there
is neither marrying nor giving in marriage!"

"Well," said I, "speaking for myself and most lads like me, we will mend
our ways before we get a chance of trying that far country! And in the
meantime here we are--our feet in the mire, and our heads not so very
near the sky. Talk of angels--where are we to get their society? And the
likest to them that I have ever heard tell of are just women--good
women, innocent lasses, beginning to feel the stir of their own
power--and all the better and the stronger are they for that! Oh, Fred,
I saw an angel within the last half-hour! There she stood, her eyes
shooting witcheries, poised for flight like a butterfly, the dimples
playing hide-and-seek on her face, and her whole soul and body saying to
the sons of men, 'Come, seek me on your knees--you know you can't help
loving me! It is very good for you to worship me!"

"And you are not ashamed, Duncan MacAlpine, to speak such words?"

"Oh, ye Lallan Scot!" I cried; "ye Westland stot! Is there no hot blood
of the Celt in you? What brought _you_ to Galloway, where the Celt sits
on every hill-top, names every farm and lea-rig, and lights his
Baal-fires about the standing stones on St. John's Eve?"

"Man," said Fred, shaking his head, "I aye thought ye were a barbarian.
Now I know it. If you had your way, you would raid your neighbours'
womenfolk and bring them in by the hair of their heads, trailing them
two at a time. For me, I worship them like stars, standing afar off."

"Aye," said I, "that would be a heap of use to the next generation, and
the lasses themselves would like it weel!"

But what Freddy Esquillant said about the next generation was unworthy
of him, and certainly shall not sully this philosophic page. Besides, he
spake in his haste.

All the same, I noticed that, if ever any of the stars came near to his
earth, it would be a certain very moderately brilliant planet, bearing
the name of Agnes Anne or, more scientifically, MacAlpine Minima, which
would attract Master Fred's reluctant worship.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE AVALANCHE

And now there was a second and longer probation in that gaunt town of
Edinburgh, without any miniature to lie beside me on my work-table like
a tickless watch, and help along the weary hours. And though the session
before I had thought but little of the letters (and indeed there was
nothing in them), yet this time there were none at all, which suited me
far worse. For, as it see