Archie was outside by the gate of the graveyard, conversing with Hob and 
the minister and shaking hands all round with the scattering 
congregation, when Clem and Christina were brought up to be presented.  
The laird took off his hat and bowed to her with grace and respect.  
Christina made her Glasgow curtsey to the laird, and went on again up 
the road for Hermiston and Cauldstaneslap, walking fast, breathing 
hurriedly with a heightened colour, and in this strange frame of mind, 
that when she was alone she seemed in high happiness, and when any one 
addressed her she resented it like a contradiction.  A part of the way 
she had the company of some neighbour girls and a loutish young man; 
never had they seemed so insipid, never had she made herself so 
disagreeable.  But these struck aside to their various destinations or 
were out-walked and left behind; and when she had driven off with sharp 
words the proffered convoy of some of her nephews and nieces, she was 
free to go on alone up Hermiston brae, walking on air, dwelling 
intoxicated among clouds of happiness.  Near to the summit she heard 
steps behind her, a man's steps, light and very rapid.  She knew the 
foot at once and walked the faster.  "If it's me he's wanting, he can 
run for it," she thought, smiling.

Archie overtook her like a man whose mind was made up.

"Miss Kirstie," he began.

"Miss Christina, if you please, Mr. Weir," she interrupted.  "I canna 
bear the contraction."

"You forget it has a friendly sound for me.  Your aunt is an old friend 
of mine, and a very good one.  I hope we shall see much of you at 
Hermiston?"

"My aunt and my sister-in-law doesna agree very well.  Not that I have 
much ado with it.  But still when I'm stopping in the house, if I was to 
be visiting my aunt, it would not look considerate-like."

"I am sorry," said Archie.

"I thank you kindly, Mr. Weir," she said.  "I whiles think myself it's a 
great peety."

"Ah, I am sure your voice would always be for peace!" he cried.

"I wouldna be too sure of that," she said.  "I have my days like other 
folk, I suppose."

"Do you know, in our old kirk, among our good old grey dames, you made 
an effect like sunshine."

"Ah, but that would be my Glasgow clothes!"

"I did not think I was so much under the influence of pretty frocks."

She smiled with a half look at him.  "There's more than you!" she said.  
"But you see I'm only Cinderella.  I'll have to put all these things by 
in my trunk; next Sunday I'll be as grey as the rest.  They're Glasgow 
clothes, you see, and it would never do to make a practice of it.  It 
would seem terrible conspicuous."

By that they were come to the place where their ways severed.  The old 
grey moors were all about them; in the midst a few sheep wandered; and 
they could see on the one hand the straggling caravan scaling the braes 
in front of them for Cauldstaneslap, and on the other, the contingent 
from Hermiston bending off and beginning to disappear by detachments 
into the policy gate.  It was in these circumstances that they turned to 
say farewell, and deliberately exchanged a glance as they shook hands.  
All passed as it should, genteelly; and in Christina's mind, as she 
mounted the first steep ascent for Cauldstaneslap, a gratifying sense of 
triumph prevailed over the recollection of minor lapses and mistakes.  
She had kilted her gown, as she did usually at that rugged pass; but 
when she spied Archie still standing and gazing after her, the skirts 
came down again as if by enchantment.  Here was a piece of nicety for 
that upland parish, where the matrons marched with their coats kilted in 
the rain, and the lasses walked barefoot to kirk through the dust of 
summer, and went bravely down by the burn-side, and sat on stones to 
make a public toilet before entering!  It was perhaps an air wafted from 
Glasgow; or perhaps it marked a stage of that dizziness of gratified 
vanity, in which the instinctive act passed unperceived.  He was looking 
after!  She unloaded her bosom of a prodigious sigh that was all 
pleasure, and betook herself to run.  When she had overtaken the 
stragglers of her family, she caught up the niece whom she had so 
recently repulsed, and kissed and slapped her, and drove her away again, 
and ran after her with pretty cries and laughter.  Perhaps she thought 
the laird might still be looking!  But it chanced the little scene came 
under the view of eyes less favourable; for she overtook Mrs. Hob 
marching with Clem and Dand.

"You're shurely fey, lass!" quoth Dandie.

"Think shame to yersel', miss!" said the strident Mrs. Hob.  "Is this
the gait to guide yersel' on the way hame frae kirk?  You're shiirely
no sponsible the day!  And anyway I would mind my guid claes."

"Hoot!" said Christina, and went on before them head in air, treading 
the rough track with the tread of a wild doe.

She was in love with herself, her destiny, the air of the hills, the 
benediction of the sun.  All the way home, she continued under the 
intoxication of these sky-scraping spirits.  At table she could talk 
freely of young Hermiston; gave her opinion of him off-hand and with a 
loud voice, that he was a handsome young gentleman, real well mannered 
and sensible-like, but it was a pity he looked doleful.  Only - the 
moment after - a memory of his eyes in church embarrassed her.  But for 
this inconsiderable check, all through meal-time she had a good 
appetite, and she kept them laughing at table, until Gib (who had 
returned before them from Crossmichael and his separative worship) 
reproved the whole of them for their levity.

Singing "in to herself" as she went, her mind still in the turmoil of a 
glad confusion, she rose and tripped upstairs to a little loft, lighted 
by four panes in the gable, where she slept with one of her nieces.  The 
niece, who followed her, presuming on "Auntie's" high spirits, was 
flounced out of the apartment with small ceremony, and retired, smarting 
and half tearful, to bury her woes in the byre among the hay.  Still 
humming, Christina divested herself of her finery, and put her treasures 
one by one in her great green trunk.  The last of these was the psalm-book;
it was a fine piece, the gift of Mistress Clem, in distinct old-faced type,
on paper that had begun to grow foxy in the warehouse - not by service -
and she was used to wrap it in a handkerchief every Sunday after its
period of service was over, and bury it end-wise at the head of her
trunk.  As she now took it in hand the book fell open where the leaf
was torn, and she stood and gazed upon that evidence of her bygone
discomposure.  There returned again the vision of the two brown eyes
staring at her, intent and bright, out of that dark corner of the kirk.  
The whole appearance and attitude, the smile, the suggested gesture of
young Hermiston came before her in a flash at the sight of the torn
page.  "I was surely fey!" she said, echoing the words of Dandie, and
at the suggested doom her high spirits deserted her.  She flung herself
prone upon the bed, and lay there, holding the psalm-book in her hands
for hours, for the more part in a mere stupor of unconsenting pleasure
and unreasoning fear.  The fear was superstitious; there came up again
and again in her memory Dandie's ill-omened words, and a hundred grisly
and black tales out of the immediate neighbourhood read her a commentary
on their force.  The pleasure was never realised.  You might say the
joints of her body thought and remembered, and were gladdened, but her
essential self, in the immediate theatre of consciousness, talked
feverishly of something else, like a nervous person at a fire.  The
image that she most complacently dwelt on was that of Miss Christina
in her character of the Fair Lass of Cauldstaneslap, carrying all before
her in the straw-coloured frock, the violet mantle, and the yellow cobweb
stockings.  Archie's image, on the other hand, when it presented itself
was never welcomed - far less welcomed with any ardour, and it was exposed
at times to merciless criticism.  In the long vague dialogues she held in
her mind, often with imaginary, often with unrealised interlocutors,
Archie, if he were referred to at all came in for savage handling.  He
was described as "looking like a stork," "staring like a caulf," "a face
like a ghaist's."  "Do you call that manners?" she said; or, "I soon put
him in his place." " `MISS CHRISTINA, IF YOU PLEASE, MR.  WEIR!' says I,
and just flyped up my skirt tails."  With gabble like this she would 
entertain herself long whiles together, and then her eye would perhaps 
fall on the torn leaf, and the eyes of Archie would appear again from 
the darkness of the wall, and the voluble words deserted her, and she 
would lie still and stupid, and think upon nothing with devotion, and be 
sometimes raised by a quiet sigh.  Had a doctor of medicine come into 
that loft, he would have diagnosed a healthy, well-developed, eminently 
vivacious lass lying on her face in a fit of the sulks; not one who had 
just contracted, or was just contracting, a mortal sickness of the mind 
which should yet carry her towards death and despair.  Had it been a 
doctor of psychology, he might have been pardoned for divining in the 
girl a passion of childish vanity, self-love IN EXCELSIS, and no more.  
It is to be understood that I have been painting chaos and describing 
the inarticulate.  Every lineament that appears is too precise, almost 
every word used too strong.  Take a finger-post in the mountains on a 
day of rolling mists; I have but copied the names that appear upon the 
pointers, the names of definite and famous cities far distant, and now 
perhaps basking in sunshine; but Christina remained all these hours, as 
it were, at the foot of the post itself, not moving, and enveloped in 
mutable and blinding wreaths of haze.

The day was growing late and the sunbeams long and level, when she sat 
suddenly up, and wrapped in its handkerchief and put by that psalm-book 
which had already played a part so decisive in the first chapter of her 
love-story.  In the absence of the mesmerist's eye, we are told nowadays 
that the head of a bright nail may fill his place, if it be steadfastly 
regarded.  So that torn page had riveted her attention on what might 
else have been but little, and perhaps soon forgotten; while the ominous 
words of Dandie - heard, not heeded, and still remembered - had lent to 
her thoughts, or rather to her mood, a cast of solemnity, and that idea 
of Fate - a pagan Fate, uncontrolled by any Christian deity, obscure, 
lawless, and august - moving indissuadably in the affairs of Christian 
men.  Thus even that phenomenon of love at first sight, which is so rare 
and seems so simple and violent, like a disruption of life's tissue, may 
be decomposed into a sequence of accidents happily concurring.

She put on a grey frock and a pink kerchief, looked at herself a moment 
with approval in the small square of glass that served her for a toilet 
mirror, and went softly downstairs through the sleeping house that 
resounded with the sound of afternoon snoring.  Just outside the door, 
Dandie was sitting with a book in his hand, not reading, only honouring 
the Sabbath by a sacred vacancy of mind.  She came near him and stood 
still.

"I'm for off up the muirs, Dandie," she said.

There was something unusually soft in her tones that made him look up.  
She was pale, her eyes dark and bright; no trace remained of the levity 
of the morning.

"Ay, lass?  Ye'll have yer ups and downs like me, I'm thinkin'," he 
observed.

"What for do ye say that?" she asked.

"O, for naething," says Dand.  "Only I think ye're mair like me than the 
lave of them.  Ye've mair of the poetic temper, tho' Guid kens little 
enough of the poetic taalent.  It's an ill gift at the best.  Look at 
yoursel'.  At denner you were all sunshine and flowers and laughter, and 
now you're like the star of evening on a lake."

She drank in this hackneyed compliment like wine, and it glowed in her 
veins.

"But I'm saying, Dand" - she came nearer him - "I'm for the muirs.  I 
must have a braith of air.  If Clem was to be speiring for me, try and 
quaiet him, will ye no?"

"What way?" said Dandie.  "I ken but the ae way, and that's leein'."  
I'll say ye had a sair heid, if ye like."

"But I havena," she objected.

"I daursay no," he returned.  "I said I would say ye had; and if ye like 
to nay-say me when ye come back, it'll no mateerially maitter, for my 
chara'ter's clean gane a'ready past reca'."

"O, Dand, are ye a lecar?" she asked, lingering.

"Folks say sae," replied the bard.

"Wha says sae?" she pursued.

"Them that should ken the best," he responded.  "The lassies, for ane."

"But, Dand, you would never lee to me?" she asked.

"I'll leave that for your pairt of it, ye girzie," said he.  "Ye'll lee 
to me fast eneuch, when ye hae gotten a jo.  I'm tellin' ye and it's 
true; when you have a jo, Miss Kirstie, it'll be for guid and ill.  I 
ken: I was made that way mysel', but the deil was in my luck!  Here, 
gang awa wi' ye to your muirs, and let me be; I'm in an hour of 
inspiraution, ye upsetting tawpie!"

But she clung to her brother's neighbourhood, she knew not why.

"Will ye no gie's a kiss, Dand?" she said.  "I aye likit ye fine."

He kissed her and considered her a moment; he found something strange in 
her.  But he was a libertine through and through, nourished equal 
contempt and suspicion of all womankind, and paid his way among them 
habitually with idle compliments.

"Gae wa' wi' ye!" said he.  "Ye're a dentie baby, and be content wi' 
that!"

That was Dandie's way; a kiss and a comfit to Jenny - a bawbee and my 
blessing to Jill - and goodnight to the whole clan of ye, my dears!  
When anything approached the serious, it became a matter for men, he 
both thought and said.  Women, when they did not absorb, were only 
children to be shoo'd away.  Merely in his character of connoisseur, 
however, Dandie glanced carelessly after his sister as she crossed the 
meadow.  "The brat's no that bad!" he thought with surprise, for though 
he had just been paying her compliments, he had not really looked at 
her.  "Hey! what's yon?"  For the grey dress was cut with short sleeves 
and skirts, and displayed her trim strong legs clad in pink stockings of 
the same shade as the kerchief she wore round her shoulders, and that 
shimmered as she went.  This was not her way in undress; he knew her 
ways and the ways of the whole sex in the country-side, no one better; 
when they did not go barefoot, they wore stout "rig and furrow" woollen 
hose of an invisible blue mostly, when they were not black outright; and 
Dandie, at sight of this daintiness, put two and two together.  It was a 
silk handkerchief, then they would be silken hose; they matched - then 
the whole outfit was a present of Clem's, a costly present, and not 
something to be worn through bog and briar, or on a late afternoon of 
Sunday.  He whistled.  "My denty May, either your heid's fair turned, or 
there's some ongoings!" he observed, and dismissed the subject.

She went slowly at first, but ever straighter and faster for the 
Cauldstaneslap, a pass among the hills to which the farm owed its name.  
The Slap opened like a doorway between two rounded hillocks; and through 
this ran the short cut to Hermiston.  Immediately on the other side it 
went down through the Deil's Hags, a considerable marshy hollow of the 
hill tops, full of springs, and crouching junipers, and pools where the 
black peat-water slumbered.  There was no view from here.  A man might 
have sat upon the Praying Weaver's stone a half century, and seen none 
but the Cauldstaneslap children twice in the twenty-four hours on their 
way to the school and back again, an occasional shepherd, the irruption 
of a clan of sheep, or the birds who haunted about the springs, drinking 
and shrilly piping.  So, when she had once passed the Slap, Kirstie was 
received into seclusion.  She looked back a last time at the farm.  It 
still lay deserted except for the figure of Dandie, who was now seen to 
be scribbling in his lap, the hour of expected inspiration having come 
to him at last.  Thence she passed rapidly through the morass, and came 
to the farther end of it, where a sluggish burn discharges, and the path 
for Hermiston accompanies it on the beginning of its downward path.  
From this corner a wide view was opened to her of the whole stretch of 
braes upon the other side, still sallow and in places rusty with the 
winter, with the path marked boldly, here and there by the burn-side a 
tuft of birches, and - two miles off as the crow flies - from its 
enclosures and young plantations, the windows of Hermiston glittering in 
the western sun.

Here she sat down and waited, and looked for a long time at these far-
away bright panes of glass.  It amused her to have so extended a view, 
she thought.  It amused her to see the house of Hermiston - to see 
"folk"; and there was an indistinguishable human unit, perhaps the 
gardener, visibly sauntering on the gravel paths.

By the time the sun was down and all the easterly braes lay plunged in 
clear shadow, she was aware of another figure coming up the path at a 
most unequal rate of approach, now half running, now pausing and seeming 
to hesitate.  She watched him at first with a total suspension of 
thought.  She held her thought as a person holds his breathing.  Then 
she consented to recognise him.  "He'll no be coming here, he canna be; 
it's no possible."  And there began to grow upon her a subdued choking 
suspense.  He WAS coming; his hesitations had quite ceased, his step 
grew firm and swift; no doubt remained; and the question loomed up 
before her instant: what was she to do?  It was all very well to say 
that her brother was a laird himself: it was all very well to speak of 
casual intermarriages and to count cousinship, like Auntie Kirstie.  The 
difference in their social station was trenchant; propriety, prudence, 
all that she had ever learned, all that she knew, bade her flee.  But on 
the other hand the cup of life now offered to her was too enchanting.  
For one moment, she saw the question clearly, and definitely made her 
choice.  She stood up and showed herself an instant in the gap relieved 
upon the sky line; and the next, fled trembling and sat down glowing 
with excitement on the Weaver's stone.  She shut her eyes, seeking, 
praying for composure.  Her hand shook in her lap, and her mind was full 
of incongruous and futile speeches.  What was there to make a work 
about?  She could take care of herself, she supposed!  There was no harm 
in seeing the laird.  It was the best thing that could happen.  She 
would mark a proper distance to him once and for all.  Gradually the 
wheels of her nature ceased to go round so madly, and she sat in passive 
expectation, a quiet, solitary figure in the midst of the grey moss.  I 
have said she was no hypocrite, but here I am at fault.  She never 
admitted to herself that she had come up the hill to look for Archie.  
And perhaps after all she did not know, perhaps came as a stone falls.  
For the steps of love in the young, and especially in girls, are 
instinctive and unconscious.

In the meantime Archie was drawing rapidly near, and he at least was 
consciously seeking her neighbourhood.  The afternoon had turned to 
ashes in his mouth; the memory of the girl had kept him from reading and 
drawn him as with cords; and at last, as the cool of the evening began 
to come on, he had taken his hat and set forth, with a smothered 
ejaculation, by the moor path to Cauldstaneslap.  He had no hope to find 
her; he took the off chance without expectation of result and to relieve 
his uneasiness.  The greater was his surprise, as he surmounted the 
slope and came into the hollow of the Deil's Hags, to see there, like an 
answer to his wishes, the little womanly figure in the grey dress and 
the pink kerchief sitting little, and low, and lost, and acutely 
solitary, in these desolate surroundings and on the weather-beaten stone 
of the dead weaver.  Those things that still smacked of winter were all 
rusty about her, and those things that already relished of the spring 
had put forth the tender and lively colours of the season.  Even in the 
unchanging face of the death-stone, changes were to be remarked; and in 
the channeled lettering, the moss began to renew itself in jewels of 
green.  By an afterthought that was a stroke of art, she had turned up 
over her head the back of the kerchief; so that it now framed becomingly 
her vivacious and yet pensive face.  Her feet were gathered under her on 
the one side, and she leaned on her bare arm, which showed out strong 
and round, tapered to a slim wrist, and shimmered in the fading light.

Young Hermiston was struck with a certain chill.  He was reminded that 
he now dealt in serious matters of life and death.  This was a grown 
woman he was approaching, endowed with her mysterious potencies and 
attractions, the treasury of the continued race, and he was neither 
better nor worse than the average of his sex and age.  He had a certain 
delicacy which had preserved him hitherto unspotted, and which (had 
either of them guessed it) made him a more dangerous companion when his 
heart should be really stirred.  His throat was dry as he came near; but 
the appealing sweetness of her smile stood between them like a guardian 
angel.

For she turned to him and smiled, though without rising.  There was a 
shade in this cavalier greeting that neither of them perceived; neither 
he, who simply thought it gracious and charming as herself; nor yet she, 
who did not observe (quick as she was) the difference between rising to 
meet the laird, and remaining seated to receive the expected admirer.

"Are ye stepping west, Hermiston?" said she, giving him his territorial 
name after the fashion of the country-side.

"I was," said he, a little hoarsely, "but I think I will be about the 
end of my stroll now.  Are you like me, Miss Christina?  The house would 
not hold me.  I came here seeking air."

He took his seat at the other end of the tombstone and studied her, 
wondering what was she.  There was infinite import in the question alike 
for her and him.

"Ay," she said.  "I couldna bear the roof either.  It's a habit of mine 
to come up here about the gloaming when it's quaiet and caller."

"It was a habit of my mother's also," he said gravely.  The recollection 
half startled him as he expressed it.  He looked around.  "I have scarce 
been here since.  It's peaceful," he said, with a long breath.

"It's no like Glasgow," she replied.  "A weary place, yon Glasgow!  But 
what a day have I had for my homecoming, and what a bonny evening!"

"Indeed, it was a wonderful day," said Archie.  "I think I will remember 
it years and years until I come to die.  On days like this - I do not 
know if you feel as I do - but everything appears so brief, and fragile, 
and exquisite, that I am afraid to touch life.  We are here for so short 
a time; and all the old people before us - Rutherfords of Hermiston, 
Elliotts of the Cauldstaneslap - that were here but a while since riding 
about and keeping up a great noise in this quiet corner - making love 
too, and marrying - why, where are they now?  It's deadly commonplace, 
but, after all, the commonplaces are the great poetic truths."

He was sounding her, semi-consciously, to see if she could understand 
him; to learn if she were only an animal the colour of flowers, or had a 
soul in her to keep her sweet.  She, on her part, her means well in 
hand, watched, womanlike, for any opportunity to shine, to abound in his 
humour, whatever that might be.  The dramatic artist, that lies dormant 
or only half awake in most human beings, had in her sprung to his feet 
in a divine fury, and chance had served her well.  She looked upon him 
with a subdued twilight look that became the hour of the day and the 
train of thought; earnestness shone through her like stars in the purple 
west; and from the great but controlled upheaval of her whole nature 
there passed into her voice, and rang in her lightest words, a thrill of 
emotion.

"Have you mind of Dand's song?" she answered.  "I think he'll have been 
trying to say what you have been thinking."

"No, I never heard it," he said.  "Repeat it to me, can you?"

"It's nothing wanting the tune," said Kirstie.

"Then sing it me," said he.

"On the Lord's Day?  That would never do, Mr. Weir!"

"I am afraid I am not so strict a keeper of the Sabbath, and there is no 
one in this place to hear us, unless the poor old ancient under the 
stone."

"No that I'm thinking that really," she said.  "By my way of thinking, 
it's just as serious as a psalm.  Will I sooth it to ye, then?"

"If you please," said he, and, drawing near to her on the tombstone, 
prepared to listen.

She sat up as if to sing. "I'll only can sooth it to ye," she explained.  
"I wouldna like to sing out loud on the Sabbath.  I think the birds 
would carry news of it to Gilbert," and she smiled.  "It's about the 
Elliotts," she continued, "and I think there's few bonnier bits in the 
book-poets, though Dand has never got printed yet."

And she began, in the low, clear tones of her half voice, now sinking 
almost to a whisper, now rising to a particular note which was her best, 
and which Archie learned to wait for with growing emotion:-


"O they rade in the rain, in the days that are gane,
In the rain and the wind and the lave,
They shoutit in the ha' and they routit on the hill,
But they're a' quaitit noo in the grave.
Auld, auld Elliotts, clay-cauld Elliotts, dour, bauld Elliotte of auld!"


All the time she sang she looked steadfastly before her, her knees 
straight, her hands upon her knee, her head cast back and up.  The 
expression was admirable throughout, for had she not learned it from the 
lips and under the criticism of the author?  When it was done, she 
turned upon Archie a face softly bright, and eyes gently suffused and 
shining in the twilight, and his heart rose and went out to her with 
boundless pity and sympathy.  His question was answered.  She was a 
human being tuned to a sense of the tragedy of life; there were pathos 
and music and a great heart in the girl.

He arose instinctively, she also; for she saw she had gained a point, 
and scored the impression deeper, and she had wit enough left to flee 
upon a victory.  They were but commonplaces that remained to be 
exchanged, but the low, moved voices in which they passed made them 
sacred in the memory.  In the falling greyness of the evening he watched 
her figure winding through the morass, saw it turn a last time and wave 
a hand, and then pass through the Slap; and it seemed to him as if 
something went along with her out of the deepest of his heart.  And 
something surely had come, and come to dwell there.  He had retained 
from childhood a picture, now half obliterated by the passage of time 
and the multitude of fresh impressions, of his mother telling him, with 
the fluttered earnestness of her voice, and often with dropping tears, 
the tale of the "Praying Weaver," on the very scene of his brief tragedy 
and long repose.  And now there was a companion piece; and he beheld, 
and he should behold for ever, Christina perched on the same tomb, in 
the grey colours of the evening, gracious, dainty, perfect as a flower, 
and she also singing-


"Of old, unhappy far off things,
And battles long ago,"


of their common ancestors now dead, of their rude wars composed, their 
weapons buried with them, and of these strange changelings, their 
descendants, who lingered a little in their places, and would soon be 
gone also, and perhaps sung of by others at the gloaming hour.  By one 
of the unconscious arts of tenderness the two women were enshrined 
together in his memory.  Tears, in that hour of sensibility, came into 
his eyes indifferently at the thought of either; and the girl, from 
being something merely bright and shapely, was caught up into the zone 
of things serious as life and death and his dead mother.  So that in all 
ways and on either side, Fate played his game artfully with this poor 
pair of children.  The generations were prepared, the pangs were made 
ready, before the curtain rose on the dark drama.

In the same moment of time that she disappeared from Archie, there 
opened before Kirstie's eyes the cup-like hollow in which the farm lay.  
She saw, some five hundred feet below her, the house making itself 
bright with candles, and this was a broad hint to her to hurry.  For 
they were only kindled on a Sabbath night with a view to that family 
worship which rounded in the incomparable tedium of the day and brought 
on the relaxation of supper.  Already she knew that Robert must be 
within-sides at the head of the table, "waling the portions"; for it was 
Robert in his quality of family priest and judge, not the gifted 
Gilbert, who officiated.  She made good time accordingly down the steep 
ascent, and came up to the door panting as the three younger brothers, 
all roused at last from slumber, stood together in the cool and the dark 
of the evening with a fry of nephews and nieces about them, chatting and 
awaiting the expected signal.  She stood back; she had no mind to direct 
attention to her late arrival or to her labouring breath.

"Kirstie, ye have shaved it this time, my lass?" said Clem.  "Whaur were 
ye?"

"O, just taking a dander by mysel'," said Kirstie.

And the talk continued on the subject of the American War, without 
further reference to the truant who stood by them in the covert of the 
dusk, thrilling with happiness and the sense of guilt.

The signal was given, and the brothers began to go in one after another, 
amid the jostle and throng of Hob's children.

Only Dandie, waiting till the last, caught Kirstie by the arm.  "When 
did ye begin to dander in pink hosen, Mistress Elliott?" he whispered 
slyly.

She looked down; she was one blush.  "I maun have forgotten to change 
them," said she; and went into prayers in her turn with a troubled mind, 
between anxiety as to whether Dand should have observed her yellow 
stockings at church, and should thus detect her in a palpable falsehood, 
and shame that she had already made good his prophecy.  She remembered 
the words of it, how it was to be when she had gotten a jo, and that 
that would be for good and evil.  "Will I have gotten my jo now?" she 
thought with a secret rapture.

And all through prayers, where it was her principal business to conceal 
the pink stockings from the eyes of the indifferent Mrs. Hob - and all 
through supper, as she made a feint of eating and sat at the table 
radiant and constrained - and again when she had left them and come into 
her chamber, and was alone with her sleeping niece, and could at last 
lay aside the armour of society - the same words sounded within her, the 
same profound note of happiness, of a world all changed and renewed, of 
a day that had been passed in Paradise, and of a night that was to be 
heaven opened.  All night she seemed to be conveyed smoothly upon a 
shallow stream of sleep and waking, and through the bowers of Beulah; 
all night she cherished to her heart that exquisite hope; and if, 
towards morning, she forgot it a while in a more profound 
unconsciousness, it was to catch again the rainbow thought with her 
first moment of awaking.



CHAPTER VII - ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES



TWO days later a gig from Crossmichael deposited Frank Innes at the 
doors of Hermiston.  Once in a way, during the past winter, Archie, in 
some acute phase of boredom, had written him a letter.  It had contained 
something in the nature of an invitation or a reference to an invitation 
- precisely what, neither of them now remembered.  When Innes had 
received it, there had been nothing further from his mind than to bury 
himself in the moors with Archie; but not even the most acute political 
heads are guided through the steps of life with unerring directness.  
That would require a gift of prophecy which has been denied to man.  For 
instance, who could have imagined that, not a month after he had 
received the letter, and turned it into mockery, and put off answering 
it, and in the end lost it, misfortunes of a gloomy cast should begin to 
thicken over Frank's career?  His case may be briefly stated.  His 
father, a small Morayshire laird with a large family, became 
recalcitrant and cut off the supplies; he had fitted himself out with 
the beginnings of quite a good law library, which, upon some sudden 
losses on the turf, he had been obliged to sell before they were paid 
for; and his bookseller, hearing some rumour of the event, took out a 
warrant for his arrest.  Innes had early word of it, and was able to 
take precautions.  In this immediate welter of his affairs, with an 
unpleasant charge hanging over him, he had judged it the part of 
prudence to be off instantly, had written a fervid letter to his father 
at Inverauld, and put himself in the coach for Crossmichael.  Any port 
in a storm!  He was manfully turning his back on the Parliament House 
and its gay babble, on porter and oysters, the race-course and the ring; 
and manfully prepared, until these clouds should have blown by, to share 
a living grave with Archie Weir at Hermiston.

To do him justice, he was no less surprised to be going than Archie was 
to see him come; and he carried off his wonder with an infinitely better 
grace.

"Well, here I am!" said he, as he alighted.  "Pylades has come to 
Orestes at last.  By the way, did you get my answer?  No?  How very 
provoking!  Well, here I am to answer for myself, and that's better 
still."

"I am very glad to see you, of course," said Archie.  "I make you 
heartily welcome, of course.  But you surely have not come to stay, with 
the Courts still sitting; is that not most unwise?"

"Damn the Courts!" says Frank.  "What are the Courts to friendship and a 
little fishing?"

And so it was agreed that he was to stay, with no term to the visit but 
the term which he had privily set to it himself - the day, namely, when 
his father should have come down with the dust, and he should be able to 
pacify the bookseller.  On such vague conditions there began for these 
two young men (who were not even friends) a life of great familiarity 
and, as the days drew on, less and less intimacy.  They were together at 
meal times, together o' nights when the hour had come for whisky-toddy; 
but it might have been noticed (had there been any one to pay heed) that 
they were rarely so much together by day.  Archie had Hermiston to 
attend to, multifarious activities in the hills, in which he did not 
require, and had even refused, Frank's escort.  He would be off 
sometimes in the morning and leave only a note on the breakfast table to 
announce the fact; and sometimes, with no notice at all, he would not 
return for dinner until the hour was long past.  Innes groaned under 
these desertions; it required all his philosophy to sit down to a 
solitary breakfast with composure, and all his unaffected good-nature to 
be able to greet Archie with friendliness on the more rare occasions 
when he came home late for dinner.

"I wonder what on earth he finds to do, Mrs. Elliott?" said he one 
morning, after he had just read the hasty billet and sat down to table.

"I suppose it will be business, sir," replied the housekeeper drily, 
measuring his distance off to him by an indicated curtsy.

"But I can't imagine what business!" he reiterated.

"I suppose it will be HIS business," retorted the austere Kirstie.

He turned to her with that happy brightness that made the charm of his 
disposition, and broke into a peal of healthy and natural laughter.

"Well played, Mrs. Elliott!" he cried; and the housekeeper's face 
relaxed into the shadow of an iron smile.  "Well played indeed!" said 
he.  "But you must not be making a stranger of me like that.  Why, 
Archie and I were at the High School together, and we've been to college 
together, and we were going to the Bar together, when - you know!  Dear, 
dear me! what a pity that was!  A life spoiled, a fine young fellow as 
good as buried here in the wilderness with rustics; and all for what?  A 
frolic, silly, if you like, but no more.  God, how good your scones are, 
Mrs. Elliott!"

"They're no mines, it was the lassie made them," said Kirstie; "and, 
saving your presence, there's little sense in taking the Lord's name in 
vain about idle vivers that you fill your kyte wi'."

"I daresay you're perfectly right, ma'am," quoth the imperturbable 
Frank.  "But as I was saying, this is a pitiable business, this about 
poor Archie; and you and I might do worse than put our heads together, 
like a couple of sensible people, and bring it to an end.  Let me tell 
you, ma'am, that Archie is really quite a promising young man, and in my 
opinion he would do well at the Bar.  As for his father, no one can deny 
his ability, and I don't fancy any one would care to deny that he has 
the deil's own temper - "

"If you'll excuse me, Mr. Innes, I think the lass is crying on me," said 
Kirstie, and flounced from the room.

"The damned, cross-grained, old broomstick!" ejaculated Innes.

In the meantime, Kirstie had escaped into the kitchen, and before her 
vassal gave vent to her feelings.

"Here, ettercap!  Ye'll have to wait on yon Innes!  I canna haud myself 
in.  `Puir Erchie!'  I'd `puir Erchie' him, if I had my way!  And 
Hermiston with the deil's ain temper!  God, let him take Hermiston's 
scones out of his mouth first.  There's no a hair on ayther o' the Weirs 
that hasna mair spunk and dirdum to it than what he has in his hale 
dwaibly body!  Settin' up his snash to me!  Let him gang to the black 
toon where he's mebbe wantit - birling in a curricle - wi' pimatum on 
his heid - making a mess o' himsel' wi' nesty hizzies - a fair 
disgrace!"  It was impossible to hear without admiration Kirstie's 
graduated disgust, as she brought forth, one after another, these 
somewhat baseless charges.  Then she remembered her immediate purpose, 
and turned again on her fascinated auditor.  "Do ye no hear me, tawpie?  
Do ye no hear what I'm tellin' ye?  Will I have to shoo ye in to him?  
If I come to attend to ye, mistress!" And the maid fled the kitchen, 
which had become practically dangerous, to attend on Innes' wants in the 
front parlour.

TANTAENE IRAE?  Has the reader perceived the reason?  Since Frank's 
coming there were no more hours of gossip over the supper tray!  All his 
blandishments were in vain; he had started handicapped on the race for 
Mrs. Elliott's favour.

But it was a strange thing how misfortune dogged him in his efforts to 
be genial.  I must guard the reader against accepting Kirstie's epithets 
as evidence; she was more concerned for their vigour than for their 
accuracy.  Dwaibly, for instance; nothing could be more calumnious.  
Frank was the very picture of good looks, good humour, and manly youth.  
He had bright eyes with a sparkle and a dance to them, curly hair, a 
charming smile, brilliant teeth, an admirable carriage of the head, the 
look of a gentleman, the address of one accustomed to please at first 
sight and to improve the impression.  And with all these advantages, he 
failed with every one about Hermiston; with the silent shepherd, with 
the obsequious grieve, with the groom who was also the ploughman, with 
the gardener and the gardener's sister - a pious, down-hearted woman 
with a shawl over her ears - he failed equally and flatly.  They did not 
like him, and they showed it.  The little maid, indeed, was an 
exception; she admired him devoutly, probably dreamed of him in her 
private hours; but she was accustomed to play the part of silent auditor 
to Kirstie's tirades and silent recipient of Kirstie's buffets, and she 
had learned not only to be a very capable girl of her years, but a very 
secret and prudent one besides.  Frank was thus conscious that he had 
one ally and sympathiser in the midst of that general union of disfavour 
that surrounded, watched, and waited on him in the house of Hermiston; 
but he had little comfort or society from that alliance, and the demure 
little maid (twelve on her last birthday) preserved her own counsel, and 
tripped on his service, brisk, dumbly responsive, but inexorably 
unconversational.  For the others, they were beyond hope and beyond 
endurance.  Never had a young Apollo been cast among such rustic 
barbarians.  But perhaps the cause of his ill-success lay in one trait 
which was habitual and unconscious with him, yet diagnostic of the man.  
It was his practice to approach any one person at the expense of some 
one else.  He offered you an alliance against the some one else; he 
flattered you by slighting him; you were drawn into a small intrigue 
against him before you knew how.  Wonderful are the virtues of this 
process generally; but Frank's mistake was in the choice of the some one 
else.  He was not politic in that; he listened to the voice of 
irritation.  Archie had offended him at first by what he had felt to be 
rather a dry reception, had offended him since by his frequent absences.  
He was besides the one figure continually present in Frank's eye; and it 
was to his immediate dependants that Frank could offer the snare of his 
sympathy.  Now the truth is that the Weirs, father and son, were 
surrounded by a posse of strenuous loyalists.  Of my lord they were 
vastly proud.  It was a distinction in itself to be one of the vassals 
of the "Hanging Judge," and his gross, formidable joviality was far from 
unpopular in the neighbourhood of his home.  For Archie they had, one 
and all, a sensitive affection and respect which recoiled from a word of 
belittlement.

Nor was Frank more successful when he went farther afield.  To the Four 
Black Brothers, for instance, he was antipathetic in the highest degree.  
Hob thought him too light, Gib too profane.  Clem, who saw him but for a 
day or two before he went to Glasgow, wanted to know what the fule's 
business was, and whether he meant to stay here all session time!  
"Yon's a drone," he pronounced.  As for Dand, it will be enough to 
describe their first meeting, when Frank had been whipping a river and 
the rustic celebrity chanced to come along the path.

"I'm told you're quite a poet," Frank had said.

"Wha tell't ye that, mannie?" had been the unconciliating answer.

"O, everybody!" says Frank.

"God!  Here's fame!" said the sardonic poet, and he had passed on his 
way.

Come to think of it, we have here perhaps a truer explanation of Frank's 
failures.  Had he met Mr. Sheriff Scott he could have turned a neater 
compliment, because Mr. Scott would have been a friend worth making.  
Dand, on the other hand, he did not value sixpence, and he showed it 
even while he tried to flatter.  Condescension is an excellent thing, 
but it is strange how one-sided the pleasure of it is!  He who goes 
fishing among the Scots peasantry with condescension for a bait will 
have an empty basket by evening.

In proof of this theory Frank made a great success of it at the 
Crossmichael Club, to which Archie took him immediately on his arrival; 
his own last appearance on that scene of gaiety.  Frank was made welcome 
there at once, continued to go regularly, and had attended a meeting (as 
the members ever after loved to tell) on the evening before his death.  
Young Hay and young Pringle appeared again.  There was another supper at 
Windiclaws, another dinner at Driffel; and it resulted in Frank being 
taken to the bosom of the county people as unreservedly as he had been 
repudiated by the country folk.  He occupied Hermiston after the manner 
of an invader in a conquered capital.  He was perpetually issuing from 
it, as from a base, to toddy parties, fishing parties, and dinner 
parties, to which Archie was not invited, or to which Archie would not 
go.  It was now that the name of The Recluse became general for the 
young man.  Some say that Innes invented it; Innes, at least, spread it 
abroad.

"How's all with your Recluse to-day?" people would ask.

"O, reclusing away!" Innes would declare, with his bright air of saying 
something witty; and immediately interrupt the general laughter which he 
had provoked much more by his air than his words, "Mind you, it's all 
very well laughing, but I'm not very well pleased.  Poor Archie is a 
good fellow, an excellent fellow, a fellow I always liked.  I think it 
small of him to take his little disgrace so hard, and shut himself up.  
'Grant that it is a ridiculous story, painfully ridiculous,' I keep 
telling him.  'Be a man!  Live it down, man!'  But not he.  Of course, 
it's just solitude, and shame, and all that.  But I confess I'm 
beginning to fear the result.  It would be all the pities in the world 
if a really promising fellow like Weir was to end ill.  I'm seriously 
tempted to write to Lord Hermiston, and put it plainly to him."

"I would if I were you," some of his auditors would say, shaking the 
head, sitting bewildered and confused at this new view of the matter, so 
deftly indicated by a single word.  "A capital idea!" they would add, 
and wonder at the APLOMB and position of this young man, who talked as a 
matter of course of writing to Hermiston and correcting him upon his 
private affairs.

And Frank would proceed, sweetly confidential: "I'll give you an idea, 
now.  He's actually sore about the way that I'm received and he's left 
out in the county - actually jealous and sore.  I've rallied him and 
I've reasoned with him, told him that every one was most kindly inclined 
towards him, told him even that I was received merely because I was his 
guest.  But it's no use.  He will neither accept the invitations he 
gets, nor stop brooding about the ones where he's left out.  What I'm 
afraid of is that the wound's ulcerating.  He had always one of those 
dark, secret, angry natures - a little underhand and plenty of bile - 
you know the sort.  He must have inherited it from the Weirs, whom I 
suspect to have been a worthy family of weavers somewhere; what's the 
cant phrase? - sedentary occupation.  It's precisely the kind of 
character to go wrong in a false position like what his father's made 
for him, or he's making for himself, whichever you like to call it.  And 
for my part, I think it a disgrace," Frank would say generously.

Presently the sorrow and anxiety of this disinterested friend took 
shape.  He began in private, in conversations of two, to talk vaguely of 
bad habits and low habits.  "I must say I'm afraid he's going wrong 
altogether," he would say.  "I'll tell you plainly, and between 
ourselves, I scarcely like to stay there any longer; only, man, I'm 
positively afraid to leave him alone.  You'll see, I shall be blamed for 
it later on.  I'm staying at a great sacrifice.  I'm hindering my 
chances at the Bar, and I can't blind my eyes to it.  And what I'm 
afraid of is that I'm going to get kicked for it all round before all's 
done.  You see, nobody believes in friendship nowadays."

"Well, Innes," his interlocutor would reply, "it's very good of you, I 
must say that.  If there's any blame going, you'll always be sure of MY 
good word, for one thing."

"Well," Frank would continue, "candidly, I don't say it's pleasant.  He 
has a very rough way with him; his father's son, you know.  I don't say 
he's rude - of course, I couldn't be expected to stand that - but he 
steers very near the wind.  No, it's not pleasant; but I tell ye, man, 
in conscience I don't think it would be fair to leave him.  Mind you, I 
don't say there's anything actually wrong.  What I say is that I don't 
like the looks of it, man!" and he would press the arm of his momentary 
confidant.

In the early stages I am persuaded there was no malice.  He talked but 
for the pleasure of airing himself.  He was essentially glib, as becomes 
the young advocate, and essentially careless of the truth, which is the 
mark of the young ass; and so he talked at random.  There was no 
particular bias, but that one which is indigenous and universal, to 
flatter himself and to please and interest the present friend.  And by 
thus milling air out of his mouth, he had presently built up a 
presentation of Archie which was known and talked of in all corners of 
the county.  Wherever there was a residential house and a walled garden, 
wherever there was a dwarfish castle and a park, wherever a quadruple 
cottage by the ruins of a peel-tower showed an old family going down, 
and wherever a handsome villa with a carriage approach and a shrubbery 
marked the coming up of a new one - probably on the wheels of machinery 
- Archie began to be regarded in the light of a dark, perhaps a vicious 
mystery, and the future developments of his career to be looked for with 
uneasiness and confidential whispering.  He had done something 
disgraceful, my dear.  What, was not precisely known, and that good kind 
young man, Mr. Innes, did his best to make light of it.  But there it 
was.  And Mr. Innes was very anxious about him now; he was really 
uneasy, my dear; he was positively wrecking his own prospects because he 
dared not leave him alone.  How wholly we all lie at the mercy of a 
single prater, not needfully with any malign purpose!  And if a man but 
talks of himself in the right spirit, refers to his virtuous actions by 
the way, and never applies to them the name of virtue, how easily his 
evidence is accepted in the court of public opinion!

All this while, however, there was a more poisonous ferment at work 
between the two lads, which came late indeed to the surface, but had 
modified and magnified their dissensions from the first.  To an idle, 
shallow, easy-going customer like Frank, the smell of a mystery was 
attractive.  It gave his mind something to play with, like a new toy to 
a child; and it took him on the weak side, for like many young men 
coming to the Bar, and before they had been tried and found wanting, he 
flattered himself he was a fellow of unusual quickness and penetration.  
They knew nothing of Sherlock Holmes in those days, but there was a good 
deal said of Talleyrand.  And if you could have caught Frank off his 
guard, he would have confessed with a smirk that, if he resembled any 
one, it was the Marquis de Talleyrand-Perigord.  It was on the occasion 
of Archie's first absence that this interest took root.  It was vastly 
deepened when Kirstie resented his curiosity at breakfast, and that same 
afternoon there occurred another scene which clinched the business.  He 
was fishing Swingleburn, Archie accompanying him, when the latter looked 
at his watch.