Strickland went to where the moor path ran by the outermost trees of the glen head.  Here he sat down beneath an oak and waited.  Another hour passed; then he heard the horse’s hoofs.  He rose and met Glenfernie home-returning.

“It is good to see you, Strickland!”

“I found you yonder by the Kelpie’s Pool.  Then I came here and waited.”

“I have spent hours there....  They were not unhappy.  They were not at all unhappy.”

They moved together along the moor track, the horse following.

“I am glad and glad again that you have come—­”

“I have been coming a good while.  But there were preventions.”

“We have heard nothing direct for almost a year.”

“Then my letters did not reach you.  I wrote, but knew that they might not.  There is the smoke from Mother Binning’s cot.”  He stood still to watch the mounting feather.  “I remember when first I saw that, a six-year-old, climbing the glen with my father, carried on his shoulder when I was tired.  I thought it was a hut in a fairy-tale....  So it is!”

To Strickland the remarkable thing lay in the lack of strain, the simplicity and fullness.  Glenfernie was unfeignedly glad to see him, glad to see home shapes and colors.  The blue feather among the trees had simply pleased him as it could not please a heart fastened to rage and sorrow.  The stream of memories that it had beckoned—­many others, it must be, besides that of the six-year-old’s visit—­seemed to have washed itself clear, to have disintegrated, dissolved venom and stinging.  Strickland, pondering even while he talked, found the word he wanted:  “Comprehensiveness....  He always tended to that.”

Said Glenfernie, “I’ve had another birth, Strickland, and all things are the same and yet not the same.”  He gave it as an explanation, but then left it.  They were going the moorland way to Glenfernie House.  He was looking from side to side, recovering old landscape in sweep and in detail.  Bit by bit, as they came to it, Strickland gave him the country news.  At last there was the house before them, among the firs and oaks, topping the crag.  They came into the wood at the base of the hill.  The stream—­the trees—­above, the broken, ancient wall, the roofs of the new house that was not so new, the old, outstanding keep.  The whole rested, mellowed, lifted, still, against a serene and azure sky.  Alexander stood and gazed.

“The keep.  The pine still knots and clings there by the school-room.  Do you remember, Strickland, a day when you set me to read ’The Cranes of Ibycus’?”

“I remember.”

“Life within life, and sky above sky!—­I hear Bran!”

* * * * *

They mounted the hill.  It seemed to run before them that the laird had come home.  Bran and Davie and the men and maids and Alice, a bonny woman, and Mrs. Grizel, very little withered, exclaimed and ran.  Tibbie Ross was there that day, and Black Alan neighed from his stall.  Even the waving trees—­even the flowers in the garden—­Home, and its taste and fragrance—­its dear, close emanations....