did so, as if to place
it on his neck, but drew back and put the lantern fast behind her, lest
her fervour had been noticed by the ironic and jealous night. He, she
saw, could not notice; the thing was not in his mind.

"In the stories they just move off, then?" said she shyly. "There was
the meeting, the meeting--no more, and they just went away?"

"And the sooner the better," said he, again leading the way at
last, after taking the lantern from her, and "John Hielan'man, John
Hielan'man!" she cried vexatiously within.

She followed, pouting her lips in the darkness. "It's quite different
from what I expected," she said, whispering as they passed the front
door and down by the burn.

"And with me too," he confessed. "I had it made up in my mind all
otherwise. There should have been moonlight and a horse, and many other
things." "It seems to me you are not making so much as you might of what
there is," she suggested. "Are you sure it is not a trouble to carry the
lantern and the bundle too?"

"Oh! no, no!" he cried softly, but eagerly, every chivalric sentiment
roused lest she should deprive him of the pleasure of doing all he could
for her. She sighed.

"Are you vexed you have come?" he asked, stopping and turning on her his
yet wan face full of regret and of dubiety too.

"The thing is done," she answered abruptly, and they were stepping
carefully over the burn that ran about its boulders in the dark,
gurgling. "Are you sure you are not sorry yourself?"

"I am not a bit sorry," he said, "but--but----"

"Your 'buts' are too late, Gilian," she went on firmly. "If you rued the
enterprise now, I would go myself." But she relaxed some of the coldness
of her mood as he shifted his lantern to the other hand and put a
bashful but firm and supporting hand below her arm to secure her footing
in the rough ascent. This was a little more like what she had expected,
she told herself, though she missed something of warmth in the action.
How could she tell that the hand that held her was trembling with
passion, that her shawl fringe as it was blown across his face by the
breeze was something he could have kissed rapturously?

And now they were well up the hillside. The house of Maam, the garden,
the plantings, the noisy river, were down in the valley, all surrendered
to the night. Their lantern, swinging on the lad's finger, threw a
path of light before them, showing the short cropped grass, the rushy
patches, or the gal