g very slowly."

Lindsay turned with the horses. Ian, light of step, resilient,
"magnificent," turned from the purple moor into the shade of birches.
A few moments and he was near the cot of Mother Binning. A cock
crowed, a feather of blue smoke went up from her peat fire.

He came to her door, meaning to stay but for a good-natured five
minutes of gossip. She had lived here forever, set in the picture with
ash-tree and boulder. But when he came to the door he found sitting
with her, in the checkered space behind the opening, Glenfernie's
inamorata.

Now he remembered her.... He wondered if he had truly ever forgotten
her.

When he had received his welcome he sat down upon the door-step. He
could have touched Elspeth's skirt. When she lowered her eyes they
rested upon his gold-brown head, upon his hand in a little pool of
light.

"Eh, laddie!" said Mother Binning, "but ye grow mair braw each time ye
come!"

Elspeth thought him braw. The wishing-green where they danced, hand in
hand!... Now she knew--now she knew--why her heart had lain so cold
and still--for months, for years, cold and still! That was what hearts
did until the sun came.... Definitely, in this hour, for her now, upon
this stretch of the mortal path, Ian became the sun.

Ian sat daffing, talking. The old woman listened, her wheel idle; the
young woman listened. The young woman, sitting half in shadow, half in
light, put up her hand and drew farther over her face the brim of her
wide hat of country weave. She wished to hide her eyes, her lips. She
sat there pale, and through her ran in fine, innumerable waves human
passion and longing, wild courage and trembling humility.

The sunlight that flooded the door-stone and patched the cottage floor
began to lessen and withdraw. Low and distant there sounded a roll of
thunder. Jock Binning came upon his crutches from the bench by the
stream where he made a fishing-net.

"A tempest's daundering up!"

Elspeth rose. "I must go home--I must get home before it comes!"

"If ye'll bide, lassie, it may go by."

"No, I cannot." She had brought to Mother Binning a basket heaped with
bloomy plums. She took it up and set it on the table. "I'll get the
basket when next I come. Now I must go! Hark, there's the thunder
again!"

Ian had risen also. "I will go with you. Yes! It was my purpose to
walk through to White Farm. I sent Fatima around with Peter Lindsay."

As they passed the ash-tree there was lightnin