Mary's eyes wandered from Rob's face far over the heather. There might be tears in her eyes at any moment. The colonel was looking.
'That stream,' said Rob, with a mighty effort, pointing to the distant Whunny, 'twists round the hill on which we are now standing, and runs through Thrums. It turns the wheel of a saw-mill there, and in that saw-mill I was born and worked with my father for the greater part of my life.'
'I have seen it,' said Mary, with her head turned away. 'I have been in it.'
'It was on the other side of the hill that my sister's child was found dead. Had she lived I might never have seen you.'
'One of the gamekeepers,' said Mary, 'showed me the place where you found her with her foot in the water.'
'I have driven a cart through this glen a hundred times,' continued Rob doggedly. 'You see that wooden shed at the schoolhouse; it was my father and I who put it up. It seems but yesterday since I carted the boards from Thrums.'
'The dear boards,' murmured Mary.
'Many a day my mother has walked from the saw-mill into this glen with my dinner in a basket.'
'Good mother,' said Mary,
'Now,' said Rob, 'now, when I come back here and see you, I remember what I am. I have lived for you from the moment I saw you, but however hard I might toil for you, there must always be a difference between us.'