to do than stare at a boy who could not stare back!
How many things they had seen; how many thoughts they must share between
them! He wished himself on the other side of Aora river in the stillness
of Kincreggan wood, or on the hill among the sheep--anywhere away from
the presence of those old men with the keen scrutiny in their eyes,
doubtless knowing all about him and seeing his very thoughts. Had they
been shepherds, or even the clever gillies that sometimes came to the
kitchen of Ladyfield on nights of _ceilidh_ or gossip, he would have
felt himself their equal. He would have been comfortable in feeling
that however much they might know about the hills, and woods, and wild
beasts, it was likely enough better known to himself, who lived among
them and loved them. And the thoughts of the gillie, and the shepherd,
were rarely beyond his shrewd guess as he looked at them; they had
but to say a word or two, and he knew the end of their story from the
beginning. But these old gentlemen were as far beyond his understanding
as Gillesbeg Aotram, the wanderer who came about the glens and was
called daft by the people who did not know, as Gilian did, that he was
wiser than themselves.

The Paymaster took his rattan and knocked noisily on the table for the
landlord.

The Sergeant More stepped softly on his tiptoes six steps into the
kitchen, then six steps noisily back again and put his head in.

"What's your will, Captain?" said he, polishing a tray with the corner
of his brattie.

"Give this boy some dinner, for me," said the Paymaster. "There is
nothing at our place to-day but herrings, and it's the poorest of meals
for melancholy. Miss Mary would make it all the more melancholy with her
weeping over the goodwife of Ladyfield."

Gilian went out with the Sergeant More and made a feeble pretence at
eating his second dinner that day.

CHAPTER III--THE FUNERAL

All the glen came to the funeral, and people of Lochowside on either
side from Stronmealachan to Eredine, and many of the folk of Glen Shira
and the town. A day of pleasant weather, with a warm wind from the west,
full of wholesome dryness for the soil that was still clogged with the
rains of spring. It filled the wood of Kincreggan with sounds, with the
rasping and creaking of branches and the rustle of leaves, and the road
by the river under the gean-trees was strewn with the broken blossom.

The burial ground of Kilmalieu lies at the foot of a tall hill