"Perhaps you do not want to hear the rest. Yet—it was such a pretty dream, and of good omen.
"You do want to hear? Well, then, be good!
"As we sat there we could hear the bumblebees scurrying home, and every now and then one of the big boom-beetles would sail whirring past us. We could hear the sheep crying below in the little green meadows so lonesomely, and the snipe bleating an answer away up in the sky above their heads, and you said, 'It is all so empty, wanting him!'
"Then the maids brought in the cows, and milked them standing at the gable end, and we could smell the smell of their breath, sweet like the scent of the flowers they had been eating all day long. Then, after a while, they were driven out of the yard again, and went in a string, one after the other, back to their pastures, doucely and sedately, just like folk going to holy kirk on Sabbath days when it is summer time in Galloway.
"Then you said, 'I am weary of waiting for him!' And I answered, 'Why,—he has not been gone more than a day. Sometimes I do not see him for weeks, and I never fret like that!'
"Then you answered (it has all come so clear into my mind), 'Some day you will know, little one!' And you patted me on the head, and went to the house end to look into the sunset. You looked many minutes under your hand, and when you came back you said, as if you had never said it before, 'He is long a-coming! I wonder what can be keeping him.'
"Then the maidens told us that the supper was ready to put on the table, whereat you scolded them, telling them that it was too early, and that they must keep it hot against their master's coming. And to me you said, 'You are not hungry, are you?' And I answered, 'No,' though I was indeed very hungry—(in my dream, that is). Then you said again, sighing: 'It is strange that he should not come home! I cannot eat till he comes! Perhaps he has fallen into a ditch, or some eagle may have pecked out his eyes!'
"Then all the while it grew darker, and still no one came. Whereat you cried a little softly, and said: 'He might have come—I know right well he could have been here by this time if he had tried. But he does not love me any more.' And you were patting the ground with your foot as you used to do when—well, when he went away from Thrieve without coming out upon the leads to say 'Good-night.' Then, all at once, there was a noise of quick feet brushing eagerly through the heather, and some one (no, not Landless Jock) leaped the wall and caught me—me—in his arms."
"No, it was not you whom he caught in his arms!" cried Maud Lindesay, indignantly, and then stopped, abashed at her own folly. But the little maid laughed merrily.
"Aha!" she said, "I caught you that time in my trap. You know who it was in my dream, though I have never told you, nor so much as hinted.