He moved away, moss and ling muffling step, gained and dipped behind the shoulder of the moor. The horse grazed on. The laird sat still, his arms upon his knees, his head a little lifted, his eyes crossing the Kelpie's Pool to the wave-line against the sky.
Strickland went to where the moor path ran by the outermost trees of the glen head. Here he sat down beneath an oak and waited. Another hour passed; then he heard the horse's hoofs. He rose and met Glenfernie home-returning.
"It is good to see you, Strickland!"
"I found you yonder by the Kelpie's Pool. Then I came here and waited."
"I have spent hours there.... They were not unhappy. They were not at all unhappy."
They moved together along the moor track, the horse following.
"I am glad and glad again that you have come—"
"I have been coming a good while. But there were preventions."
"We have heard nothing direct for almost a year."
"Then my letters did not reach you. I wrote, but knew that they might not. There is the smoke from Mother Binning's cot." He stood still to watch the mounting feather. "I remember when first I saw that, a six-year-old, climbing the glen with my father, carried on his shoulder when I was tired. I thought it was a hut in a fairy-tale.... So it is!"