“The clash in the kirkyard is worth half a dozen sermons,” say the unregenerate, and though no kirkyard is about the Zion of our parish, the people are used to wait a little before home-going and talk of a careful selection of secular affairs; not about the prices of hoggs and queys, for that is Commerce, nor of Saturday night’s songs in the tavern, for that (in the Sabbath mind) is Sin. But of births, marriages, courtships, weather, they discourse. And Gilian, his head dazed, stood in a group with the Paymaster and Miss Mary, and some of the people of the glens, who were the ostensible reason for the palaver. At first he was glad of the excuse to wait outside, for to have gone the few yards that were necessary down the street and sat at Sunday’s cold viands even with Peggy’s brew of tea to follow would be to place a flight of stairs and a larch door between him and—— And what? What was he reluctant to sever from? He asked himself that with as much surprise as if he had been a stranger to himself. He felt that to go within at once would be to lose something, to go out of a most agreeable atmosphere. He was not hungry. To sit with old people over an austere table with no flowers on it because of the day, and see the Paymaster snuff above his tepid second day’s broth, and hear the Cornal snort because the mince-collops his toothless-ness demanded on other days of the week were not available to-day, would be, somehow, to bring a sordid, unable, drab and weary world close up on a vision of joy and beauty. He felt it in his flesh, in some flutter of the breast It was better to be out here in the sun among the chattering people, to have nothing between him and Glen Shira but a straight sweep of wind-blown highway. From the steps of the church he could see the Boshang Gate and the hazy ravines and jostling elbows of the hills in Shira Glen. He saw it all, and in one bound his spirit vaulted there, figuring her whose psalm he had but heard in the delusion of desire.

The Duke came lazily down the steps, threw a glance among his clan and tenantry, cast his plaid, with a fine grace, about his shoulders, touching his bonnet with a finger as hat or bonnet rose in salutation, and he went fair up in the middle of the street.

The conversation ceased, and people looked after him as on an Emperor.

“He’s going to London on Tuesday, I hear,” said Major Hall to Mr. Spencer. It was the Majors great pride to know the prospective movements at the Castle sooner than any one else, and he was not above exchanging snuff-mulls with Wat Thomson, the ducal boot-brusher, if ducal news could only be got thereby.

“London, London; did you say, London, sir?” said the innkeeper, looking again with an envy after his Grace, the name at once stirring in him the clime from which he was an exile. And the smell of peaty clothes smote him on the nostril for the first time that day. He had been so many Sundays accustomed to it that as a rule he no longer perceived it, but now it rose in contrast to the beefy, beer-charged, comfortable odours of his native town.

“Ah! he’s going on Tuesday,” said the Paymaster, “but when Duke George’s gone, there are plenty of Dukes to take his place. Every officer in his corps will be claiming a full command, quarrelling among themselves. There’ll be Duke Islay——”

“Hus—s—sh!” whispered Major Hall discreetly from the corner of his mouth. “Here’s his young fellow coming up behind.” Then loudly, “It’s a very fine season indeed, Captain Campbell, a very fine season.”

Young Islay came forward with a salute for the Captain and his sister. He was Gilian’s age and size, but of a different build, broader at the shoulder, fuller at the chest, black of hair, piercing of eye, with just enough and no more of a wholesome conceit of himself to give his Majesty’s uniform justice. When he spoke it was with a clear and manly tone deep in the chest.

He shook hands all round, he was newly come home from the lowlands, his tunic was without speck or crease, his chin was smooth, his strong hands were white; as Gilian returned his greeting he felt himself in an enviable and superior presence.

Promptly, too, there came like a breath upon glass a remembrance of the ensign of the same corps who kissed his hand to Nan on just such another day of sunshine at Boshang Gate.

“Glad to see you back, Islay,” said the Paymaster, proffering his Sabbath snuff-mull. “Faith, you do credit to the coat!” And he cast an admiring eye upon the young soldier.

Young Islay showed his satisfaction in his face.

“But it’s a smaller coat than yours, Captain,” said he, “and easier filled nowadays than when fighting was in fashion. I’m afraid the old school would have the better of us.”

It was a touch of Gaelic courtesy to an elder, well-meant, pardonable; it visibly pleased the old gentleman to whom it was addressed, and he looked more in admiration than before upon this smart young officer.

“Up the Glen yet, Gilian?” said Islay, with the old schoolboy freedom, and Gilian carelessly nodded, his eyes once more roving on the road to Boshang Gate. Young Islay looked at him curiously, a little smile hovering about the corners of his lips, for he knew the dreamer’s reputation.

The Paymaster gave a contemptuous “Humph!” “Up the Glen yet. You may well say it,” said he. “And like to be. It’s a fine clime for stirks.”

Gilian did not hear it, but Miss Mary felt it sting to her very heart, and she moved away, pressing upon her favourite’s arm to bring him with her. “We must be moving,” said she; “Peggy will be scolding about the dinner spoiled with waiting.”

But no one else seemed willing to break up the group. Young Islay had become the centre of attraction. MacGibbon and Major Hall, the Sheriff, Mr. Spencer and the dominie, listened to his words as to a sage, gratified by his robust and handsome youth, and the Turners had him by the arm and questioned him upon his experience. Major Mac-Nicol, ludicrous in a bottle-green coat with abrupt tails and an English beaver hat of an ancient pattern, jinked here and there among the people, tip-toeing, round shouldered, with eyes peering and alarmed, jerking his head across his shoulder at intervals to see that no musket barrel threatened, and at times, for a moment or two, he would hang upon the outskirts of Young Islay’s levÉe, with a hand behind an ear to listen to his story, filled for a little space with a wave of vague and bitter recollection that never broke upon the shore of solid understanding, enchanted by a gleam of red and gold, the colours of glory and of youth.

“Let us go home,” whispered Miss Mary, pulling gently at Gilian’s coat.

“Wait, wait, no hurry for cold kail hot again,” said the Paymaster, every instinct for gossip alert and eager.

“And you showed him the qualities of a Highland riposte! Good lad! Good lad! I’m glad that Sandy and you learned something of the art of fence before they tried you in the Stirling fashion,” General Turner was saying. “You’ll be home for a while won’t you? Come up and see us at Maam; no ceremony, a bird, a soldier’s jug, and——”

“And a soldier’s song from Miss Nan, I hope,” continued the young officer, smiling. “That would be the best inducement of all I hear she’s home again from the low country, and thought she would have been in church to-day.”

“City ways, you know, Islay, city ways,” said Turner, tapping the young fellow playfully on the shoulder with his cane. “She did not come down because she must walk! I wonder what Dr. Colin would say if he found me yoking a horse to save a three miles Sabbath daunder to the kirk. Come up and have your song, though, any day you like; I’ll warrant you never heard better.”

“I’m certain I never did,” admitted Young Islay heartily.

“And when I think,” said the General softly, more closely pressing the young fellow’s arm, “that there might be no song now at all but for your readiness with an oar, I’m bound to make a tryst of it: say Tuesday.”

“Certainly!” said Young Islay. “About my readiness with an oar, now, that was less skill than a boy’s luck. I can tell you I was pretty frightened when I baled—good heavens, how long ago I—the water from the punt, and felt the storm would smother me!” He was flushing to speak of a thing so much to his credit, and sought relief from his feelings by a random remark to the Paymaster’s boy.

“You mind?” said he, with a laughing look at Gilian, who wished now that he were in the more comfortable atmosphere of the Paymaster’s parlour for he was lamentably outside the interests of this group. “You mind?” he pressed again, as if the only victim of that storm and stranding could ever forget!

“I remember very well,” said Gilian in an Anglified accent that renewed all Miss Mary’s apprehension, for it showed an artificial mood. “I came out of that with small credit,” he went on, sparing himself nothing. “I suppose I would have risked my life half a dozen times over to be of any service; what was wanting was the sense to know what I should do. There you had the advantage of me. And did you really bail the boat with your bonnet?”

“Faith I did!” said Young Islay, laughing.

“I knew it,” said Gilian. “I knew your feelings and your acts as well as if it had been myself that had been there. I wish my comprehension of the act to be done was as ready as my imagination. I wish—”

A shyness throttled the words in his mouth when he found all the company looking upon him, all amused or a little pitiful except the dominie, whose face had a kindly respect and curiosity, and Miss Mary, who was looking wistfully in his eyes.

“There are two worlds about us,” said Brooks; “the manifest, that is as plain as a horn-book from A to Ampersand; the other, that is in the mind of man, no iota less real, but we are few that venture into it further than the lintel of the door.” And he had about his eyes an almost fatherly fondness for Gilian, who felt that in the words were some justification for him, the dreamer.

The street was emptying, one by one the people had dispersed. Young Islay’s group broke up, and went their several ways. The Paymaster and Miss Mary and Gilian went in to dinner.

“What’s the matter with you, my dear?” whispered Miss Mary at the turn of the stair when her brother had gone within.

“Matter?” said Gilian, surprised at her discovery. “Nothing that I know of. What makes you think there is anything the matter with me?”

She stopped him at the stair-head, and here in the dusk of it she was again the young companion. “Gilian, Gilian,” said she, with stress in her whisper and a great affection in the face of her. “Do you think I can be deceived? You are ill; or something troubles you. What were you eating?”

He laughed loudly; he could not help it at so prosaic a conclusion.

“What carry-on is that on the stair on a Lord’s day?” cried the Paymaster angrily and roughly from his room as he tugged short-tempered at the buckle of his Sabbath stock.

“Then there’s something bothering you, my dear,” said Miss Mary again, paying no heed to the interruption. And Gilian could not release his arm from her restraint.

“Is there, Auntie?” said he. “Perhaps. And still I could not name it. Come, come, what’s the sense of querying a man upon his moods?”

“A man!” said Miss Mary.

“On the verge at least,” said he, with a confidence he had never had in his voice before, taking a full breath in his chest.

“A man!” said she again. And she saw, as if a curtain had fallen from before her eyes, that this was no more the fair-haired, wan-faced, trembling child who came from Ladyfield to her heart.

“I wish, I wish,” said she all trembling, “the children did not grow at all!”