it was ever at the crisis of things
my mind took on this mood of thought and pity.

It was not of my own case I reflected there, but of the great swooning
silences that might be tenanted ere the sun dropped behind the firs by
the ghost of him I walked with. Not of my own father, but of an even
older man in a strath beyond the water hearing a rap at his chamber door
to-night and a voice of horror tell him he had no more a son. A fool,
a braggart, a liar the less, but still he must leave a vacancy at the
hearth! My glance could not keep off the shoulder of him as he walked
cockily beside me, a healthy brown upon his neck, and I shivered to
think of this hour as the end of him, and of his clay in a little
stretched upon the grass that grew where psalm had chanted and the feet
of holy men had passed. Kill him! The one thrust of fence I dare not
neglect was as sure as the arrow of fate; I knew myself in my innermost
his executioner.

It was a day, I have said, of exceeding calm, with no trace left almost
of the winter gone, and the afternoon came on with a crimson upon the
west, and numerous birds in flying companies settled upon the bushes.
The firs gave a perfume from their tassels and plumes, and a little
burn among the bushes gurgled so softly, so like a sound of liquor in a
goblet, that it mustered the memories of good companionship. No more my
mind was on the knave and liar, but on the numerous kindnesses of man.

We stepped in upon the bare _larach_ with the very breath checked upon
our lips. The trees stood round it and back, knowing it sanctuary; tall
trees, red, and rough at the hide, cracked and splintered in roaring
storms; savage trees, coarse and vehement, but respecting that patch
of blessed memory vacant quite but of ourselves and a little bird who
turned his crimson breast upon us for a moment then vanished with a
thrill of song. Crimson sky, crimson-vested bird, the colour of that
essence I must be releasing with the push of a weapon at that youth
beside me!

John Splendid was the first to break upon the silence.

"I was never so much struck with the Sunday feeling of a place," he
said; "I daresay we could find a less melancholy spot for our meeting if
we searched for it, but the day goes, and I must not be putting off an
interesting event both of you, I'm sure, are eager to begin."

"Indeed we might have got a more suitable place in many ways," I
confessed, my hands behind me, with every scrap of pas