I not know well enough where you got that settled
melancholy of yours, that despondency, that somber grief--call it what
you like--that marked him all his life, and even in his death? That
came from him, your father. I thank God I did not give you that,
knowing what life must hold for you in suffering! He suffered, yes,
but not as you will. And you must--you must, my son. Beyond all other
men, you will suffer!"

"You were better named Cassandra, mother!" Yet the young man scarce
smiled even now.

"Yes, I am a prophetess, all too sooth a prophetess, my son. I see
ahead as only a mother can see--perhaps as only one of the old
Highland blood can see. I am soothseer and soothsayer, because you are
blood of my blood, bone of my bone, and I cannot help but know. I
cannot help but know what that melancholy and that resolution, all
these combined, must spell for you. You know how his heart was racked
at times?"

The boy nodded now.

"Then know how your own must be racked in turn!" said she. "My son, it
is no ordinary fate that will be yours. You will go forward at all
costs; you will keep your word bright as the knife in your belt--you
will drive yourself. What that means to you in agony--what that means
when your will is set against the unalterable and the inevitable--I
wish--oh, I wish I could not see it! But I do see it, now, all laid
out before me--all, all! Oh, Merne--may I not call you Merne once more
before I let you go?"

She let her hands fall from his head to his shoulders as she gazed
steadily out beyond him, as if looking into his future; but she
herself sat, her strong face composed. She might, indeed, have been a
prophetess of old.

"Tragedy is yours, my son," said she, slowly, "not happiness. No woman
will ever come and lie in your arms happy and content."

"Mother!"

He half flung off her hands, but she laid them again more firmly on
his shoulders, and went on speaking, as if half in reverie, half in
trance, looking down the long slope of green and gold as if it showed
the vista of the years.

"You will love, my boy, but with your nature how could love mean
happiness to you? Love? No man could love more terribly. You will be
intent, resolved, but the firmness of your will means that much more
suffering for you. You will suffer, my boy--I see that for you, my
first-born boy! You will love--why should you not, a man fit to love
and be loved by any woman? But that love, the stronger it grows, will
bu