Ian rose, and walked slowly away.
Alister lay clutching the ground with his hands. For a passing moment Ian felt as if he had lost him.
"Lord, save him from this demon-love," he said, and sat down among the pines.
In a few minutes, Alister came to him.
"You cannot mean, Ian," he said-and his face was white through all its brown, "that I am to think no more of the fields of my fathers than of any other ground on the face of the earth!" "Think of them as the ground God gave to our fathers, which God may see fit to take from us again, and I shall be content—for the present," answered Ian.
"Do not be vexed with me," cried Alister. "I want to think as well as do what is right; but you cannot know how I feel or you would spare me. I love the very stones and clods of the land! The place is to me as Jerusalem to the Jews:—you know what the psalm says:—
Thy saints take pleasure in her stones,
Her very dust to them is dear!"
"They loved their land as theirs," said Ian, "and have lost it!"
"I know I must be cast out of it! I know I must die and go from it; but I shall come back and wander about the fields and the hills with you and our father and mother!"
"And how about horse and dog?" asked Ian, willing to divert his thoughts for a moment.