"Nothing."
"Naething?"
"Nothing that you would call anything."
Jenny sat with open mouth. "They said you'd changed, even to look at—and sae you have!—Naething!"
Jarvis Barrow entered the room, and with him came Gilian. The old man failed, failed. Now he knew Glenfernie and spoke to him of to-day and of yesterday—and now he addressed him as though he were his father, the old laird, or even his grandfather. And after a few minutes he said that he would go out to the fir-tree. Alexander helped him there. Gilian took the Bible and placed it beside him.
"Open at eleventh Isaiah," he said. "'And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots—'"
Gilian opened the book. "You read," and she sat down beside him.
"I wish to talk to you," said Alexander to her. "When—?"
"I am going to town to-morrow afternoon. I'll walk back over the moor."
When he came upon the moor next day it was bathed by a sun half-way down the western quarter. The colors of it were lit, the vast slopes had alike tenderness and majesty. He moved over the moor; then he sat down by a furze-bush and waited. Gilian came at last, sat down near him in the dry, sweet growth. She put her arms over her knees; she held her head back and drank the ineffable rich compassion of the sky. She spoke at last.