s level with the holding; now he
spoke to her, lifting his hat. She answered, with the smile beneath
her eyes:

"Aye, Glenfernie, it's a braw day!"

"May I come into the fairy country and sit awhile and visit?"

"Aye." She welcomed him to a hillock of green rising from the water's
edge. "It _is_ fairyland, and these are the broad seas around, and I
know if I came here by night I should find the Good People before me!"
She looked at him with friendliness, half shy, half frank. "It is the
best of weather for wandering."

"Are you fond of that, too? Do you go up and down alone?"

"By my lee-lane when Gilian's not here. She's in Aberdeen now, where
live our mother's folk."

"I have not seen you for years."

"I mind the last time. Your mother lay ill. One evening at sunset Mr.
Ian Rullock and you came to White Farm."

"It must have been after sunset. It must have been dark."

"Back of that you and he came from Edinburgh one time. We were down by
the wishing-green, Robin Greenlaw and Gilian and I and three or four
other lads and lassies. Do you remember? Mr. Rullock would have us
dance, and we all took hands--you, too--and went around the ash-tree
as though it were a May-pole. We changed hands, one with another, and
danced upon the green. Then you and he got upon your horses and rode
away. He was riding the white mare Fatima. But oh," said Elspeth,
"then came grandfather, who had seen us from the reaped field, and he
blamed us sair and put no to our playing! He gave word to the
minister, and Sunday the sermon dealt with the ill women of Scripture.
Back of that--"

"Back of that--"

"There was the day the two of you would go to the Kelpie's Pool."
Elspeth's eyes enlarged and darkened. "The next morn we heard--Jock
Binning told us--that Mr. Ian had nearly drowned."

"Almost ten years ago. Once--twice--thrice in ten years. How idly were
they spent, those years!"

"Oh," cried Elspeth, "they say that you have been to world's end and
have gotten great learning!"

"One comes home from all that to find world's end and great learning."

Elspeth leaned from him, back against the thorn-tree. She looked
somewhat disquietedly, somewhat questioningly, at this new laird.
Glenfernie, in his turn, laid upon himself both hands of control. He
thought:

"Do not peril all--do not peril all--with haste and frightening!"

He sat upon the green hillock and talked of country news. She met him
with this and that ... White Farm a