The path led into the wood.  Trees rose about them, phantoms in the snowstorm.  The snow fell in large flakes, straight, undriven by wind.  Footprints made transient shapes.  The snow obliterated them as in the desert moving sand obliterated.  Ian and Alexander, leaving the wood, took a way that led by field and moor to Littlefarm.

The earth seemed a Solitary, with no child nor lover of hers abroad.  The day declined, the snow fell.  Ian and Alexander moved on, hardly speaking.  The outer landscape rolled dimmed, softened, withdrawn.  The inner world moved among its own contours.  The day flowed toward night, as the night would flow toward day.

They came to the foot of the moor that stretched between White Farm and Littlefarm.

“There is a woman standing by that tree,” said Ian.

“Yes.  It is Gilian.”

They moved toward her.  Tall, fair, wide-browed and gray-eyed, she leaned against the oak stem and seemed to be at home here, too.  The wide falling snow, the mystic light and quietness, were hers for mantle.  As they approached she stirred.

“Good day, Glenfernie!—­Good day, Ian Rullock!—­Glenfernie, you cannot go this way!  Soldiers are at Littlefarm.”

“Did Robin—­”

“He got word to me an hour since.  They are chance-fallen, the second time.  They will get no news and soon be gone.  He trusted me to give you warning.  He says wait for him at the cot that was old Skene’s.  It stands empty and folk say that it is haunted and go round about.”  She left the tree and took the path with them.  “It lies between us and White Farm.  This snow is friendly.  It covers marks—­it keeps folk within-doors—­nor does it mean to fall too long or too heavily.”

They moved together through the falling snow.

It was a mile to old Skene’s cot.  They walked it almost in silence—­upon Ian’s part in silence.  The snow fell; it covered their footprints.  All outlines showed vague and looming.  The three seemed three vital points moving in a world dissolving or a world forming.

The empty cot rose before them, the thatch whitened, the door-stone whitened.  Glenfernie pushed the door.  It opened; they found a clean, bare place, twilight now, still, with the falling snow without.

Gilian spoke.  “I’ll go on now to White Farm.  Robin will come.  In no long time you’ll be upon the farther road....  Now I will say Fare you well!”

Alexander took her hands.  “Farewell, Gilian!”

Gray eyes met gray eyes.  “Be it short time or be it long time—­soon home to Glenfernie, or long, long gone—­farewell, and God bless you, Glenfernie!”

“And you, Gilian!”

She turned to Ian.  “Ian Rullock—­farewell, too, and God bless you, too!”

She was gone.  They watched through the door her form moving amid falling snow.  The veil between thickened; she vanished; there were only the white particles of the dissolving or the forming world.  The two kept silence.