like an arm from the main pass.  Here was the oak beneath which they had sat, against which she had leaned.  It wrapt him from himself, this place.  He stood, and space around seemed filled with forms just beyond visibility.  What were they?  He did not know, but they seemed to breathe against his heart, to whisper....  He searched this place well, but there were only the winter banks and trees, the little burn, the invisible presences.  Back in the deep glen a hawk sailed overhead, across the stripe of pale-blue sky.  Alexander went on by the stream and the projecting rock and the twisted roots.  There was no sound other than the loud voice of the water, talking only of its return to the sea.  When he came to the cave he pushed aside the masking growth and entered.  Dark and barren here, with the ashes of an old fire!  For one moment, as it were distinctly, he saw Ian.  He stood so clear in the mind’s eye that it seemed that one intense effort might have set him bodily in the cavern.  But the central strength let the image go.  Alexander moved the ashes of the fire with his foot, shuddered in the place of cold and shadow, and, stooping, went out of the cave and on upon his search for Elspeth Barrow.

He sought the glen through, and at last, at the head, he came to Mother Binning’s cot.  Her fire was burning; she was standing in the door looking toward him.

“Eh, Glenfernie! is there news of the lassie?”

“None.  You’ve got the sight.  Can you not see?”

“It’s gane from me!  When it gaes I’m just like ony bird with a broken wing.”

“If you cannot see, what do you think?”

“I dinna want to think and I dinna want to say.  Whaur be ye gaeing now?”

“On over the moor and down by the Kelpie’s Pool.”

“Gae on then.  I’ll watch for ye coming back.”

He went on.  Something strange had him, drawing him.  He came out from the band of trees upon the swelling open moor, bare and brown save where the snow laced it.  Gold filtered over it; a pale sky arched above; it was wide, still, and awful—­a desert.  He saw the light run down and glint upon the pool.  Searchers had ridden across this moor also, he had been told.  He went down at once to the pool and stood by the kelpie willow.  He was not thinking, he was not keenly feeling.  He seemed to stand in open, endless, formless space, and in unfenced time.  A clump of dry reeds rose by his knee, and upon the other side of these he noticed that a stone had been lifted from its bed.  He stooped, and in the reeds he found an inch-long fragment of ribbon—­of a snood.

He stepped back from the willow.  He took off and dropped upon the moor hat and riding-coat and boots, inner coat and waistcoat.  Then he entered the Kelpie’s Pool.  He searched it, measure by measure, and at last he found the body of Elspeth.  He drew it up; he loosened and let fall the stone tied in the plaid that was wrapped around it; he bore the form out of the pool and laid it upon the bank beyond the willow.  The sunlight showed the whole, the face and figure.  The laird of Glenfernie, kneeling beside it, put back the long drowned hair and saw, pinned upon the bosom of the gown, the folded letter, wrapped twice in thicker paper.  He took it from her and opened it.  The writing was yet legible.