ny case: could I now,
Gibbie?"

She laid her head again on his shoulder and sobbed. Gibbie did not
well understand her. Donal, where he had thrown himself on a heap
of granite chips, heard and understood, felt and knew and resolved
all in one. The moon shone, and the clouds went flitting like
ice-floe about the sky, now gray in distance, now near the moon and
white, now in her very presence and adorned with her favour on their
bosoms, now drifting again into the gray; and still the two, Ginevra
and Gibbie, stood motionless--Gibbie with the tears in his eyes, and
Ginevra weeping as if her heart would break; and behind the granite
blocks lay Donal.

Again Ginevra raised her head.

"Gibbie, you must go and look after poor Donal," she said.

Gibbie went, but Donal was nowhere to be seen. To escape the two he
loved so well, and be alone as he felt, he had crept away softly
into one of the many recesses of the place. Again and again Gibbie
made the noise with which he was accustomed to call him, but he gave
back no answer, and they understood that wherever he was he wanted
to be left to himself. They climbed again the winding way out of
the gulf, and left him the heart of its desolation.

"Take me home, Gibbie," said Ginevra, when they reached the high
road.

As they went, not a word more passed between them. Ginevra was as
dumb as Gibbie, and Gibbie was sadder than he had ever been in his
life--not only for Donal's sake, but because, in his inexperienced
heart, he feared that Ginevra would not listen to Donal because she
could not--because she had already promised herself to Fergus Duff;
and with all his love to his kind, he could not think it well that
Fergus should be made happy at such a price. He left her at her own
door, and went home, hoping to find Donal there before him.

He was not there. Hour after hour passed, and he did not appear.
At eleven o'clock, Gibbie set out to look for him, but with little
hope of finding him. He went all the way back to the quarry,
thinking it possible he might be waiting there, expecting him to
return without Ginevra. The moon was now low, and her light reached
but a little way into it, so that the look of the place was quite
altered, and the bottom of it almost dark. But Gibbie had no fear.
He went down to the spot, almost feeling his way, where they had
stood, got upon the heap, and called and whistled many times. But
no answer came. Donal was away, he did not