But Mr. Touris would not shake the black dog from his shoulders.  “He’ll bring trouble yet—­was born the sort to do it!”

Alexander defended him.

“Oh, you’re his friend—­sworn for thick and thin!  As for Alison, she’d find a good word for the fiend from hell!—­not that my sister’s son is anything of that,” said the Scotchman.  “But he’ll bring trouble to warm, canny, king-and-kirk-abiding folk!  He’s an Indian macaw in a dove-cote.”

They rose from table.  Out on the terrace they walked up and down in the soft, bright morning light.  Mr. Touris seemed to wish company; he clung to Glenfernie until the latter must mount his horse and ride home.  Only for a moment did Alexander and Mrs. Alison have speech together.

“When will you be seeing Elspeth?”

“I hope this afternoon.”

“May joy come to you, Alexander!”

“I want it to come.  I want it to come.”

He and Black Alan journeyed home.  As he rode he thought now and again of Ian, perhaps in Edinburgh according to his word of mouth, but perhaps, despite that word, on board some ship that should place him in the Low Countries, from which he might travel into France and to Paris and that group of Jacobites humming like a byke of bees around a prince, the heir of all the Stewarts.  He thought with old affection and old concern.  Whatever Ian did—­intrigued with Jacobite interest or held aloof like a sensible man—­yet was he Ian with the old appeal. Take me or leave me—­me and my dusky gold! Alexander drew a deep breath, shook his shoulders, raised his head.  “Let my friend be as he is!”

He ceased to think of Ian and turned to the oncoming afternoon—­the afternoon rainbow-hued, coming on to the sound of music.

Again in his own house, he and Strickland worked an hour or more upon estate business.  That over and dinner past, he went to the room in the keep.  When the hour struck three he passed out of the opening in the old wall, clambered down the bank, and, going through the wood, took his way to White Farm.

Just one foreground wish in his mind was granted.  There was an orchard strip by White Farm, and here, beneath a red-apple tree, he found Elspeth alone.  She was perfectly direct with him.

“Willy told us that you were home.  I thought you might come now to White Farm.  I was watching.  I wanted to speak to you where none was by.  Let us cross the burn and walk in the fields.”

The fields were reaped, lay in tawny stubble.  The path ran by this and by a lichened stone wall.  Overhead, swallows were skimming.  Heath and bracken, rolled the colored hills.  The air swam cool and golden, with a smell of the harvest earth.

“Elspeth, I stayed away years and years and years, and I stayed away not one hour!”

She stopped; she stood with her back to the wall.  The farm-house had sunk from sight, the sun was westering, the fields lay dim gold and solitary.  She had over her head a silken scarf, the ends of which she drew together and held with one brown, slender hand against her breast.  She wore a dark gown; he saw her bosom rise and fall.