Her hand fell from the folds of her shawl and lay across the dyke.  It looked a lonely thing, and Duncan Rowallan was sure that it trembled, so he took it in his.  There it fluttered a little and then lay still, as a taken bird that knows it cannot escape.  The dyke was between them, but they drew very near to it on either side.

Then at the same moment each drew a deep breath, and one looked at the other as if expecting speech.  Yet neither spoke, and after a slow dwelling of questioning eyes, each on each, as if in a kind of reproach they looked suddenly away again.

The sunset glow deepened into rich crimson.  The valleys into which they looked down from the high corner of the field were lakes of fathomless sapphire.  The light smoky haze on the ridges was infinitely varied in tone, and caused the distance to fall back, crest behind crest, in illimitable perspective.

Still they did not speak, but their hearts beat so loudly that they answered each other.  The stone dyke was between.  Grace Hutchinson took back her hand.

Opportunity stood on tip-toe.  The full tide of Duncan Rowallan’s affairs lipped the watershed, the stone dyke only standing between.

He turned towards her.  Far away a sheep bleated.  The sound came to Duncan scornfully, as though a wicked elf had laughed at his indecision.

He put out his hands across the rough stones to take her hand again.  He touched her warm shoulders instead beneath the shawl.  He drew her to him.  Into the deep eyes luminous with blackness he looked as into the mirror of his fate.  Now, what happened just then is a mystery, and I cannot explain it.  Neither can Grace nor Duncan.  They have gone many times to the very place to find out exactly how it all happened, but without success.  Where they have failed, can I succeed?

I can only tell what did happen.

Duncan Rowallan seemed to rise into another world, as in his childhood he had often dreamed of doing, looking up and up into the fleecy waves of the highest cloudlets.  Her lips beckoned to him in the gloaming, like a red flower whose petals have fallen a little apart.  It came at last.

For the dyke proved too narrow, and in one swift electric touch their old world flew into flinders.

The stone dyke was not any longer between.  Duncan Rowallan had overleaped it and stood by the side of Grace Hutchison.

* * * * *

The minister had come home to Howpaslet manse exceedingly elate.  At last he had won the battle.  The Kers had gone home gnashing their teeth.  There was lament in the manse of the Calvins.  After long endeavours he had got the farmer and the publican to vote for the dismissal of Duncan Rowallan.  He smiled to himself as he came in.  He was not a malicious man, but he could not bear being worsted in his own parish.  His feeling against Duncan Rowallan was neither here nor there; but, indeed, the Kers were hard to bear.