the very house-fronts seemed
inhospitable, so that I must pass the time upon the quay. There are days
at that season when Loch Finne, so calm, so crystal, so duplicate of the
sky, seems like water sunk and lost for ever to wind and wave, when the
sea-birds doze upon its kindly bosom like bees upon the flower, and a
silence hangs that only breaks in distant innuendo of the rivers or the
low of cattle on the Cowal shore. The great bays lapse into hills
that float upon a purple haze, forest nor lea has any sign of spring's
extravagance or the flame of the autumn that fires Dunchuach till it
blazes like a torch. All is in the light sleep of the year's morning,
and what, I have thought, if God in His pious whim should never awake it
any more?

It was such a day when I went up and down the rough cobble of the quay,
and to behold men working there at their noisy and secular occupations
seemed, at first, a Sabbath desecration. But even they seemed affected
by this marvellous peace of sea and sky, as they lifted from the net
or rested on the tackle to look across greasy gunnels with some vague
unquiet of the spirit at the marvellous restfulness