There!  He heard a footstep.  There was a light coming down the avenue under the elders.  At last!  No, it was only the glow-worms under the leaves, shining along the grass by the wayside.  The footstep was but a restless sheep on the hillside.  Then some one coughed, with the suppressed sound of one who covers his mouth with his hand.  Ralph was startled, but almost laughed to think that it was still only the lamb on the other side of the wall moving restlessly about in act to feed.  Time and again the blood rushed to his temples, for he was sure that he heard her coming to him.  But it was only the echo of the blood surging blindly through his own veins, or some of the night creatures fulfilling their love-trysts, and seeking their destinies under the cloud of night.

Suddenly his whole soul rose in revolt against him.  Certainly now he heard a light and swift footstep.  There was a darker shape coming towards him against the dim, faint grey glimmer of the loch.  It was his love, and she had come out to him at his bidding.  He had dreamed of an angel, and lo! now he should touch her in the hollow night, and find that she was a warm, breathing woman.

Wrapped from head to foot in a soft close shawl, she came to him.  He could see her now, but only as something darker against the canopy of the night.  So, in the blissful dark, which makes lovers brave, he opened his arms to receive her.  For the first time in his life he drew them to him again not empty.

The thrill electric of the contact, the yielding quiescence of the girl whom he held to his breast, stilled his heart’s tumultuous beating.  She raised her head, and their lips drew together into a long kiss.  What was this thing?  It was a kiss in which he tasted a strange alien flavour even through the passion of it.  A sense of wrong and disappointment flowed round Ralph’s heart.  So on the bridge in the darkness, where many lovers had stood ever since the first Pict trysted his dark-browed bride by the unbridged water, the pair stood very still.  They only breathed each other’s breath.  Something familiar struck on Ralph’s senses.  He seemed to be standing silent in the parlour at Craig Ronald—­not here, with his arms round his love—­and somehow between them there rose unmistakable the perfume of the flower which for an hour he had carried in his coat on the day that he and she went a-fishing.

“Beloved,” he said tenderly, looking down, “you are very good to me to come!”

For all reply a face was held close pressed to his.  The mists of night had made her cheek damp.  He passed his hand across the ripples of her hair.  Half hidden by the shawl he could feel the crisping of the curls under his fingers.

It was harder in texture than he had fancied Winsome’s hair would be.  He half smiled that he had time at such a moment to think such a thing.  It was strange, however.  He had thought a woman’s hair was like floss silk—­at least Winsome’s, for he had theorized about none other.