an' a' the bein's in't, up and doon, that we ken unco
little about."

CHAPTER LV.

The next morning Kate and Alec rose early, to walk before breakfast to
the top of one of the hills, through a young larch-wood which covered
it from head to foot. The morning was cool, and the sun exultant as a
good child. The dew-diamonds were flashing everywhere, none the less
lovely that they were fresh-made that morning. The lark's song was a
cantata with the sun and the wind and the larch-odours, in short, the
whole morning for the words. How the larks did sing that morning! The
only clouds were long pale delicate streaks of lovely gradations in
gray; here mottled, there swept into curves. It was just the morning to
rouse a wild longing for motion, for the sea and its shore, for endless
travel through an endless region of grace and favour, the sun rising no
higher, the dew lingering on every blade, and the lark never wearying
for his nest. Kate longed for some infinitude of change without
vicissitude--ceaseless progress towards a goal endlessly removed! She
did not know that the door into that life might have been easier to
find in that ugly chapel than even here in the vestibule of heaven.

"My nurse used to call the lark 'Our Lady's hen,'" said Kate.

"How pretty!" answered Alec, and had no more to say.

"Are the people of Glamerton very wicked, Alec?" asked Kate, making
another attempt to rouse a conversation.

"I'm sure I don't know," answered Alec. "I suppose they're no worse
than other people."

"I thought from Mr Turnbull's sermon that they must be a great deal
worse."

"Oh! they all preach like that--except good Mr Cowie, and he's dead."

"Do you think he knew better than the rest of them?"

"I don't know that. But the missionars do know something that other
people don't know. And that Mr Turnbull always speaks as if he were in
earnest."

"Yes, he does."

"But there's that fellow Bruce!"

"Do you mean the man that put us into his seat?"

"Yes. I _can't_ think what makes my mother so civil to him."

"Why shouldn't she be?"

"Well, you see--I can't bear him. And I can't understand my mother.
It's not like her."

In a moment more they were in a gentle twilight of green, flashed with
streaks of gold. A forest of delicate young larches crowded them in,
their rich brown cones hanging like the knops that looped up their dark
garments fringed with paler green.

And the scent! What a thing to _inve