"Wha is she?"
"Your granddaughter Elspeth."
Silence, while the shadows of the trees in the vale below grew longer and longer. Then said White Farm:
"She isna what they call your equal in station. And she has nae tocher or as good as nane."
"For the last I have enough for us both. For the first the springs of Barrow and Jardine, back in Time's mountains, are much the same. Scotland's not the country to bother overmuch if the one stream goes, in a certain place, through a good farm, and the other by a not over-rich laird's house."
"Are ye Whig and Kirk like your father?"
"I am Whig—until something more to the dawn than that comes up. For the Kirk ... I will tell truth and say that I have my inner differences. But they do not lean toward Pope or prelate.... I am Christian, where Christ is taken very universally—the higher Self, the mounting Wisdom of us all.... Some high things you and I may view differently, but I believe that there are high things."
"And seek them?"
"And seek them."
"You always had the air to me," vouchsafed White Farm, "of one wha hunted gowd elsewhaur than in the earthly mine." He looked at the red west, and drew his plaid about him, and took firmer clutch upon his staff. "But the lassie does not love you?"