."

"Do you mean," asked Strickland, "to kill him when you find him?"

"I like your directness. But I do not know--I do not know!... I mean
to be his following fiend. To have him ever feel me--when he turns his
head ever to see me!"

The other sighed sharply. He thought to himself, "Oh, mind, thy
abysses!"

Indeed, Glenfernie looked at this moment stronger. He folded Jamie's
letter and put it by. He drew the bowl of flowers to him and picked
forth a rose. "A week--two at most--and I shall be wholly recovered!"
His voice had fiber, decision, even a kind of cheer.

Strickland thought, "It is his fancied remedy, at which he snatches!"

Glenfernie continued: "We'll set to work to-morrow upon long
arrangements! With you to manage here, I will not be missed." Without
waiting for the morrow he took quill and paper and began to figure.

Strickland watched him. At last he said, "Will you go at once in three
ships to Holland, Portugal, and America?"

"Has the onlooker room for irony, while to me it looks so simple? I
shall ship first to the likeliest land.... In ten days--in two weeks
at most--to Edinburgh--"

Strickland left him figuring and, rising, went to the window. He saw
the great cedar, and in mind the pilgrim who planted it there. All the
pilgrims--all the crusaders--all the men in Plutarch; the long frieze
of them, the full ocean of them ... all the self-search, dressed as
search of another. "I, too, I doubt not--I, too!" Buried scenes in his
own life rose before Strickland. Behind him scratched Glenfernie's
pen, sounded Glenfernie's voice:

"I am going to see presently if I can walk as far as the keep. In two
or three days I shall ride. There are things that I shall know when I
get to Edinburgh. He would take, if he could, the ship that would land
him at the door of France."

CHAPTER XXIII

Alexander rode across the moors to the glen head. Two or three
solitary farers that he met gave him eager good day.

"Are ye getting sae weel, laird? I am glad o' that!"

"Good day, Mr. Jardine! I rejoice to see you recovered. Well, they
hung more of them yesterday!"

"Gude day, Glenfernie! It's a bonny morn, and sweet to be living!"

At noon he looked down on the Kelpie's Pool. The air was sweet and
fine, bird sounds came from the purple heather. The great blue arch of
the sky smiled; even the pool, reflecting day, seemed to have
forgotten cold and dread. But for Glenfernie a dull, cold, sick horror
ove