general, of Ian's late
proceedings and the lairdship of Alexander, of men and places that
they knew away from this countryside. Ian watched the other as they
talked. Whatever there was that had moved, down there in the abyss,
was asleep again.

"Old Steadfast, you are ruddy and joyous! How long since I was here,
in the winter? Four months? Well, you've changed. What is it?... Is it
love? Are you in love?"

"If I am--" Glenfernie rose and paced the room. Coming to one of the
narrow windows, he stood and looked out and down upon bank and brae
and wood and field and moor. He returned to the table. "I'll tell you
about it."

He told. Ian sat and listened. The light played about him, shook gold
dots and lines over his green coat, over his hands, his faintly
smiling face, his head held straight and high. He was so well to look
at, so "magnificent"! Alexander spoke with the eloquence of a
possessing passion, and Ian listened and felt himself to be the
sympathizing friend. Even the profound, unreasonable, unhumorous
idealism of old Steadfast had its quaint, Utopian appeal. He was going
to marry the farmer's granddaughter, though he might, undoubtedly,
marry better.... Ian listened, questioned, summed up:

"I have always been the worldly-wise one! Is there any use in my
talking now of worldly wisdom?"

"No use at all."

"Then I won't!... Old Alexander the Great, are you happy?"

"If she gives me her love."

Ian dismissed that with a wave of his hand. "Oh, I think she'll give
it, dear simpleton!" He looked at Glenfernie now with genial
affection. "Well, on the whole, and balancing one thing against
another, I think that I want you to be happy!"

Alexander laughed at that minification. "And my happiness is big
enough--or if I get it it will be big enough--not in the least to
disturb our friendship country, Ian!"

"I'll believe that, too. Our relations are old and rooted."

"Old and rooted."

"So I wish you joy.... And I remember when you thought you would not
marry!"

"Oh--memories! I'm sweeping them away! I'm beginning again!... I hold
fast the memory of friendship. I hold fast the memory that somehow, in
this form or that, I must have loved her from the beginning of
things!" He rose and moved about the room. Going to the fireplace, he
leaned his forehead against the stone and looked down at the laid, not
kindled, wood. He turned and came back to Ian. "The world seems to me
all good."

Ian laughed at him, hal