“To me, to all Friends,” said Truelove sweetly, halting a little in her work, “thee has now what thee thyself calls freedom.  For God meant not that one of his creatures should say to another:  ’Lo, here am I!  Behold thy God!’ To me, and my father and mother and Ephraim, thee is no bond servant of Marmaduke Haward.  But thee is bond servant to thy own vain songs; thy violent words; thy idle pride, that, vaunting the cruel deeds of thy forefathers, calls meekness and submission the last worst evil; thy shameless reverence for those thy fellow creatures, James Stewart and him whom thee calls the chief of thy house,—­forgetting that there is but one house, and that God is its head; thy love of clamor and warfare; thy hatred of the ways of peace”—­

MacLean laughed.  “I hate not all its ways.  There is no hatred in my heart for this house which is its altar, nor for the priestess of the altar.  Ah! now you frown, Truelove”—­

Across the clouds ran so fierce a line of gold that Truelove, startled, put her hand before her eyes.  Another dart of lightning, a low roll of thunder, a bending apart of the alder bushes on the far side of the creek; then a woman’s voice calling to the boy in the boat to come ferry her over.

“Who may that be?” asked Truelove wonderingly.

It was only a little way to the bending alders.  Ephraim rowed across the glassy water, dark beneath the approach of the storm; the woman stepped into the boat, and the tiny craft came lightly back to its haven beneath the bank.

“It is Darden’s Audrey,” said the storekeeper.

Truelove shrank a little, and her eyes darkened.  “Why should she come here?  I never knew her.  It is true that we may not think evil, but—­but”—­

MacLean moved restlessly.  “I have seen the girl but twice,” he said.  “Once she was alone, once—­It is my friend of whom I think.  I know what they say, but, by St. Kattan!  I hold him a gentleman too high of mind, too noble—­There was a tale I used to hear when I was a boy.  A long, long time ago a girl lived in the shadow of the tower of Duart, and the chief looked down from his walls and saw her.  Afterwards they walked together by the shore and through the glens, and he cried her health when he drank in his hall, sitting amongst his tacksmen.  Then what the men whispered the women spoke aloud; and so, more quickly than the tarie is borne, word went to a man of the MacDonalds who loved the Duart maiden.  Not like a lover to his tryst did he come.  In the handle of his dirk the rich stones sparkled as they rose and fell with the rise and fall of the maiden’s white bosom.  She prayed to die in his arms; for it was not Duart that she loved, but him.  She died, and they snooded her hair and buried her.  Duart went overseas; the man of the MacDonalds killed himself.  It was all wrought with threads of gossamer,—­idle fancy, shrugs, smiles, whispers, slurring speech,—­and it was long ago.  But there is yet gossamer to be had for the gathering; it gleams on every hand these summer mornings.”