, 'Go in
peace!'"

She looked at him mournfully. "Is it to pocket the injury? Will not
all combine--silently, silently--to teach him at last? Less than
man--man--more than man, than to-day's appearing man?... I am not
wise. For yourself and the ring of your moment you may be judging
inevitably, rightly.... But with what will you overcome--and in
overcoming what will you overcome?"

He made a gesture of impatience. "Oh, friend, once I, too, could be
metaphysical! I cannot now."

Speech failed between them. They sat with eyes upon the garden, the
old tree, the August blue sky, but perhaps they hardly saw these. At
last she turned. She had a slender, still youthful figure, an oval,
lovely, still young face. Now there was a smile upon her lips, and in
her eyes a light deep, touching, maternal.

"Go as you will, hunt him as you will, do what you will! And he,
too--Ian! Ian and his sins. Grapes in the wine-press--wheat beneath
the flail--ore in the ardent fire, and over all the clouds of wrath!
Suffering and making to suffer--sinning and making to sin.... And yet
will the dawn come, and yet will you be reconciled!"

"Not while memory holds!"

"Ah, there is so much to remember! Ian has so much and you have so
much.... When the great memory comes you will see. But not now, it is
apparent, not now! So go if you will and must, Alexander, with the net
and the spear!"

"Did he not sin?"

"Yes."

"I also sin. But my sin does not match his! God makes use of
instruments, and He shall make use of me!"

"If He 'shall,' then He shall. Let us leave talk of this. Where you go
may love and light go, too--and work it out, and work it out!"

He did not stay long in her garden. All Black Hill oppressed him now.
The dark crept in upon the light. She saw that it was so.

"He can be friends now with none. He sees in each one a partisan--his
own or Ian's." She did not detain him, but when he rose to say good-by
helped him to say it without delay.

He went, and she paced her garden, thinking of Ian who had done so
great wrong, and Alexander who cried, "My enemy!" She stayed in the
garden an hour, and then she turned and went to play piquet with the
lonely, shriveled man, her brother.

CHAPTER XXIV

Two days after this Glenfernie rode to White Farm. Jenny Barrow met
him with exclamations.

"Oh, Mr. Alexander! Oh, Glenfernie! And they say that you are amaist
as weel as ever--but to me you look twelve years older! Eh, an