mall circle of illumination like a
wraith. Yet a minute or two longer the clatter of his break-neck flight
was audible, then it was cut off by the intervening steepness of the
hill; and again, a great while after, the renewed beating of phantom
horsehoofs, far in the valley of the Hermiston, showed that the horse at
least, if not his rider, was still on the homeward way.

There was a Tuesday club at the "Crosskeys" in Crossmichael, where the
young bloods of the countryside congregated and drank deep on a
percentage of the expense, so that he was left gainer who should have
drunk the most. Archie had no great mind to this diversion, but he took
it like a duty laid upon him, went with a decent regularity, did his
manfullest with the liquor, held up his head in the local jests, and got
home again and was able to put up his horse, to the admiration of
Kirstie and the lass that helped her. He dined at Driffel, supped at
Windielaws. He went to the new year's ball at Huntsfield and was made
welcome, and thereafter rode to hounds with my Lord Muirfell, upon whose
name, as that of a legitimate Lord of Parliament, in a work so full of
Lords of Session, my pen should pause reverently. Yet the same fate
attended him here as in Edinburgh. The habit of solitude tends to
perpetuate itself, and an austerity of which he was quite unconscious,
and a pride which seemed arrogance, and perhaps was chiefly shyness,
discouraged and offended his new companions. Hay did not return more
than twice, Pringle never at all, and there came a time when Archie even
desisted from the Tuesday Club, and became in all things--what he had
had the name of almost from the first--the Recluse of Hermiston.
High-nosed Miss Pringle of Drumanno and high-stepping Miss Marshall of
the Mains were understood to have had a difference of opinion about him
the day after the ball--he was none the wiser, he could not suppose
himself to be remarked by these entrancing ladies. At the ball itself my
Lord Muirfell's daughter, the Lady Flora, spoke to him twice, and the
second time with a touch of appeal, so that her colour rose and her
voice trembled a little in his ear, like a passing grace in music. He
stepped back with a heart on fire, coldly and not ungracefully excused
himself, and a little after watched her dancing with young Drumanno of
the empty laugh, and was harrowed at the sight, and raged to himself
that this was a world in which it was given to Drumanno to please,