The lilac sunbonnet waved a little heartless wave which dropped in the middle as if a string were broken.  But the shining hair blew out, as a waft of wind from the Bennan fretted a moving patch across the loch.

Ralph flung out his hand in one of the savage gestures men use when they turn bewildered and march away, leaving the best of their lives behind them.

So shutting his eyes Ralph plunged headlong into the green glades of the Kenside and looked no more.  Winsome walked slowly and sedately back, not looking on the world any more, but only twining and pulling roughly the strings of her sunbonnet till one came off.  Winsome threw it on the grass.  What did it matter now?  She would wear it no longer.  There was none to cherish the lilac sunbonnet any more.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Over the hills and far awa’.

Winsome came back to a quiet Craig Ronald.  The men were in the field.  The farmsteading was hushed, Meg not to be seen, the dogs silent, the bedroom blind undrawn when she entered to find the key in the door.  She went within instantly and threw herself down upon the bed.  Outside, the morning sun strengthened and beat on the shining white of the walls of Craig Ronald, and on Ralph far across the moors.

Winsome must wait.  We shall follow Ralph.  It is the way of the world at any rate.  The woman always must wait and nothing said.  With the man are the keen interests of the struggle, the grip of opposition, the clash of arms.  With the woman, naught worth speaking of—­only the silence, the loneliness, and waiting.

Ralph went northward wearing Winsome’s parting kiss on his brow like an insignia of knighthood.  It meant much to one who had never gone away before.  So simple was he that he did not know that there are all-experiencing young men who love and sail away, clearing as they go the decks of their custom-staled souls for the next action.

He stumbled, this simple knight, blindly into the ruts and pebbly water courses down which the winter rains had rushed, tearing the turf clean from the granite during the November and February rains.

So he journeyed onward, heedless of his going.

To him came Jock Gordon, skipping like a wild goat down the Bennan side.

“Hey, mon, d’ye want to drive intil Loch Ken?  Ye wad mak’ braw ged-bait.  Haud up the hill, breest to the brae.”

Through his trouble Ralph heard and instinctively obeyed.  In a little while he struck the beautiful road which runs north and south along the side of the long loch of Ken.  Now there are fairer bowers in the south sunlands.  There are Highlands and Alp-lands of sky-piercing beauty.  But to Galloway, and specially to the central glens and flanking desolations thereof, one beauty belongs.  She is like a plain girl with beautiful eyes.  There is no country like her in the world for colour—­so delicately fresh in the rain-washed green of her pasture slopes, so keen the viridian [Footnote:  Veronese green] of her turnip-fields when the dew is on the broad, fleshy, crushed leaves, so tender and deep the blue in the hollow places.  It was small wonder that Ralph had set down in the note-book in which he sketched for future use all that passed under his eye: