ce of
the firs and the content of the animals sheltering from the storm,
he found a momentary peace from the agitation that had set up in him,
roused at the song of the girl, the story of the mariner. The emotions,
the fears, longings, discontents that jangled through him as they had
never done before relapsed to a mood level and calm, as if they, too,
had sheltered from the storm like the birds upon the trees.

But by-and-by he became ashamed of his action, that must seem so foolish
to the friends he had left in the ship without a word of explanation.
His face flamed hotly at the thought of his rude departure. He would
give a world to be able to go back again as if nothing had happened and
sit unchallenged in the cosy den of the Jean. And musing thus he went
through the wood till he came upon the bank of the Duglas, roaring grey
and ragged, a robber from the hills, bearing spoil of the upper reaches,
the town-lands, the open and windswept plains. It carried the trunks of
great trees that had lain since other storms upon its banks, and with a
great chafing and cracking no less than the wooden bridge from Clonary
which the children were wont to cross from those parts on their way to
school.

"That will go battering on the vessel," he thought, looking amazed
at its ponderous beams flicking through the water and over the little
cascades as if they had been feathers blown by an evening breeze. "That
will go battering on the _Jean_" he thought, and of a sudden it seemed
his manifest duty to warn the occupants of the ship to defend themselves
from the unexpected attack.

He followed the bridge for a little, fascinated, wondering what was to
become of it next in the tumult of waters till he came to the falls,
where he had looked for a check to it. But it stayed no more than a
moment on the lip of the precipice swung up a jagged edge above the
deep, then crashed into the linn, where it seemed to swerve and turn,
giddy with its adventure. Gilian stood spellbound on the banks looking
at it so far down, then he turned, and cutting off the bend of the
river, made for the shore.

He crashed through bracken and bramble and through the fir-wood again,
startling the sheltering birds by his hurry, emerging upon the face
of the brae in sight of the _Jean_ and the sea. In his absence a great
change had come upon the wave, upon the hilly distance, upon the whole
countenance of nature. The rain was no longer in drumming torrents, but
i