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 kerchief" target="_blank" title="n.手帕，手绢">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 softlydownstairs 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 sacredvacancy 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 poetictemper, 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 kerchief" target="_blank" title="n.手帕，手绢">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 occasionalshepherd, 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,