It was not Ian Rullock nor anything to do with him that had helped on this sharp alteration, this turn into some Cimmerian stretch of the mind’s or the emotions’ vast landscape.  If Strickland had at first wondered if this might be the case, the thought vanished.  Glenfernie, free to speak of Ian, spoke freely, with the relief of there, at least, a sunny day.  It somewhat amazed and disquieted, even while it touched, the older man of quiet passions and even ways, the old strength of this friendship.  Glenfernie seemed to brood with a mother-passion over Ian.  To an extent here he confided in Strickland.  The latter knew of the worry about Jacobite plots and the drawing of Ian into that vortex—­Ian known now to be in Paris, writing thence twice or thrice during this autumn and early winter, letters that came to Glenfernie’s hand by unusual channels, smacking all of them of Jacobite or High Tory transmissals.  Strickland did not see these letters.  Of them Alexander said only that Ian wrote as usual, except that he made no reference to sere leaves turning green or a dead staff budding.

In the room with only the loophole windows, by the firelight, Alexander read over again the second of these letters.  “So you have loved and lost, old Steadfast?  Let it not grieve you too much!” And that was all of that.  And it pleased Alexander that it was all.  Ian was too wise to touch and finger the heart.  Ian, Ian, rich and deep and himself almost!  Ten thousand Ian recollections pressed in upon Alexander.  Let Ian, an he would, go a-lusting after old dynasties!  Yet was he Ian!  In these months it was Ian memories that chiefly gave Alexander comfort.

They gave beyond what, at this time, Mrs. Alison could give.  At considerable intervals he went to Black Hill.  But his old friend lived in a rare, upland air, and he could not yet find rest in her clime.  She saw that.

“It’s for after a while, isn’t it, Alexander?  Oh, after a while you’ll see that it is the breathing, living air!  But do not feel now that you are in duty bound to come here.  Wait until you feel like coming, and never think that I’ll be hurt—­”

“I am a marsh thing,” he said.  “I feel dull and still and cold, and over me is a heavy atmosphere filled with motes.  Forgive me and let me come to you farther on and higher up.”

He went back to the gray crag, Glenfernie House and the room in the keep, the fire and his books, and a brooding traveling over the past, and, like a pool of gold in a long arctic night, the image, nested and warm, of Ian.  Love was lost, but there stayed the ancient, ancient friend.

Two weeks before Christmas Alice came home, bright as a rose.  She talked of a thousand events, large and small.  Glenfernie listened, smiled, asked questions, praised her, and said it was good to have brightness in the house.

“Aye, it is!” she answered.  “How grave and old you and Mr. Strickland and the books and the hall and Bran look!”