"Miss Alice doesna marry?"
"She's not the marrying kind, she says."
"Eh, then! She's bonny and gude, juist the same! Did ye come by White Farm?"
"Yes. Jarvis Barrow fails. He sits under his fir-tree, with his Bible beside him and his eyes on the hills. Littlefarm manages now for White Farm."
"Robin's sunny and keen. But he aye irked Jarvis with his profane sangs." She drew out the adjective with a humorous downward drag of her lip.
Strickland smiled. "The old man's softer now. You see that by the places at which his Bible opens."
"Oh aye! We're journeyers—rock and tree and Kelpie's Pool with the rest of us."
She seemed to catch her own speech and look at it. "That's a word I hae been wanting the morn!—The Kelpie's Pool, with the moor sae green and purple around it." She sat bent forward, her wrinkled hands in her lap, her eyes, rather wide, fixed upon the ash-tree.
"We have not heard from the laird," said Strickland, "this long time."
"The laird—now there! What ye want further comes when the mind strains and then waits! I see in one ring the day and Glenfernie and yonder water. Wherever the laird be, he thinks to-day of Scotland."