“Your mither wasna your father’s kind.  She had always her smile to the side and her japes, and she looked to the warld.  Not that she didna mean to do weel in it!  She did.  But I couldna just see clear the seal in her forehead.”

“That was because you did not look close enough,” said Alexander.  “It was there.”

“I didna mind your uphawding your mither.  Aweel, what did ye have to say?”

The laird turned full to him.  “White Farm, you were once a young man.  You loved and married.  So do I love, so would I marry!  The woman I love does not yet love me, but she has, I think, some liking.—­I bide in hope.  I would speak to you about it, as is right.”

“Wha is she?”

“Your granddaughter Elspeth.”

Silence, while the shadows of the trees in the vale below grew longer and longer.  Then said White Farm: 

“She isna what they call your equal in station.  And she has nae tocher or as good as nane.”

“For the last I have enough for us both.  For the first the springs of Barrow and Jardine, back in Time’s mountains, are much the same.  Scotland’s not the country to bother overmuch if the one stream goes, in a certain place, through a good farm, and the other by a not over-rich laird’s house.”

“Are ye Whig and Kirk like your father?”

“I am Whig—­until something more to the dawn than that comes up.  For the Kirk ...  I will tell truth and say that I have my inner differences.  But they do not lean toward Pope or prelate....  I am Christian, where Christ is taken very universally—­the higher Self, the mounting Wisdom of us all....  Some high things you and I may view differently, but I believe that there are high things.”

“And seek them?”

“And seek them.”

“You always had the air to me,” vouchsafed White Farm, “of one wha hunted gowd elsewhaur than in the earthly mine.”  He looked at the red west, and drew his plaid about him, and took firmer clutch upon his staff.  “But the lassie does not love you?”

“My trust is that she may come to do so.”

The elder got to his feet.  Alexander rose also.

“It’s coming night!  Ye will be gaeing on over the muir to the House?”

“Yes.  Then, sir, I may come to White Farm, or meet her when I may, and have my chance?”

“Aye.  If so be I hear nae great thing against ye.  If so be ye’re reasonable.  If so be that in no way do ye try to hurt the lassie.”

“I’ll be reasonable,” said the laird of Glenfernie.  “And I’d not hurt Elspeth if I could!” His face shone, his voice was a deep and happy music.  He was so bound, so at the feet of Elspeth, that he could not but believe in joy and fortune.  The sun had dipped; the land lay dusk, but the sky was a rose.  There was a skimming of swallows overhead, a singing of the wind in the ling.  He walked with White Farm to the foot of the moor, then said good night and turned toward his own house.