What drew her forth so early this June day was no thought or hope or plan except the desire to read the heart of Nature, and perhaps that she might not be left too long alone with the parable of her own heart.  A girl’s heart is full of thought which it dares not express to herself—­of fluttering and trembling possibilities, chrysalis-like, set aside to await the warmth of an unrevealed summer.  In Winsome’s soul the first flushing glory of the May of youth was waking the prisoned life.  But there were throbs and thrillings too piercingly sweet to last undeveloped in her soul.  The bursting bud of her healthful beauty, quickened by the shy radiance of her soul, shook the centres of her life, even as a laburnum-tree mysteriously quivers when the golden rain is in act to break from the close-clustered dependent budlets.

Thus it was that, at the stile which helps the paths be tween the Dullarg and Craig Ronald to overleap the high hill dyke, Ralph met Winsome.  As they looked into one another’s eyes, they saw Nature suddenly dissolve into confused meaninglessness.  There was no clear message for either of them there, save the message that the old world of their hopes and fears had wholly passed away.  Yet no new world had come when over the hill dyke their hands met.  They said no word.  There is no form of greeting for such.  Eve did not greet Adam in polite phrase when he awoke to find her in the dawn of one Eden day, a helpmeet meet for him.  Neither did Eve reply that “it was a fine morn ing.”  It is always a fine morning in Eden.  They were silent, and so were these two.  Their hands lay within one another a single instant.  Then, with a sense of something wanting, Ralph sprang lightly over the dyke as an Edin burgh High-School boy ought who had often played hares and hounds in the Hunter’s Bog, and been duly thrashed therefor by Dr. Adam [Footnote:  The Aery famous master of the High School of Edinburgh.] on the following morning.

When Ralph stood beside her upon the sunny side of the stile he instinctively resumed Winsome’s hand.  For this he had no reason, certainly no excuse.  Still, it may be urged in excuse that it was as much as an hour or an hour and a half before Winsome remembered that he needed any.  Our most correct and ordered thoughts have a way of coming to us belated, as the passenger who strolls in confidently ten minutes after the platform is clear.  But, like him, they are at least ready for the next train.

As Winsome and Ralph turned towards the east, the sun set his face over the great Scotch firs on the ridge, whose tops stood out like poised irregular blots on the fire centred ocean of light.

It was the new day, and if the new world had not come with it, of a surety it was well on the way.

CHAPTER XIII.

A string of the lilac sunbonnet.

For a long time they were silent, though it was not long before Winsome drew away her hand, which, however, continued to burn consciously for an hour afterwards.  Silence settled around them.  The constraint of speech fell first upon Ralph, being town-bred and accustomed to the convenances at Professor Thriepneuk’s.