Edinburgh, educated, or polished, or finished off as they
call it--I hope she kens what she's to be after next, for I'm sure her
father does not."

Gilian's breast filled with some strange new sense of sudden relief. It
was as if he had been climbing out of an airless, hopeless valley, and
emerged upon a hill-crest, and was struck there by the flat hand of
the lusty wind and stiffened into hearty interest in the rolling and
variegated world around. In a second, the taunt of the General of Maam
was no more to him than a dream. A dozen emotions mastered him, and he
tingled from head to foot, for the first time man.

"Oh, and _she's_ back, is she?" said he with a crafty indifference, as
one who expects no answer.

Miss Mary was not deceived. She had moved to the window and was looking
down into the street where the children played, but the new tone of his
voice, and the pause before it, gave her a sense of desertion, and she
grieved. On the ridges of the opposite lands, sea-gulls perched and
preened their feathers, pigeons kissed each other as they moved about
the feet of the passers-by. A servant lass bent over a window in the
dwelling of Marget Maclean and smiled upon a young fisherman who went up
the middle of the street, noisily in knee-high boots. The afternoon was
glorious with sun.

CHAPTER XXII--IN CHURCH

If the lambs were still wailing when Gilian got back to Ladyfield he
never heard them. Was the glen as sad and empty as before? Then he was
absent, indeed! For he was riding through an air almost jocund, and his
spirit sang within him. The burns bubbled merrily among the long grasses
and the bracken, the myrtle cast a sharp and tonic sweetness all around.
The mountain bens no more pricked the sky in solemn loneliness, but
looked one to the other over the plains--companions, lovers, touched to
warmth and passion by the sun of the afternoon. It was as if an empty
world had been fresh tenanted. Gilian, as he rode up home, woke to
wonder at his own cheerfulness. He reflected that he had been called a
failure--and he laughed.

Next day he was up with the sun, and Cameron was amazed at this new
zeal that sent him, crook in hand, to the hill for some wanderers of the
flock, whistling blithely as he went. Long after he was gone he could
see him, black against the sky, on the backbone of the mountain, not
very active for a man in search of sheep. But what he could not see so
far was Gilian's rapture as he loo