far less confident than her words.

Gilian made no reply. He only looked at her reproaching for her
bitterness, and humbly took up step by her side as she walked quickly
away from the scene of the cold reception.

They had gone some distance when Elasaid opened her door again and came
out to look after them. She saw a most touching helplessness in the
manner of their uncertain walk across the heather, with no fixed mind
as to which direction was the best, stopping and debating, moving now
a little to the east, now a little to the west, but always further into
the region of the lochs. She began to blame herself for her hastiness.
She had expected that, face to face with her disapproval, the foolish
young people would have gone back the road they came; but here they were
going further than ever away from the father in whose interest she had
loyally refused her hospitality. She cried loudly after them with a
short-breathed Gaelic halloo, too much like an animal's cry to attract
their attention. Nan did not hear it at all; Gilian but dreamed it, as
it were, and though he took it for the call of a moor-fowl, found it in
his ready fancy alarmingly like the summons of an irate father. But now
he dared betray no hesitancy; he did not even turn to look behind him.

Elasaid cried again, but still in vain. She concluded they were
deliberately deaf to her, and "Let them go!" she said crabbedly,
flaunting an eloquent arm to the winds, comforting herself with the
thought that there was no other house in all that dreary country to give
them the shelter she had denied.

The sun by this time was pouring into the moor from a sky without a
speck of cloud. Compared with the brown and purple of the moor and the
dull colour of Ben Bhreac--the mount away to the southeast--the heavens
were uncommonly blue, paling gradual to their dip. In another hour than
this distressed and perplexed one, our wanderers would have felt some
jocund influence in a forenoon so benign and handsome.

And now, too, the country began to show more of its true character. Its
little lochs--a great chain of them--dashed upon their vision in patches
of blue or grey or yellow. The valley was speckled with the tarns.
Gilian forgot the hazards of the enterprise and the discomforts to be
faced; he had no time to think of what was to be done next for them in
their flight, so full was he with the romance of those multitudinous
lakelets lost in the empty and sunny wilds, so