nkle of
broken glass, and he stooped to feel. His finger came upon the portions
of the broken cup, and he remembered, with shame for his own share in
the scene, how Nan had punished his awkwardness by casting from her the
vessel of which this was the fragment She had had her lips to this, her
fingers had touched it; it was a gem to put in his pocket, and he put
it there. He searched round again as he repeated in his mind all the
incidents of that first morning in the moor, and a little farther on he
came upon the ashes of their dead fire. Poor dead fire, grey old ashes,
flame quenched, warmth departed, loneliness come--the reflections made
him shiver.

As he stood there in what was now the dark night, he might have been a
phantom mourning for the unrecoverable, the ghost of old revelries, the
shade of pleasant bygone hearths and love the ancient.

He shook himself into the present world, and left behind the ashes of
their fire and made for the shealing hut, all the way solacing himself
with fancy. The girl was his, but he never let his mind linger on the
numerous difficulties that lay inevitably between the present hour and
his possession of her. He projected himself into the future with a
blank unexplained behind, and saw them at unextinguishable hearths, love
accompanying them through generations. Through the heather he brushed
eagerly now, his eyes intent upon the dim summits of the brae from which
again he should see the light of the shealing if it was there. Loch
Little Fox, and Great Fox, and all the black and sobbing pools among
the heather he passed on the light feet of love, and when he came to the
brae top and still found no beacon there, he was exceedingly dashed.

"I hope, I hope there is nothing wrong," he said aloud. And he hurried
the faster.

The sky was full of clouds, all but a patch star-sown over Ben Bhreac,
and all through the hollows and hags ran a wail of rain-wind most
mournful. The birds that had been crying over the pools departed, and
there was no sound of animal life. The wind moaned and the pools sobbed.
About the black edifice in which he thought was all he prized most dear
on earth, blackness hung like a terror. Breathless he stood at the door.
It was wide open! It was wide open! It was wide open to the night wind!
As if a hand of ice had clutched him at the heart he shook and staggered
back.

"God of Grace!" he cried in his mother tongue, then "Nan! Nan!" he
called to the dark withi