not doubt that there will come a day
when we'll walk over the plains of the sun--the flesh of our body then
as gauze, moved at will where we please and swift as thought--inner
and outer motion keeping time with the beat and rhythm of that _where
we are_--"

"The young do not speak the auld tongue."

"Tongues alter with the rest."

Silence fell while the sun reddened, going nearer to the mountain
brow. The young man and the old, the farmer and the laird, sat still.
The air struck more freshly, stronger, coming from the sea. Far off a
horn was blown, a dog barked.

"Will ye be hame now for gude, Glenfernie? Lairds should bide in their
ain houses if the land is to have any gude of them."

"I wish to stay, White Farm, the greatest part of the year round. I
want to speak to you very seriously. Think back a moment to my father
and mother, and to my forebears farther back yet. As they had faults,
and yet had a longing to do the right and struggled toward it over
thick and thin, so I believe I may say of myself. That is, I struggle
toward it," said Alexander, "though I'm not so sure of the thick and
thin."

"Your mither wasna your father's kind. She had always her smile to the
side and her japes, and she looked to the warld. Not that she didna
mean to do weel in it! She did. But I couldna just see clear the seal
in her forehead."

"That was because you did not look close enough," said Alexander. "It
was there."

"I didna mind your uphawding your mither. Aweel, what did ye have to
say?"

The laird turned full to him. "White Farm, you were once a young man.
You loved and married. So do I love, so would I marry! The woman I
love does not yet love me, but she has, I think, some liking.--I bide
in hope. I would speak to you about it, as is right."

"Wha is she?"

"Your granddaughter Elspeth."

Silence, while the shadows of the trees in the vale below grew longer
and longer. Then said White Farm:

"She isna what they call your equal in station. And she has nae tocher
or as good as nane."

"For the last I have enough for us both. For the first the springs of
Barrow and Jardine, back in Time's mountains, are much the same.
Scotland's not the country to bother overmuch if the one stream goes,
in a certain place, through a good farm, and the other by a not
over-rich laird's house."

"Are ye Whig and Kirk like your father?"

"I am Whig--until something more to the dawn than that comes up. For
the Kirk ... I will te