There was a silence; then, “Mr. Haward is at Fair View again,” announced the storekeeper.

The girl’s face twitched.

“He has been nigh to death,” went on her informant.  “There were days when I looked for no morrow for him; one night when I held above his lips a mirror, and hardly thought to see the breath-stain.”

Audrey laughed.  “He can fool even Death, can he not?” The laugh was light and mocking, a tinkling, elvish sound which the Highlander frowned to hear.  A book, worn and dog-eared, lay near her on the grass.  He took it up and turned the leaves; then put it by, and glanced uneasily at the slender, brown-clad form seated upon the fairy mound.

“That is strange reading,” he said.

Audrey looked at the book listlessly.  “The schoolmaster gave it to me.  It tells of things as they are, all stripped of make-believe, and shows how men love only themselves, and how ugly and mean is the world when we look at it aright.  The schoolmaster says that to look at it aright you must not dream; you must stay awake,”—­she drew her hand across her brow and eyes,—­“you must stay awake.”

“I had rather dream,” said MacLean shortly.  “I have no love for your schoolmaster.”

“He is a wise man,” she answered.  “Now that I do not like the woods I listen to him when he comes to the glebe house.  If I remember all he says, maybe I shall grow wise, also, and the pain will stop.”  Once more she dropped her chin upon her hand and fell to brooding, her eyes upon the river.  When she spoke again it was to herself:  “Sometimes of nights I hear it calling me.  Last night, while I knelt by my window, it called so loud that I put my hands over my ears; but I could not keep out the sound,—­the sound of the river that comes from the mountains, that goes to the sea.  And then I saw that there was a light in Fair View house.”

Her voice ceased, and the silence closed in around them.  The sun was setting, and in the west were purple islands merging into a sea of gold.  The river, too, was colored, and every tree was like a torch burning stilly in the quiet of the evening.  For some time MacLean watched the girl, who now again seemed unconscious of his presence; but at last he got to his feet, and looked toward his boat.  “I must be going,” he said; then, as Audrey raised her head and the light struck upon her face, he continued more kindly than one would think so stern a seeming man could speak:  “I am sorry for you, my maid.  God knows that I should know how dreadful are the wounds of the spirit!  Should you need a friend”—­

Audrey shook her head.  “No more friends,” she said, and laughed as she had laughed before.  “They belong in dreams.  When you are awake,—­that is a different thing.”

The storekeeper went his way, back to the Fair View store, rowing slowly, with a grim and troubled face, while Darden’s Audrey sat still upon the green hillock and watched the darkening river.  Behind her, at no great distance, was the glebe house; more than once she thought she heard Hugon coming through the bushes and calling her by name.  The river darkened more and more, and in the west the sea of gold changed to plains of amethyst and opal.  There was a crescent moon, and Audrey, looking at it with eyes that ached for the tears that would not gather, knew that once she would have found it fair.