nd somewhat broken.

"Oh aye, my bonny man! All things die and all things live. To and fro
gaes the shuttle!"

Glenfernie sat on the door-stone. She took all the news he could
bring, and had her own questions to put.

"How's the house and all in it?"

"Well."

"Ye've got a bonny sister! Whom will she marry? There's Abercrombie
and Fleming and Ferguson."

"I do not know. The one she likes the best."

"And when will ye be marrying yourself?"

"I am not going to marry, Mother. I would marry Wisdom, if I could!"

"Hoot! she stays single! Do ye love the hunt of Wisdom so?"

"Aye, I do. But it's a long, long chase--and to tell you the truth, at
times I think she's just a wraith! And at times I am lazy and would
just sit in the sun and be a fool."

"Like to-day?"

"Like to-day. And so," said Alexander, rising, "as I feel that way,
I'll e'en be going on!"

"I'm thinking that maist of the wise have inner tokens by which they
ken the fule. I was ne'er afraid of folly," said Mother Binning. "It's
good growing stuff!"

Glenfernie laughed and left her and the drone of her wheel. A clucking
hen and her brood, the cot and its ash-tree, sank from sight. A little
longer and he reached the middle glen where the banks approached and
the full stream rushed with a manifold sound. Here was the curtain of
brier masking the cave that he had shared with Ian. He drew it aside
and entered. So much smaller was the place than it had seemed in
boyhood! Twice since they came to be men had he been here with Ian,
and they had smiled over their cavern, but felt for it a tenderness.
In a corner lay the fagots that, the last time, they had gathered with
laughter and left here against outlaws' needs. Ian! He pictured Ian
with his soldiers.

Outside the cavern, the air came about him like a cloud of fragrance.
As he went down the glen, into its softer sweeps, this increased, as
did the song of birds. The primrose was strewn about in disks of pale
gold, the white thorn lifted great bouquets, the bluebell touched the
heart. A lark sang in the sky, linnet and cuckoo at hand, in the wood
at the top of the glen cooed the doves. The water rippled by the
leaning birches, the wild bees went from flower to flower. The sky was
all sapphire, the air a perfumed ocean. So beautiful rang the spring
that it was like a bell in the heart, in the blood. The laird of
Glenfernie, coming to a great natural chair of sun-warmed rock, sat
down to listen. All w