“Then,” said the girl, “it is fitter that I should return to the ’Back of Beyont’ till such time as you and your men come back to burn the thatch about our ears.”

The young man smiled and said—­“No, Flora, you and I have another road to travel this night.  Over there by the halse o’ the pass, there stand tethered two good horses that will take us before the morning to the Manse of Balmaclellan, where my cousin, the minister, is waiting, and his mother is expecting you.  Come with me, and you shall be Lady of Bargany before morning.”  He stooped again to take her hand.

“My certes, but ye made braw and sure of me with your horses,” she said.  “I have a great mind not to stir a foot.”

But the young man laughed, being still well pleased, and giving no heed to her protestations.

* * * * *

So there was a wedding in the early morning at the Manse of the Kells, and a young bride was brought home to Bargany.  As for old Roy Campbell, he was made the deputy-keeper of the Forest of Buchan, which was an old Cassilis distinction—­and a post that exactly suited his Highland blood.  Time and again, however, had his son to intercede with him not to be too severe with those smugglers and gangrel bodies who had come to look upon the fastnesses of the Forest as their own.

“Have ye no fellow-feeling, Roy, for old sake’s sake?” Kennedy would ask.

“Feeling? havers!” growled Roy impolitely, for Roy was spoiled.  “I’m a chief’s man noo, and I’ll harbour nae gangrel loons on the lands o’ Kennedy.”

So the old cateran would depart humming the Galloway rhyme—­

  “Frae Wigtown to the Toon o’ Ayr,
    Portpatrick to the Cruives o’ Cree;
  Nae man need hope to bide safe there,
    Unless he court wi’ Kennedy.”

“Body o’ MacCallum More,” chuckled the deputy-keeper of the Forest of Buchan, “but it was Kennedy that cam’ coortin’ to the ‘Back o’ Beyont’ that time, whatever, I’m thinkin’!”

VI

NORTH TO THE ARCTIC

  At home ’tis sunny September,
    Though here ’tis a waste of snows,
  So bleak that I scarce remember
    How the scythe through the cornland goes.

  With an aching heart I wander
    Through the cold and curved wreaths,
  And dream that I see meander
    Brown burns amid purple heaths: 

  That I hear the stags on the mountains
    Bray loud in the early morn,
  And that scarlet gleams by the fountains
    The red-berried wild-rose thorn.

“It was bad enough in the Free Command,” said Constantine, leaning back in his luxurious easy-chair and joining his thin fingers easily before him as though he were measuring the stretch between thumb and middle finger.  “But, God knows, it was Paris itself to the hell on earth up at the Yakut Yoort.”