rs....
What strange thoughts we have of ourselves, and of those nearest and
dearest!"

"Mr. Wotherspoon says that he is fifteenth-century Italian. You have
both done a proper bit of characterization! But I," said Alexander, "I
know another great territory of Ian."

"I know that, Glenfernie! And so do I know other good realms of Ian.
Yet that was what I thought when I read Daniel. And I had the thought,
too, that those old people were capable of great friendships."

Black Alan was waiting. Glenfernie mounted, said good-by again; the
green boughs of the elm-trees took him and his steed.

CHAPTER XIII

Ian forestalled Alexander, riding to Glenfernie House the morning
after his arrival at Black Hill. "Let us go," he said, "where we can
talk at ease! The old, alchemical room?"

They crossed the grass-grown court to the keep, entered and went up
the broken stair to the stone-walled chamber that took up the second
floor, that looked out of loophole windows north, south, east, and
west. The day was high summer, bright and hot. Strong light and less
strong light came in beams from the four quarters and made in the
large place a conflict of light and shadow. The fireplace was great
enough for Gog and Magog to have warmed themselves thereby. Around, in
an orderly litter, yet stood on table or bench or shelf many of the
matters that Alexander had gathered there in his boyhood. In one
corner was the furnace that when he was sixteen his father had let him
build. More recent was the oaken table in the middle of the room, two
deep chairs, and shelves with many books. After the warmth of the sun
the place presented a grave, cool, brown harbor.

The two, entering, had each an arm over the other's shoulder. Where
they were known their friendship was famed. Youth and manhood, they
had been together when it was possible. When it was not so the
thought of each outtraveled separation. Their differences, their
varied colors of being, seemed but to bind them closer. They entered
this room like David and Jonathan.

Ian also was tall, but not so largely made as was the other. Lithe,
embrowned, with gold-bronze hair and eyes, knit of a piece, moving as
by one undulation, there was something in him not like the Scot,
something foreign, exotic. Sometimes Alexander called him "Saracen"--a
finding of the imagination that dated from old days upon the moor
above the Kelpie's Pool when they read together the _Faery Queen_. The
other da