ool green shadow over him. His mother had gone
again. Having made these discoveries, he closed his eyes, and
pretending to be still asleep, lay in a waking dream. But dreams
themselves must come to an end. Kate soon saw that his face was awake,
although his eyes were closed.

"I think it is time we went into the house, Alec," she said. "You have
been asleep nearly an hour."

"Happy so long, and not know it?" returned he, looking up at her from
where he lay.

Kate blushed a little. I think she began to feel that he was not quite
a boy. But he obeyed her like a child, and they went in together.

When Annie vanished among the stooks after the rejection of her offered
shadow, a throbbing pain at her heart kept her from returning to the
reapers. She wandered away up the field towards a little old cottage,
in which some of the farm servants resided. She knew that Thomas Crann
was at work there, and found him busy rough-casting the outside of it.

"Ye're busy harlin', Thomas," said Annie, for the sake of saying
something.

"Ay, jist helpin' to mak' a heepocreet," answered Thomas, with a nod
and a grim smile, as he threw a trowelful of mortar mixed with small
pebbles against the wall.

"What mean ye by that?" rejoined Annie.

"Gin ye kent this auld bothie as weel as I do, ye wadna need to spier
that question. It sud hae been pu'ed doon fra the riggin to the
fundation a century afore noo. And here we're pittin a clean face upo'
't, garrin' 't luik as gin it micht stan' anither century, and nobody
had a richt to luik asclent at it."

"It _luiks_ weel eneuch."

"I tell't ye that I was makin' a heepocreet. There's no a sowl wants
this hoose to stan' but the mistress doon there, that doesna want to
waur the siller, and the rottans inside the wa's o' 't, that doesna
want to fa' into the cluiks o' Bawdrins and Colley--wha lie in wait for
sic like jist as the deevil does for the sowl o' the heepocreet.--Come
oot o' the sun, lassie. This auld hoose is no a'thegither a heepocreet:
it can haud the sun aff o' ye yet."

Thomas had seen Annie holding her hand to her head, an action
occasioned partly by the heat and partly by the rebuff Alec had given
her. She stepped into the shadow beside him.

"Isna the warl' fu' o' bonnie things cheap?" Thomas went on. "The sun's
fine and het the day. And syne whan he's mair nor we can bide, there's
lots o' shaidows lyin' aboot upo' the face o' the warl'; though they
say there's some count