"So you have
loved and lost, old Steadfast? Let it not grieve you too much!" And
that was all of that. And it pleased Alexander that it was all. Ian
was too wise to touch and finger the heart. Ian, Ian, rich and deep
and himself almost! Ten thousand Ian recollections pressed in upon
Alexander. Let Ian, an he would, go a-lusting after old dynasties! Yet
was he Ian! In these months it was Ian memories that chiefly gave
Alexander comfort.

They gave beyond what, at this time, Mrs. Alison could give. At
considerable intervals he went to Black Hill. But his old friend lived
in a rare, upland air, and he could not yet find rest in her clime.
She saw that.

"It's for after a while, isn't it, Alexander? Oh, after a while you'll
see that it is the breathing, living air! But do not feel now that you
are in duty bound to come here. Wait until you feel like coming, and
never think that I'll be hurt--"

"I am a marsh thing," he said. "I feel dull and still and cold, and
over me is a heavy atmosphere filled with motes. Forgive me and let me
come to you farther on and higher up."

He went back to the gray crag, Glenfernie House and the room in the
keep, the fire and his books, and a brooding traveling over the past,
and, like a pool of gold in a long arctic night, the image, nested and
warm, of Ian. Love was lost, but there stayed the ancient, ancient
friend.

Two weeks before Christmas Alice came home, bright as a rose. She
talked of a thousand events, large and small. Glenfernie listened,
smiled, asked questions, praised her, and said it was good to have
brightness in the house.

"Aye, it is!" she answered. "How grave and old you and Mr. Strickland
and the books and the hall and Bran look!"

"It's heigho! for Jamie, isn't it?" asked Alexander. "Winter makes us
look old. Wait till springtime!"

That evening she waylaid Strickland. "What is the matter with
Alexander?"

"I don't know."

"He looks five years older. He looks as though he had been through
wars."

"Perhaps he has. I don't know what it is," said Strickland, soberly.

"Do you think," said Alice--"do you think he could have had--oh,
somewhere out in the world!--a love-affair, and it ended badly? She
died, or there was a rival, or something like that, and he has just
heard of it?"

"You have been reading novels," said Strickland. "And yet--!"

That night, seeing from his own window the light in the keep, he
turned to his bed with the thought of the havoc o