“A lad and a lass met ower the brae;
They blushed rose-red, but they said nae word—­
The woodbine fair and the milk-white slae:—­
And frae one to the other gaed a silver bird,
A silver bird.

“A man set his Wish all odds before,
With sword, with pen, and with gold he stirred
Till the Wish and he met on a conquered shore,
And frae one to the other gaed an ebon bird,
An ebon bird.

“God looked on a man and said:  ’’Tis time! 
The broken mends, clear flows the blurred. 
You and I are two worlds that rhyme!’
And frae one to the other gaed a golden bird,
A golden bird.”

She sang it through, then sat entirely still against the stem of the thorn, while about her lips played that faint, unapproachable, glamouring smile.  Her hands touched the grass to either side her body; her slender, blue-clad figure, the all of her, smote him like some god’s line of poetry.

There was in the laird of Glenfernie’s nature an empty palace.  It had been built through ages and every wind of pleasure and pain had blown about it.  Then it had slowly come about that the winds of pain had increased upon the winds of pleasure.  The mind closed the door of the palace and the nature inclined to turn from it.  It was there, but a sea mist hid it, and a tall thorn-hedge, and a web stretched across its idle gates.  It had hardly come, in this life, into Glenfernie’s waking mind that it was there at all.

Now with a suddenness every door clanged open.  The mist parted, the thorn-wood sank, the web was torn.  The palace stood, shining like home, and it was he who was afar, in the mist and the wood, and the web of idleness and oblivion in shreds about him.  Set in the throne-room, upon the throne, he saw the queen.

His mood, that May day, had given the moment, and wide circumstance had met it.  Now the hand was in the glove, the statue in the niche, the bow upon the string, the spark in the tinder, the sea through the dike.  Now what had reached being must take its course.

He felt that so fatally that he did not think of resistance....  Elspeth, upon the grassy cape, beneath the blooming thorn, heard steps down the glen path, and turned her eyes to see the young laird moving between the birch stems.  Now he was level with the holding; now he spoke to her, lifting his hat.  She answered, with the smile beneath her eyes: 

“Aye, Glenfernie, it’s a braw day!”

“May I come into the fairy country and sit awhile and visit?”

“Aye.”  She welcomed him to a hillock of green rising from the water’s edge.  “It is fairyland, and these are the broad seas around, and I know if I came here by night I should find the Good People before me!” She looked at him with friendliness, half shy, half frank.  “It is the best of weather for wandering.”

“Are you fond of that, too?  Do you go up and down alone?”

“By my lee-lane when Gilian’s not here.  She’s in Aberdeen now, where live our mother’s folk.”