think it should be tried again. And I know it, root and
branch. I am going afoot. I will leave Black Alan here."

They wasted no time. He went, while Robin Greenlaw on his gray took
the opposed direction. Looking back, he saw the great fire that Jenny
kept, dancing through the open door and in the pane of the window.
Then the trees and the winding of the path shut it away, shut away
house and field and all token of human life.

He moved swiftly to the mouth of the glen, but then more slowly. The
trees soared bare, the water rushed with a hoarse sound, snow lay in
clefts. So well he knew the place! There was no spot where foot might
have climbed, no ledge nor opening where form might lay, huddled or
outstretched, that lacked his searching eye or hand. Here was the
pebbly cape with the thorn-tree where in May he had come upon Elspeth,
sitting by the water, singing.... Farther on he turned into that
smaller, that fairy glen, bending like an arm from the main pass. Here
was the oak beneath which they had sat, against which she had leaned.
It wrapt him from himself, this place. He stood, and space around
seemed filled with forms just beyond visibility. What were they? He
did not know, but they seemed to breathe against his heart, to
whisper.... He searched this place well, but there were only the
winter banks and trees, the little burn, the invisible presences. Back
in the deep glen a hawk sailed overhead, across the stripe of
pale-blue sky. Alexander went on by the stream and the projecting rock
and the twisted roots. There was no sound other than the loud voice of
the water, talking only of its return to the sea. When he came to the
cave he pushed aside the masking growth and entered. Dark and barren
here, with the ashes of an old fire! For one moment, as it were
distinctly, he saw Ian. He stood so clear in the mind's eye that it
seemed that one intense effort might have set him bodily in the
cavern. But the central strength let the image go. Alexander moved the
ashes of the fire with his foot, shuddered in the place of cold and
shadow, and, stooping, went out of the cave and on upon his search for
Elspeth Barrow.

He sought the glen through, and at last, at the head, he came to
Mother Binning's cot. Her fire was burning; she was standing in the
door looking toward him.

"Eh, Glenfernie! is there news of the lassie?"

"None. You've got the sight. Can you not _see_?"

"It's gane from me! When it gaes I'm just like o