“Oh!” breathed Elspeth.  She put her hands again over her eyes, and she saw, unrolling, a great fair life if—­if—­She rose to her feet.  “Let us go!  It grows late.  They’ll miss me.”

They came into the glen and so went down with the stream to the open land and to White Farm.

“Where hae you been?” asked Jenny.  “Here was father hame frae the shearing with his eyes blurred, speiring for you to read to him!”

“I was walking by the glen and the laird came down through, so we made here together.  Where is grandfather?”

“He wadna sit waiting.  He’s gane to walk on the muir.  Will ye na bide, Glenfernie?”

But the laird would not stay.  It was wearing toward sunset.  Menie, withindoors, called Jenny.  The latter turned away.  Glenfernie spoke to Elspeth.

“If I find your grandfather on the moor I shall speak of this that is between us.  Do not look so troubled!  ‘If’ or ‘if not’ it is better to tell.  So you will not be plagued.  And, anyhow, it is the wise folks’ road.”

Back came Jenny.  “Has he gane?  I had for him a tass of wine and a bit of cake.”

The moor lay like a stiffened billow of the sea, green with purple glints.  The clear western sky was ruddy gold, the sun’s great ball approaching the horizon.  But when it dipped the short June night would know little dark in this northern land.  The air struck most fresh and pure.  Glenfernie came presently upon the old farmer, found him seated upon a bit of bank, his gray plaid about him, his crook-like stick planted before him, his eyes upon the western sea of glory.  The younger man stopped beside him, settled down upon the bank, and gazed with the elder into the ocean of colored air.

“Ae gowden floor as though it were glass,” said Jarvis Barrow.  “Ae gowden floor and ae river named of Life, passing the greatness of Orinoco or Amazon.  And the tree of life for the healing of the nations.  And a’ the trees that ever leafed or flowered, ta’en together, but ae withered twig to that!”

Glenfernie gazed with him.  “I do not doubt that there will come a day when we’ll walk over the plains of the sun—­the flesh of our body then as gauze, moved at will where we please and swift as thought—­inner and outer motion keeping time with the beat and rhythm of that where we are—­”

“The young do not speak the auld tongue.”

“Tongues alter with the rest.”

Silence fell while the sun reddened, going nearer to the mountain brow.  The young man and the old, the farmer and the laird, sat still.  The air struck more freshly, stronger, coming from the sea.  Far off a horn was blown, a dog barked.

“Will ye be hame now for gude, Glenfernie?  Lairds should bide in their ain houses if the land is to have any gude of them.”

“I wish to stay, White Farm, the greatest part of the year round.  I want to speak to you very seriously.  Think back a moment to my father and mother, and to my forebears farther back yet.  As they had faults, and yet had a longing to do the right and struggled toward it over thick and thin, so I believe I may say of myself.  That is, I struggle toward it,” said Alexander, “though I’m not so sure of the thick and thin.”