--"

"I sit down to supper with mine very often," said Strickland.

"Oh yes, he's common--the demon! But somehow I could find him in Ian
Rullock, though all covered up with gold. But doubtless," said
Greenlaw, debonairly, "it would be the much of the fellow in me that
would recognize much in another!" He put his gray into motion. "Good
day, sir!" He was gone, disappearing down the long street, into the
snow that was now falling like a veil.

Strickland turned homeward. The snow fell fast and thick in large
white flakes. Glenfernie House rose before him, crowning the craggy
hill, the modern building and the remnant of the old castle, not a
great place, but an ancient, settled, and rooted, part of a land poor
but not without grandeur, not without a rhythm attained between
grandeur and homeliness. The road swept around and up between leafless
trees and green cone-bearing ones. The snow was whitening the
branches, the snow wrapped house and landscape in its veil. It broke,
in part it obliterated, line and modeling; the whole seemed on the
point of dissolving into a vast and silent unity. "Like a dying man,"
thought Strickland. He came upon the narrow level space about the
house, passed the great cedar planted by a pilgrim laird the year of
Flodden Field, and entered by a door in the southern face.

Davie met him. "Eh, sir, Mr. Alexander's come!"

"Come!"

"Aye, just! An hour past, riding Black Alan, with Tam Dickson behind
on Whitefoot, and weary enough thae horses looked! Mr. Alexander wad
ha' gane without bite or sup to the laird's room, but he's lying
asleep. So now he's gane to his ain auld room for a bit of rest.
Haith, sir," said Davie, "but he's like the auld laird when he was
twenty-eight!"

CHAPTER VIII

Strickland went, to the hall, where he found Alice.

"Come to the fire! I've been watching the snow, but it is so white and
thick and still it fair frightens me! Davie told you that Alexander
has come?"

"Yes. From Edinburgh to-day."

"Yes. He left London as soon as he had our letters."

She stood opposite him, a bright and bonny lass, with a look of her
mother, but with more beauty. The light from the burning logs deepened
the gold in her hair, as the warmth made more vivid the rose of her
cheek. She owned a warm and laughing heart, a natural goodness.
Strickland, who had watched and taught her since she was a slip of a
child, had for her a great fondness.

Jamie entered the hall. "Father