“No, Grandfather.  You remember that the old laird was William.  This is Mr. Alexander.”

“He that was always aff somewhere alane?” White Farm drew his mind together.  “I see now!  You’re right.  I remember.”

“I am coming to White Farm to-morrow, Mr. Barrow.”

“Come then....  Is Grierson slain?”

“He’s away in past time,” said Gilian.  “Grandfather, here’s Willy to help you.—­Don’t say anything more to him now, Glenfernie.”

The next day he rode to White Farm.  Jenny, through the window, saw him coming, but Jarvis Barrow, old bodily habits changing, lay sleeping on his own bed.  Nor was Gilian at hand.  The laird sat and talked with Jenny in the clean, spare living-room.  All the story of her crippling was to be told, and a packed chest of country happenings gone over.  Jenny had a happy, voluble half-hour.  At last, the immediate bag exhausted, she began to cast her mind in a wider circle.  Her words came at a slower pace, at last halted.  She sat in silence, an apple red in her cheeks.  She eyed askance the man over against her, and at last burst forth: 

“Gilian said I should na speir—­but, eh, Glenfernie, I wad gie mair than a bawbee to ken what you did to him!”

“Nothing.”

“Naething?”

“Nothing that you would call anything.”

Jenny sat with open mouth.  “They said you’d changed, even to look at—­and sae you have!—­Naething!”

Jarvis Barrow entered the room, and with him came Gilian.  The old man failed, failed.  Now he knew Glenfernie and spoke to him of to-day and of yesterday—­and now he addressed him as though he were his father, the old laird, or even his grandfather.  And after a few minutes he said that he would go out to the fir-tree.  Alexander helped him there.  Gilian took the Bible and placed it beside him.

“Open at eleventh Isaiah,” he said. “’And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots—­’”

Gilian opened the book.  “You read,” and she sat down beside him.

“I wish to talk to you,” said Alexander to her.  “When—?”

“I am going to town to-morrow afternoon.  I’ll walk back over the moor.”

When he came upon the moor next day it was bathed by a sun half-way down the western quarter.  The colors of it were lit, the vast slopes had alike tenderness and majesty.  He moved over the moor; then he sat down by a furze-bush and waited.  Gilian came at last, sat down near him in the dry, sweet growth.  She put her arms over her knees; she held her head back and drank the ineffable rich compassion of the sky.  She spoke at last.

“Oh, laird, life’s a marvel!”

“I feel the soul now,” he said, “of marigolds and pansies.  That is the difference to me.”

“What shall you do?  Stay here and grow—­or travel again and grow?”

“I do not yet know....  It depends.”