me with isle, all with
shelving heathery braes beside them, or golden bights where the little
wave lapped. He turned to his companion with an ecstasy.

"Did you ask me if I rued it?" he said. "Give me no better than to stay
here for ever--with you to share it."

She met his ardour with coolness. "I wish you had been so certain of
that a little ago," she said; "you seem very much on the swither. Have
you thought of what's to be done next? It is all very well to be putting
our backs to the angry Elasaid behind us there, but all the time I'm
wondering what's to be the outcome."

He confessed himself at a loss. She eyed him without satisfaction. This
young gentleman, who seemed so enchanting in circumstances where no
readiness of purpose was needed, looked very inadequate in the actual
stress of things, in the broad daylight, his flat bonnet far back on
his brow, his face wan, his plaid awry. And there was something in his
carriage of the ridiculous lantern that made her annoyed at herself for
some reason.

She stopped, and they hung hesitating, with the lapwings crying about
them, and no other sound in the air.

"I'm going back," said she, as if she meant it. His face fell. This time
there was no mistaking his distress.

"No, no, you cannot, Nan," he said. "We will get out of it somehow; you
cannot return, and what of me? It would be ill to explain."

"We're neither whaup nor deer," said she, shrugging her shoulders, "to
live here wild the rest of our days."

Gilian looked about him rather helplessly, and he started at the sight
of a gable wall, with what in a shealing might pass for a window in it,
and he knew it for a relic of the old days, when the moor in its levels
here would be spotted with happy summer homes, when the people of Lochow
came from the shores below and gave their cattle the juicy grazing of
these untamed pastures, themselves living the ancient life, with singing
and spinning in the open, gathering at nights for song or dance and tale
in the fine weather.

"There's something of shelter at least," he said, pointing to it. She
looked dubiously at the dry-stone walls almost tumbling, the cabars
of what had been a byre fallen over half the interior, and at the rank
nettles--head-high almost--about the rotten door.

"Is this home-coming?" she said whimsically, forcing a smile, but she
was glad to see it. By this time she was master of her companion's mind,
and could guess that it would be to him a