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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The White People, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The White People
+
+Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+Release Date: March 14, 2006 [EBook #459]
+Last Updated: September 17, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE PEOPLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Keller and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE PEOPLE
+
+By Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+
+
+
+
+TO LIONEL
+
+     “The stars come nightly to the sky;
+     The tidal wave unto the sea;
+     Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high
+     Can keep my own away from me.”
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE PEOPLE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Perhaps the things which happened could only have happened to me. I do
+not know. I never heard of things like them happening to any one else.
+But I am not sorry they did happen. I am in secret deeply and strangely
+glad. I have heard other people say things--and they were not always
+sad people, either--which made me feel that if they knew what I know it
+would seem to them as though some awesome, heavy load they had always
+dragged about with them had fallen from their shoulders. To most people
+everything is so uncertain that if they could only see or hear and know
+something clear they would drop upon their knees and give thanks. That
+was what I felt myself before I found out so strangely, and I was only a
+girl. That is why I intend to write this down as well as I can. It will
+not be very well done, because I never was clever at all, and always
+found it difficult to talk.
+
+I say that perhaps these things could only have happened to me, because,
+as I look back over my life, I realize that it has always been a rather
+curious one. Even when those who took care of me did not know I was
+thinking at all, I had begun to wonder if I were not different from
+other children. That was, of course, largely because Muircarrie
+Castle was in such a wild and remote part of Scotland that when my few
+relations felt they must pay me a visit as a mere matter of duty, their
+journey from London, or their pleasant places in the south of England,
+seemed to them like a pilgrimage to a sort of savage land; and when a
+conscientious one brought a child to play with me, the little civilized
+creature was as frightened of me as I was of it. My shyness and fear of
+its strangeness made us both dumb. No doubt I seemed like a new breed of
+inoffensive little barbarian, knowing no tongue but its own.
+
+A certain clannish etiquette made it seem necessary that a relation
+should pay me a visit sometimes, because I was in a way important. The
+huge, frowning feudal castle standing upon its battlemented rock was
+mine; I was a great heiress, and I was, so to speak, the chieftainess
+of the clan. But I was a plain, undersized little child, and had no
+attraction for any one but Jean Braidfute, a distant cousin, who took
+care of me, and Angus Macayre, who took care of the library, and who was
+a distant relative also. They were both like me in the fact that they
+were not given to speech; but sometimes we talked to one another, and I
+knew they were fond of me, as I was fond of them. They were really all I
+had.
+
+When I was a little girl I did not, of course, understand that I was
+an important person, and I could not have realized the significance of
+being an heiress. I had always lived in the castle, and was used to its
+hugeness, of which I only knew corners. Until I was seven years old,
+I think, I imagined all but very poor people lived in castles and were
+saluted by every one they passed. It seemed probable that all little
+girls had a piper who strode up and down the terrace and played on the
+bagpipes when guests were served in the dining-hall.
+
+My piper’s name was Feargus, and in time I found out that the guests
+from London could not endure the noise he made when he marched to and
+fro, proudly swinging his kilts and treading like a stag on a hillside.
+It was an insult to tell him to stop playing, because it was his
+religion to believe that The Muircarrie must be piped proudly to;
+and his ancestors had been pipers to the head of the clan for five
+generations. It was his duty to march round the dining-hall and play
+while the guests feasted, but I was obliged in the end to make him
+believe that he could be heard better from the terrace--because when he
+was outside his music was not spoiled by the sound of talking. It was
+very difficult, at first. But because I was his chieftainess, and had
+learned how to give orders in a rather proud, stern little voice, he
+knew he must obey.
+
+Even this kind of thing may show that my life was a peculiar one; but
+the strangest part of it was that, while I was at the head of so many
+people, I did not really belong to any one, and I did not know that this
+was unusual. One of my early memories is that I heard an under-nursemaid
+say to another this curious thing: “Both her father and mother were dead
+when she was born.” I did not even know that was a remarkable thing to
+say until I was several years older and Jean Braidfute told me what had
+been meant.
+
+My father and mother had both been very young and beautiful and
+wonderful. It was said that my father was the handsomest chieftain in
+Scotland, and that his wife was as beautiful as he was. They came to
+Muircarrie as soon as they were married and lived a splendid year there
+together. Sometimes they were quite alone, and spent their days fishing
+or riding or wandering on the moor together, or reading by the fire in
+the library the ancient books Angus Macayre found for them. The library
+was a marvelous place, and Macayre knew every volume in it. They used
+to sit and read like children among fairy stories, and then they would
+persuade Macayre to tell them the ancient tales he knew--of the days
+when Agricola forced his way in among the Men of the Woods, who would
+die any savage death rather than be conquered. Macayre was a sort of
+heirloom himself, and he knew and believed them all.
+
+I don’t know how it was that I myself seemed to see my young father and
+mother so clearly and to know how radiant and wildly in love they
+were. Surely Jean Braidfute had not words to tell me. But I knew. So I
+understood, in a way of my own, what happened to my mother one brilliant
+late October afternoon when my father was brought home dead--followed by
+the guests who had gone out shooting with him. His foot had caught in a
+tuft of heather, and his gun in going off had killed him. One moment
+he had been the handsomest young chieftain in Scotland, and when he was
+brought home they could not have let my mother see his face.
+
+But she never asked to see it. She was on the terrace which juts over
+the rock the castle is built on, and which looks out over the purple
+world of climbing moor. She saw from there the returning party of
+shooters and gillies winding its way slowly through the heather,
+following a burden carried on a stretcher of fir boughs. Some of her
+women guests were with her, and one of them said afterward that when she
+first caught sight of the moving figures she got up slowly and crept
+to the stone balustrade with a crouching movement almost like a young
+leopardess preparing to spring. But she only watched, making neither
+sound nor movement until the cortege was near enough for her to see that
+every man’s head was bowed upon his breast, and not one was covered.
+
+Then she said, quite slowly, “They--have--taken off--their bonnets,” and
+fell upon the terrace like a dropped stone.
+
+It was because of this that the girl said that she was dead when I was
+born. It must have seemed almost as if she were not a living thing.
+She did not open her eyes or make a sound; she lay white and cold.
+The celebrated physicians who came from London talked of catalepsy
+and afterward wrote scientific articles which tried to explain her
+condition. She did not know when I was born. She died a few minutes
+after I uttered my first cry.
+
+I know only one thing more, and that Jean Braidfute told me after I grew
+up. Jean had been my father’s nursery governess when he wore his first
+kilts, and she loved my mother fondly.
+
+“I knelt by her bed and held her hand and watched her face for three
+hours after they first laid her down,” she said. “And my eyes were so
+near her every moment that I saw a thing the others did not know her
+well enough, or love her well enough, to see.
+
+“The first hour she was like a dead thing--aye, like a dead thing that
+had never lived. But when the hand of the clock passed the last second,
+and the new hour began, I bent closer to her because I saw a change
+stealing over her. It was not color--it was not even a shadow of a
+motion. It was something else. If I had spoken what I felt, they would
+have said I was light-headed with grief and have sent me away. I have
+never told man or woman. It was my secret and hers. I can tell you,
+Ysobel. The change I saw was as if she was beginning to listen to
+something--to listen.
+
+“It was as if to a sound--far, far away at first. But cold and white as
+stone she lay content, and listened. In the next hour the far-off
+sound had drawn nearer, and it had become something else--something she
+saw--something which saw her. First her young marble face had peace in
+it; then it had joy. She waited in her young stone body until you were
+born and she could break forth. She waited no longer then.
+
+“Ysobel, my bairn, what I knew was that he had not gone far from the
+body that had held him when he fell. Perhaps he had felt lost for a bit
+when he found himself out of it. But soon he had begun to call to her
+that was like his own heart to him. And she had heard. And then, being
+half away from earth herself, she had seen him and known he was waiting,
+and that he would not leave for any far place without her. She was so
+still that the big doctors thought more than once she had passed. But I
+knew better.”
+
+It was long before I was old enough to be told anything like this that I
+began to feel that the moor was in secret my companion and friend, that
+it was not only the moor to me, but something else. It was like a thing
+alive--a huge giant lying spread out in the sun warming itself, or
+covering itself with thick, white mist which sometimes writhed and
+twisted itself into wraiths. First I noticed and liked it some day,
+perhaps, when it was purple and yellow with gorse and heather and broom,
+and the honey scents drew bees and butterflies and birds. But soon I saw
+and was drawn by another thing.
+
+How young was I that afternoon when I sat in the deep window and watched
+the low, soft whiteness creeping out and hovering over the heather as
+if the moor had breathed it? I do not remember. It was such a low little
+mist at first; and it crept and crept until its creeping grew into
+something heavier and whiter, and it began to hide the heather and
+the gorse and broom, and then the low young fir-trees. It mounted and
+mounted, and sometimes a breath of wind twisted it into weird shapes,
+almost like human creatures. It opened and closed again, and then it
+dragged and crept and grew thicker. And as I pressed my face against the
+window-pane, it mounted still higher and got hold of the moor and hid
+it, hanging heavy and white and waiting. That was what came into my
+child mind: that it had done what the moor had told it to do; had hidden
+things which wanted to be hidden, and then it waited.
+
+Strangers say that Muircarrie moor is the most beautiful and the most
+desolate place in the world, but it never seemed desolate to me. From my
+first memory of it I had a vague, half-comforted feeling that there
+was some strange life on it one could not exactly see, but was always
+conscious of. I know now why I felt this, but I did not know then.
+
+If I had been older when I first began to see what I did see there, I
+should no doubt have read things in books which would have given rise
+in my mind to doubts and wonders; but I was only a little child who had
+lived a life quite apart from the rest of the world. I was too silent by
+nature to talk and ask questions, even if I had had others to talk to. I
+had only Jean and Angus, and, as I found out years later, they knew what
+I did not, and would have put me off with adroit explanations if I had
+been curious. But I was not curious. I accepted everything as it came
+and went.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+I only six when Wee Brown Elspeth was brought to me. Jean and Angus were
+as fond of each other in their silent way as they were of me, and they
+often went together with me when I was taken out for my walks. I was
+kept in the open air a great deal, and Angus would walk by the side of
+my small, shaggy Shetland pony and lead him over rough or steep places.
+Sheltie, the pony, was meant for use when we wished to fare farther than
+a child could walk; but I was trained to sturdy marching and climbing
+even from my babyhood. Because I so loved the moor, we nearly always
+rambled there. Often we set out early in the morning, and some simple
+food was carried, so that we need not return to the castle until we
+chose. I would ride Sheltie and walk by turns until we found a place
+I liked; then Jean and Angus would sit down among the heather, Sheltie
+would be secured, and I would wander about and play in my own way. I do
+not think it was in a strange way. I think I must have played as almost
+any lonely little girl might have played. I used to find a corner among
+the bushes and pretend it was my house and that I had little friends who
+came to play with me. I only remember one thing which was not like the
+ordinary playing of children. It was a habit I had of sitting quite
+still a long time and listening. That was what I called it--“listening.”
+ I was listening to hear if the life on the moor made any sound I could
+understand. I felt as if it might, if I were very still and listened
+long enough.
+
+Angus and Jean and I were not afraid of rain and mist and change of
+weather. If we had been we could have had little outdoor life. We always
+carried plaids enough to keep us warm and dry. So on this day I speak
+of we did not turn back when we found ourselves in the midst of a sudden
+mist. We sat down in a sheltered place and waited, knowing it would lift
+in time. The sun had been shining when we set out.
+
+Angus and Jean were content to sit and guard me while I amused myself.
+They knew I would keep near them and run into no danger. I was not an
+adventurous child. I was, in fact, in a more than usually quiet mood
+that morning. The quiet had come upon me when the mist had begun to
+creep about and inclose us. I liked it. I liked the sense of being shut
+in by the soft whiteness I had so often watched from my nursery window
+in the castle.
+
+“People might be walking about,” I said to Angus when he lifted me from
+Sheltie’s back.
+
+“We couldn’t see them. They might be walking.”
+
+“Nothing that would hurt ye, bairnie,” he answered.
+
+“No, they wouldn’t hurt me,” I said. I had never been afraid that
+anything on the moor would hurt me.
+
+I played very little that day. The quiet and the mist held me still.
+Soon I sat down and began to “listen.” After a while I knew that Jean
+and Angus were watching me, but it did not disturb me. They often
+watched me when they thought I did not know they were doing it.
+
+I had sat listening for nearly half an hour when I heard the first
+muffled, slow trampling of horses’ hoofs. I knew what it was even before
+it drew near enough for me to be conscious of the other sounds--the
+jingling of arms and chains and the creaking of leather one notices as
+troopers pass by. Armed and mounted men were coming toward me. That was
+what the sounds meant; but they seemed faint and distant, though I knew
+they were really quite near. Jean and Angus did not appear to hear them.
+I knew that I only heard them because I had been listening.
+
+Out of the mist they rode a company of wild-looking men wearing garments
+such as I had never seen before. Most of them were savage and uncouth,
+and their clothes were disordered and stained as if with hard travel and
+fight. I did not know--or even ask myself--why they did not frighten me,
+but they did not. Suddenly I seemed to know that they were brave men
+and had been doing some brave, hard thing. Here and there among them I
+caught sight of a broken and stained sword, or a dirk with only a
+hilt left. They were all pale, but their wild faces were joyous and
+triumphant. I saw it as they drew near.
+
+The man who seemed their chieftain was a lean giant who was darker but,
+under his darkness, paler than the rest. On his forehead was a queer,
+star-shaped scar. He rode a black horse, and before him he held close
+with his left arm a pretty little girl dressed in strange, rich clothes.
+The big man’s hand was pressed against her breast as he held her; but
+though it was a large hand, it did not quite cover a dark-red stain on
+the embroideries of her dress. Her dress was brown, and she had brown
+hair and soft brown eyes like a little doe’s. The moment I saw her I
+loved her.
+
+The black horse stopped before me. The wild troop drew up and waited
+behind. The great, lean rider looked at me a moment, and then, lifting
+the little girl in his long arms, bent down and set her gently on her
+feet on the mossy earth in the mist beside me. I got up to greet her,
+and we stood smiling at each other. And in that moment as we stood the
+black horse moved forward, the muffled trampling began again, the wild
+company swept on its way, and the white mist closed behind it as if it
+had never passed.
+
+Of course I know how strange this will seem to people who read it, but
+that cannot be helped and does not really matter. It was in that way the
+thing happened, and it did not even seem strange to me. Anything might
+happen on the moor--anything. And there was the fair little girl with
+the eyes like a doe’s.
+
+I knew she had come to play with me, and we went together to my house
+among the bushes of broom and gorse and played happily. But before we
+began I saw her stand and look wonderingly at the dark-red stain on
+the embroideries on her childish breast. It was as if she were asking
+herself how it came there and could not understand. Then she picked
+a fern and a bunch of the thick-growing bluebells and put them in her
+girdle in such a way that they hid its ugliness.
+
+I did not really know how long she stayed. I only knew that we were
+happy, and that, though her way of playing was in some ways different
+from mine, I loved it and her. Presently the mist lifted and the sun
+shone, and we were deep in a wonderful game of being hidden in a room in
+a castle because something strange was going to happen which we were not
+told about. She ran behind a big gorse bush and did not come back. When
+I ran to look for her she was nowhere. I could not find her, and I went
+back to Jean and Angus, feeling puzzled.
+
+“Where did she go?” I asked them, turning my head from side to side.
+
+They were looking at me strangely, and both of them were pale. Jean was
+trembling a little.
+
+“Who was she, Ysobel?” she said.
+
+“The little girl the men brought to play with me,” I answered, still
+looking about me.
+
+“The big one on the black horse put her down--the big one with the star
+here.” I touched my forehead where the queer scar had been.
+
+For a minute Angus forgot himself. Years later he told me.
+
+“Dark Malcolm of the Glen,” he broke out. “Wee Brown Elspeth.”
+
+“But she is white--quite white!” I said.
+
+“Where did she go?”
+
+Jean swept me in her warm, shaking arms and hugged me close to her
+breast.
+
+“She’s one of the fair ones,” she said, kissing and patting me. “She
+will come again. She’ll come often, I dare say. But she’s gone now and
+we must go, too. Get up, Angus, man. We’re for the castle.”
+
+If we three had been different--if we had ever had the habit of talking
+and asking questions--we might surely have asked one another questions
+as I rode on Sheltie’s back, with Angus leading us. But they asked
+me nothing, and I said very little except that I once spoke of the
+wild-looking horsemen and their pale, joyous faces.
+
+“They were glad,” was all I said.
+
+There was also one brief query from Angus.
+
+“Did she talk to you, bairnie?” he said.
+
+I hesitated and stared at him quite a long time. Then I shook my head
+and answered, slowly, “N-no.”
+
+Because I realized then, for the first time, that we had said no words
+at all. But I had known what she wanted me to understand, and she had
+known what I might have said to her if I had spoken--and no words were
+needed. And it was better.
+
+They took me home to the castle, and I was given my supper and put to
+bed. Jean sat by me until I fell asleep; she was obliged to sit rather a
+long time, because I was so happy with my memories of Wee Brown Elspeth
+and the certainty that she would come again. It was not Jean’s words
+which had made me sure. I knew.
+
+She came many times. Through all my childish years I knew that she
+would come and play with me every few days--though I never saw the wild
+troopers again or the big, lean man with the scar. Children who play
+together are not very curious about one another, and I simply accepted
+her with delight. Somehow I knew that she lived happily in a place not
+far away. She could come and go, it seemed, without trouble. Sometimes
+I found her--or she found me upon the moor; and often she appeared in
+my nursery in the castle. When we were together Jean Braidfute seemed to
+prefer that we should be alone, and was inclined to keep the under-nurse
+occupied in other parts of the wing I lived in. I never asked her to do
+this, but I was glad that it was done. Wee Elspeth was glad, too. After
+our first meeting she was dressed in soft blue or white, and the red
+stain was gone; but she was always Wee Brown Elspeth with the doelike
+eyes and the fair, transparent face, the very fair little face. As I had
+noticed the strange, clear pallor of the rough troopers, so I noticed
+that she was curiously fair. And as I occasionally saw other persons
+with the same sort of fairness, I thought it was a purity of complexion
+special to some, but not to all. I was not fair like that, and neither
+was any one else I knew.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+It was when I was ten years old that Wee Elspeth ceased coming to me,
+and though I missed her at first, it was not with a sense of grief or
+final loss. She had only gone somewhere.
+
+It was then that Angus Macayre began to be my tutor. He had been a
+profound student and had lived among books all his life. He had helped
+Jean in her training of me, and I had learned more than is usually
+taught to children in their early years. When a grand governess was
+sent to Muircarrie by my guardian, she was amazed at the things I
+was familiar with, but she abhorred the dark, frowning castle and the
+loneliness of the place and would not stay. In fact, no governess would
+stay, and so Angus became my tutor and taught me old Gaelic and Latin
+and Greek, and we read together and studied the ancient books in the
+library. It was a strange education for a girl, and no doubt made me
+more than ever unlike others. But my life was the life I loved.
+
+When my guardian decided that I must live with him in London and be
+educated as modern girls were, I tried to be obedient and went to him;
+but before two months had passed my wretchedness had made me so ill that
+the doctor said I should go into a decline and die if I were not sent
+back to Muircarrie.
+
+“It’s not only the London air that seems to poison her,” he said when
+Jean talked to him about me; “it is something else. She will not live,
+that’s all. Sir Ian must send her home.”
+
+As I have said before, I had been an unattractive child and I was a
+plain, uninteresting sort of girl. I was shy and could not talk to
+people, so of course I bored them. I knew I did not look well when I
+wore beautiful clothes. I was little and unimportant and like a reed for
+thinness. Because I was rich and a sort of chieftainess I ought to have
+been tall and rather stately, or at least I ought to have had a bearing
+which would have made it impossible for people to quite overlook me.
+But; any one could overlook me--an insignificant, thin girl who slipped
+in and out of places and sat and stared and listened to other people
+instead of saying things herself; I liked to look on and be forgotten.
+It interested me to watch people if they did not notice me.
+
+Of course, my relatives did not really like me. How could they? They
+were busy in their big world and did not know what to do with a girl who
+ought to have been important and was not. I am sure that in secret they
+were relieved when I was sent back to Muircarrie.
+
+After that the life I loved went on quietly. I studied with Angus, and
+made the book-walled library my own room. I walked and rode on the moor,
+and I knew the people who lived in the cottages and farms on the estate.
+I think they liked me, but I am not sure, because I was too shy to seem
+very friendly. I was more at home with Feargus, the piper, and with
+some of the gardeners than I was with any one else. I think I was lonely
+without knowing; but I was never unhappy. Jean and Angus were my nearest
+and dearest. Jean was of good blood and a stanch gentlewoman, quite
+sufficiently educated to be my companion as she had been my early
+governess.
+
+It was Jean who told Angus that I was giving myself too entirely to the
+study of ancient books and the history of centuries gone by.
+
+“She is living to-day, and she must not pass through this life without
+gathering anything from it.”
+
+“This life,” she put it, as if I had passed through others before, and
+might pass through others again. That was always her way of speaking,
+and she seemed quite unconscious of any unusualness in it.
+
+“You are a wise woman, Jean,” Angus said, looking long at her grave
+face. “A wise woman.”
+
+He wrote to the London book-shops for the best modern books, and I began
+to read them. I felt at first as if they plunged me into a world I did
+not understand, and many of them I could not endure. But I persevered,
+and studied them as I had studied the old ones, and in time I began to
+feel as if perhaps they were true. My chief weariness with them came
+from the way they had of referring to the things I was so intimate with
+as though they were only the unauthenticated history of a life so
+long passed by that it could no longer matter to any one. So often the
+greatest hours of great lives were treated as possible legends. I
+knew why men had died or were killed or had borne black horror. I knew
+because I had read old books and manuscripts and had heard the stories
+which had come down through centuries by word of mouth, passed from
+father to son.
+
+But there was one man who did not write as if he believed the world had
+begun and would end with him. He knew he was only one, and part of
+all the rest. The name I shall give him is Hector MacNairn. He was a
+Scotchman, but he had lived in many a land. The first time I read a book
+he had written I caught my breath with joy, again and again. I knew I
+had found a friend, even though there was no likelihood that I should
+ever see his face. He was a great and famous writer, and all the world
+honored him; while I, hidden away in my castle on a rock on the edge of
+Muircarrie, was so far from being interesting or clever that even in my
+grandest evening dress and tiara of jewels I was as insignificant as a
+mouse. In fact, I always felt rather silly when I was obliged to wear my
+diamonds on state occasions as custom sometimes demanded.
+
+Mr. MacNairn wrote essays and poems, and marvelous stories which were
+always real though they were called fiction. Wheresoever his story was
+placed--howsoever remote and unknown the scene--it was a real place, and
+the people who lived in it were real, as if he had some magic power to
+call up human things to breathe and live and set one’s heart beating.
+I read everything he wrote. I read every word of his again and again. I
+always kept some book of his near enough to be able to touch it with my
+hand; and often I sat by the fire in the library holding one open on
+my lap for an hour or more, only because it meant a warm, close
+companionship. It seemed at those times as if he sat near me in the dim
+glow and we understood each other’s thoughts without using words, as Wee
+Brown Elspeth and I had understood--only this was a deeper thing.
+
+I had felt near him in this way for several years, and every year he had
+grown more famous, when it happened that one June my guardian, Sir Ian,
+required me to go to London to see my lawyers and sign some important
+documents connected with the management of the estate. I was to go
+to his house to spend a week or more, attend a Drawing-Room, and show
+myself at a few great parties in a proper manner, this being considered
+my duty toward my relatives. These, I believe, were secretly afraid that
+if I were never seen their world would condemn my guardian for
+neglect of his charge, or would decide that I was of unsound mind and
+intentionally kept hidden away at Muircarrie. He was an honorable man,
+and his wife was a well-meaning woman. I did not wish to do them an
+injustice, so I paid them yearly visits and tried to behave as they
+wished, much as I disliked to be dressed in fine frocks and to wear
+diamonds on my little head and round my thin neck.
+
+It was an odd thing that this time I found I did not dread the visit
+to London as much as I usually did. For some unknown reason I became
+conscious that I was not really reluctant to go. Usually the thought
+of the days before me made me restless and low-spirited. London always
+seemed so confused and crowded, and made me feel as if I were being
+pushed and jostled by a mob always making a tiresome noise. But this
+time I felt as if I should somehow find a clear place to stand in, where
+I could look on and listen without being bewildered. It was a curious
+feeling; I could not help noticing and wondering about it.
+
+I knew afterward that it came to me because a change was drawing near. I
+wish so much that I could tell about it in a better way. But I have only
+my own way, which I am afraid seems very like a school-girl’s.
+
+Jean Braidfute made the journey with me, as she always did, and it was
+like every other journey. Only one incident made it different, and when
+it occurred there seemed nothing unusual in it. It was only a bit of
+sad, everyday life which touched me. There is nothing new in seeing a
+poor woman in deep mourning.
+
+Jean and I had been alone in our railway carriage for a great part of
+the journey; but an hour or two before we reached London a man got in
+and took a seat in a corner. The train had stopped at a place where
+there is a beautiful and well-known cemetery. People bring their friends
+from long distances to lay them there. When one passes the station, one
+nearly always sees sad faces and people in mourning on the platform.
+
+There was more than one group there that day, and the man who sat in the
+corner looked out at them with gentle eyes. He had fine, deep eyes and a
+handsome mouth. When the poor woman in mourning almost stumbled into
+the carriage, followed by her child, he put out his hand to help her
+and gave her his seat. She had stumbled because her eyes were dim with
+dreadful crying, and she could scarcely see. It made one’s heart stand
+still to see the wild grief of her, and her unconsciousness of the world
+about her. The world did not matter. There was no world. I think there
+was nothing left anywhere but the grave she had just staggered blindly
+away from. I felt as if she had been lying sobbing and writhing and
+beating the new turf on it with her poor hands, and I somehow knew that
+it had been a child’s grave she had been to visit and had felt she left
+to utter loneliness when she turned away.
+
+It was because I thought this that I wished she had not seemed so
+unconscious of and indifferent to the child who was with her and clung
+to her black dress as if it could not bear to let her go. This one was
+alive at least, even if she had lost the other one, and its little face
+was so wistful! It did not seem fair to forget and ignore it, as if
+it were not there. I felt as if she might have left it behind on the
+platform if it had not so clung to her skirt that it was almost dragged
+into the railway carriage with her. When she sank into her seat she did
+not even lift the poor little thing into the place beside her, but left
+it to scramble up as best it could. She buried her swollen face in her
+handkerchief and sobbed in a smothered way as if she neither saw, heard,
+nor felt any living thing near her.
+
+How I wished she would remember the poor child and let it comfort her!
+It really was trying to do it in its innocent way. It pressed close to
+her side, it looked up imploringly, it kissed her arm and her crape
+veil over and over again, and tried to attract her attention. It was
+a little, lily-fair creature not more than five or six years old and
+perhaps too young to express what it wanted to say. It could only cling
+to her and kiss her black dress, and seem to beg her to remember that
+it, at least, was a living thing. But she was too absorbed in her
+anguish to know that it was in the world. She neither looked at nor
+touched it, and at last it sat with its cheek against her sleeve, softly
+stroking her arm, and now and then kissing it longingly. I was obliged
+to turn my face away and look out of the window, because I knew the man
+with the kind face saw the tears well up into my eyes.
+
+The poor woman did not travel far with us. She left the train after a
+few stations were passed. Our fellow-traveler got out before her to help
+her on to the platform. He stood with bared head while he assisted her,
+but she scarcely saw him. And even then she seemed to forget the child.
+The poor thing was dragged out by her dress as it had been dragged in. I
+put out my hand involuntarily as it went through the door, because I was
+afraid it might fall. But it did not. It turned its fair little face
+and smiled at me. When the kind traveler returned to his place in the
+carriage again, and the train left the station, the black-draped woman
+was walking slowly down the platform and the child was still clinging to
+her skirt.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+My guardian was a man whose custom it was to give large and dignified
+parties. Among his grand and fashionable guests there was nearly always
+a sprinkling of the more important members of the literary world. The
+night after I arrived there was to be a particularly notable dinner. I
+had come prepared to appear at it. Jean had brought fine array for
+me and a case of jewels. I knew I must be “dressed up” and look as
+important as I could. When I went up-stairs after tea, Jean was in my
+room laying things out on the bed.
+
+“The man you like so much is to dine here to-night, Ysobel,” she said.
+“Mr. Hector MacNairn.”
+
+I believe I even put my hand suddenly to my heart as I stood and looked
+at her, I was so startled and so glad.
+
+“You must tell him how much you love his books,” she said. She had a
+quiet, motherly way.
+
+“There will be so many other people who will want to talk to him,” I
+answered, and I felt a little breathless with excitement as I said it.
+
+“And I should be too shy to know how to say such things properly.”
+
+“Don’t be afraid of him,” was her advice. “The man will be like his
+books, and they’re the joy of your life.”
+
+She made me look as nice as she could in the new dress she had brought;
+she made me wear the Muircarrie diamonds and sent me downstairs. It does
+not matter who the guests were; I scarcely remember. I was taken in to
+dinner by a stately elderly man who tried to make me talk, and at last
+was absorbed by the clever woman on his other side.
+
+I found myself looking between the flowers for a man’s face I could
+imagine was Hector MacNairn’s. I looked up and down and saw none I could
+believe belonged to him. There were handsome faces and individual ones,
+but at first I saw no Hector MacNairn. Then, on bending forward a little
+to glance behind an epergne, I found a face which it surprised and
+pleased me to see. It was the face of the traveler who had helped the
+woman in mourning out of the railway carriage, baring his head before
+her grief. I could not help turning and speaking to my stately elderly
+partner.
+
+“Do you know who that is--the man at the other side of the table?” I
+asked.
+
+Old Lord Armour looked across and answered with an amiable smile. “It is
+the author the world is talking of most in these days, and the talking
+is no new thing. It’s Mr. Hector MacNairn.”
+
+No one but myself could tell how glad I was. It seemed so right that
+he should be the man who had understood the deeps of a poor, passing
+stranger woman’s woe. I had so loved that quiet baring of his head! All
+at once I knew I should not be afraid of him. He would understand that I
+could not help being shy, that it was only my nature, and that if I said
+things awkwardly my meanings were better than my words. Perhaps I
+should be able to tell him something of what his books had been to me.
+I glanced through the flowers again--and he was looking at me! I could
+scarcely believe it for a second. But he was. His eyes--his wonderful
+eyes--met mine. I could not explain why they were wonderful. I think
+it was the clearness and understanding in them, and a sort of great
+interestedness. People sometimes look at me from curiosity, but they do
+not look because they are really interested.
+
+I could scarcely look away, though I knew I must not be guilty of
+staring. A footman was presenting a dish at my side. I took something
+from it without knowing what it was. Lord Armour began to talk kindly.
+He was saying beautiful, admiring things of Mr. MacNairn and his work.
+I listened gratefully, and said a few words myself now and then. I was
+only too glad to be told of the great people and the small ones who were
+moved and uplifted by his thoughts.
+
+“You admire him very much, I can see,” the amiable elderly voice said.
+
+I could not help turning and looking up. “It is as if a great, great
+genius were one’s friend--as if he talked and one listened,” I said. “He
+is like a splendid dream which has come true.”
+
+Old Lord Armour looked at me quite thoughtfully, as if he saw something
+new in me.
+
+“That is a good way of putting it, Miss Muircarrie,” he answered.
+“MacNairn would like that. You must tell him about it yourself.”
+
+I did not mean to glance through the flowers again, but I did it
+involuntarily. And I met the other eyes--the wonderful, interested
+ones just as I had met them before. It almost seemed as if he had been
+watching me. It might be, I thought, because he only vaguely remembered
+seeing me before and was trying to recall where we had met.
+
+When my guardian brought his men guests to the drawing-room after
+dinner, I was looking over some old prints at a quiet, small table.
+There were a few minutes of smiling talk, and then Sir Ian crossed the
+room toward me, bringing some one with him. It was Hector MacNairn he
+brought.
+
+“Mr. MacNairn tells me you traveled together this afternoon without
+knowing each other,” he said. “He has heard something of Muircarrie and
+would like to hear more, Ysobel. She lives like a little ghost all
+alone in her feudal castle, Mr. MacNairn. We can’t persuade her to like
+London.”
+
+I think he left us alone together because he realized that we should get
+on better without a companion.
+
+Mr. MacNairn sat down near me and began to talk about Muircarrie. There
+were very few places like it, and he knew about each one of them. He
+knew the kind of things Angus Macayre knew--the things most people had
+either never heard of or had only thought of as legends. He talked as he
+wrote, and I scarcely knew when he led me into talking also. Afterward
+I realized that he had asked me questions I could not help answering
+because his eyes were drawing me on with that quiet, deep interest. It
+seemed as if he saw something in my face which made him curious.
+
+I think I saw this expression first when we began to speak of our
+meeting in the railway carriage, and I mentioned the poor little fair
+child my heart had ached so for.
+
+“It was such a little thing and it did so want to comfort her! Its white
+little clinging hands were so pathetic when they stroked and patted
+her,” I said. “And she did not even look at it.”
+
+He did not start, but he hesitated in a way which almost produced the
+effect of a start. Long afterward I remembered it.
+
+“The child!” he said. “Yes. But I was sitting on the other side. And I
+was so absorbed in the poor mother that I am afraid I scarcely saw it.
+Tell me about it.”
+
+“It was not six years old, poor mite,” I answered. “It was one of those
+very fair children one sees now and then. It was not like its mother.
+She was not one of the White People.”
+
+“The White People?” he repeated quite slowly after me. “You don’t mean
+that she was not a Caucasian? Perhaps I don’t understand.”
+
+That made me feel a trifle shy again. Of course he could not know what I
+meant. How silly of me to take it for granted that he would!
+
+“I beg pardon. I forgot,” I even stammered a little. “It is only my way
+of thinking of those fair people one sees, those very fair ones, you
+know--the ones whose fairness looks almost transparent. There are not
+many of them, of course; but one can’t help noticing them when they pass
+in the street or come into a room. You must have noticed them, too.
+I always call them, to myself, the White People, because they are
+different from the rest of us. The poor mother wasn’t one, but the child
+was. Perhaps that was why I looked at it, at first. It was such a lovely
+little thing; and the whiteness made it look delicate, and I could not
+help thinking--” I hesitated, because it seemed almost unkind to finish.
+
+“You thought that if she had just lost one child she ought to take more
+care of the other,” he ended for me. There was a deep thoughtfulness in
+his look, as if he were watching me. I wondered why.
+
+“I wish I had paid more attention to the little creature,” he said, very
+gently. “Did it cry?”
+
+“No,” I answered. “It only clung to her and patted her black sleeve and
+kissed it, as if it wanted to comfort her. I kept expecting it to cry,
+but it didn’t. It made me cry because it seemed so sure that it could
+comfort her if she would only remember that it was alive and loved her.
+I wish, I wish death did not make people feel as if it filled all the
+world--as if, when it happens, there is no life left anywhere. The child
+who was alive by her side did not seem a living thing to her. It didn’t
+matter.”
+
+I had never said as much to any one before, but his watching eyes made
+me forget my shy worldlessness.
+
+“What do you feel about it--death?” he asked.
+
+The low gentleness of his voice seemed something I had known always.
+
+“I never saw it,” I answered. “I have never even seen any one
+dangerously ill. I--It is as if I can’t believe it.”
+
+“You can’t believe it? That is a wonderful thing,” he said, even more
+quietly than before.
+
+“If none of us believed, how wonderful that would be! Beautiful, too.”
+
+“How that poor mother believed it!” I said, remembering her swollen,
+distorted, sobbing face. “She believed nothing else; everything else was
+gone.”
+
+“I wonder what would have happened if you had spoken to her about the
+child?” he said, slowly, as if he were trying to imagine it.
+
+“I’m a very shy person. I should never have courage to speak to a
+stranger,” I answered.
+
+“I’m afraid I’m a coward, too. She might have thought me interfering.”
+
+“She might not have understood,” he murmured.
+
+“It was clinging to her dress when she walked away down the platform,” I
+went on. “I dare say you noticed it then?”
+
+“Not as you did. I wish I had noticed it more,” was his answer. “Poor
+little White One!”
+
+That led us into our talk about the White People. He said he did not
+think he was exactly an observant person in some respects. Remembering
+his books, which seemed to me the work of a man who saw and understood
+everything in the world, I could not comprehend his thinking that, and
+I told him so. But he replied that what I had said about my White People
+made him feel that he must be abstracted sometimes and miss things. He
+did not remember having noticed the rare fairness I had seen. He smiled
+as he said it, because, of course, it was only a little thing--that he
+had not seen that some people were so much fairer than others.
+
+“But it has not been a little thing to you, evidently. That is why I
+am even rather curious about it,” he explained. “It is a difference
+definite enough to make you speak almost as if they were of a different
+race from ours.”
+
+I sat silent a few seconds, thinking it over. Suddenly I realized what I
+had never realized before.
+
+“Do you know,” I said, as slowly as he himself had spoken, “I did not
+know that was true until you put it into words. I am so used to thinking
+of them as different, somehow, that I suppose I do feel as if they were
+almost like another race, in a way. Perhaps one would feel like that
+with a native Indian, or a Japanese.”
+
+“I dare say that is a good simile,” he reflected. “Are they different
+when you know them well?”
+
+“I have never known one but Wee Brown Elspeth,” I answered, thinking it
+over.
+
+He did start then, in the strangest way.
+
+“What!” he exclaimed. “What did you say?”
+
+I was quite startled myself. Suddenly he looked pale, and his breath
+caught itself.
+
+“I said Wee Elspeth, Wee Brown Elspeth. She was only a child who played
+with me,” I stammered, “when I was little.”
+
+He pulled himself together almost instantly, though the color did not
+come back to his face at once and his voice was not steady for a few
+seconds. But he laughed outright at himself.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” he apologized. “I have been ill and am rather
+nervous. I thought you said something you could not possibly have
+said. I almost frightened you. And you were only speaking of a little
+playmate. Please go on.”
+
+“I was only going to say that she was fair like that, fairer than any
+one I had ever seen; but when we played together she seemed like any
+other child. She was the first I ever knew.”
+
+I told him about the misty day on the moor, and about the pale troopers
+and the big, lean leader who carried Elspeth before him on his saddle. I
+had never talked to any one about it before, not even to Jean Braidfute.
+But he seemed to be so interested, as if the little story quite
+fascinated him. It was only an episode, but it brought in the weirdness
+of the moor and my childish fancies about the things hiding in the white
+mist, and the castle frowning on its rock, and my baby face pressed
+against the nursery window in the tower, and Angus and the library, and
+Jean and her goodness and wise ways. It was dreadful to talk so much
+about oneself. But he listened so. His eyes never left my face--they
+watched and held me as if he were enthralled. Sometimes he asked a
+question.
+
+“I wonder who they were--the horsemen?” he pondered. “Did you ever ask
+Wee Elspeth?”
+
+“We were both too little to care. We only played,” I answered him. “And
+they came and went so quickly that they were only a sort of dream.”
+
+“They seem to have been a strange lot. Wasn’t Angus curious about them?”
+ he suggested.
+
+“Angus never was curious about anything,” I said. “Perhaps he knew
+something about them and would not tell me. When I was a little thing
+I always knew he and Jean had secrets I was too young to hear. They hid
+sad and ugly things from me, or things that might frighten a child. They
+were very good.”
+
+“Yes, they were good,” he said, thoughtfully.
+
+I think any one would have been pleased to find herself talking quietly
+to a great genius--as quietly as if he were quite an ordinary person;
+but to me the experience was wonderful. I had thought about him so much
+and with such adoring reverence. And he looked at me as if he truly
+liked me, even as if I were something new--a sort of discovery which
+interested him. I dare say that he had never before seen a girl who had
+lived so much alone and in such a remote and wild place.
+
+I believe Sir Ian and his wife were pleased, too, to see that I
+was talking. They were glad that their guests should see that I was
+intelligent enough to hold the attention even of a clever man. If Hector
+MacNairn was interested in me I could not be as silly and dull as I
+looked. But on my part I was only full of wonder and happiness. I was a
+girl, and he had been my only hero; and it seemed even as if he liked me
+and cared about my queer life.
+
+He was not a man who had the air of making confidences or talking about
+himself, but before we parted I seemed to know him and his surroundings
+as if he had described them. A mere phrase of his would make a picture.
+Such a few words made his mother quite clear to me. They loved each
+other in an exquisite, intimate way. She was a beautiful person. Artists
+had always painted her. He and she were completely happy when they were
+together. They lived in a house in the country, and I could not at all
+tell how I discovered that it was an old house with beautiful chimneys
+and a very big garden with curious high walls with corner towers round
+it. He only spoke of it briefly, but I saw it as a picture; and always
+afterward, when I thought of his mother, I thought of her as sitting
+under a great and ancient apple-tree with the long, late-afternoon
+shadows stretching on the thick, green grass. I suppose I saw that just
+because he said:
+
+“Will you come to tea under the big apple-tree some afternoon when the
+late shadows are like velvet on the grass? That is perhaps the loveliest
+time.”
+
+When we rose to go and join the rest of the party, he stood a moment and
+glanced round the room at our fellow-guests.
+
+“Are there any of your White People here to-night?” he said, smiling. “I
+shall begin to look for them everywhere.”
+
+I glanced over the faces carelessly. “There are none here to-night,”
+ I answered, and then I flushed because he had smiled. “It was only
+a childish name I gave them,” I hesitated. “I forgot you wouldn’t
+understand. I dare say it sounds silly.”
+
+He looked at me so quickly.
+
+“No! no! no!” he exclaimed. “You mustn’t think that! Certainly not
+silly.”
+
+I do not think he knew that he put out his hand and gently touched my
+arm, as one might touch a child to make it feel one wanted it to listen.
+
+“You don’t know,” he said in his low, slow voice, “how glad I am that
+you have talked to me. Sir Ian said you were not fond of talking to
+people, and I wanted to know you.”
+
+“You care about places like Muircarrie. That is why,” I answered,
+feeling at once how much he understood. “I care for Muircarrie more than
+for all the rest of the world. And I suppose you saw it in my face. I
+dare say that the people who love that kind of life cannot help seeing
+it there.”
+
+“Yes,” he said, “it is in your eyes. It was what I saw and found myself
+wondering about when I watched you in the train. It was really the moor
+and the mist and the things you think are hidden in it.”
+
+“Did you watch me?” I asked. “I could not help watching you a little,
+when you were so kind to the poor woman. I was afraid you would see me
+and think me rude.”
+
+“It was the far look in your face I watched,” he said. “If you will come
+to tea under the big apple-tree I will tell you more about it.”
+
+“Indeed I will come,” I answered. “Now we must go and sit among the
+other people--those who don’t care about Muircarrie at all.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+I went to tea under the big apple-tree. It was very big and old and
+wonderful. No wonder Mr. MacNairn and his mother loved it. Its great
+branches spread out farther than I had ever seen the branches of an
+apple-tree spread before. They were gnarled and knotted and beautiful
+with age. Their shadows upon the grass were velvet, deep and soft. Such
+a tree could only have lived its life in such a garden. At least it
+seemed so to me. The high, dim-colored walls, with their curious, low
+corner towers and the leafage of the wall fruits spread against their
+brick, inclosed it embracingly, as if they were there to take care of
+it and its beauty. But the tree itself seemed to have grown there in all
+its dignified loveliness of shadow to take care of Mrs. MacNairn, who
+sat under it. I felt as if it loved and was proud of her.
+
+I have heard clever literary people speak of Mrs. MacNairn as a
+“survival of type.” Sometimes clever people bewilder me by the terms
+they use, but I thought I understood what they meant in her case. She
+was quite unlike the modern elderly woman, and yet she was not in the
+least old-fashioned or demodee. She was only exquisitely distinct.
+
+When she rose from her chair under the apple-tree boughs and came
+forward to meet me that afternoon, the first things which struck me were
+her height and slenderness and her light step. Then I saw that her clear
+profile seemed cut out of ivory and that her head was a beautiful shape
+and was beautifully set. Its every turn and movement was exquisite. The
+mere fact that both her long, ivory hands enfolded mine thrilled me.
+I wondered if it were possible that she could be unaware of her
+loveliness. Beautiful people are thrilling to me, and Mrs. MacNairn has
+always seemed more so than any one else. This is what her son once said
+of her:
+
+“She is not merely beautiful; she is Beauty--Beauty’s very spirit moving
+about among us mortals; pure Beauty.”
+
+She drew me to a chair under her tree, and we sat down together. I felt
+as if she were glad that I had come. The watching look I had seen in her
+son’s eyes was in hers also. They watched me as we talked, and I found
+myself telling her about my home as I had found myself telling him. He
+had evidently talked to her about it himself. I had never met any one
+who thought of Muircarrie as I did, but it seemed as if they who were
+strangers were drawn by its wild, beautiful loneliness as I was.
+
+I was happy. In my secret heart I began to ask myself if it could be
+true that they made me feel a little as if I somehow belonged to some
+one. I had always seemed so detached from every one. I had not been
+miserable about it, and I had not complained to myself; I only accepted
+the detachment as part of my kind of life.
+
+Mr. MacNairn came into the garden later and several other people came
+in to tea. It was apparently a sort of daily custom--that people who
+evidently adored Mrs. MacNairn dropped in to see and talk to her every
+afternoon. She talked wonderfully, and her friends’ joy in her was
+wonderful, too. It evidently made people happy to be near her. All she
+said and did was like her light step and the movements of her delicate,
+fine head--gracious and soft and arrestingly lovely. She did not let
+me drift away and sit in a corner looking on, as I usually did among
+strangers. She kept me near her, and in some subtle, gentle way made me
+a part of all that was happening--the talk, the charming circle under
+the spreading boughs of the apple-tree, the charm of everything.
+Sometimes she would put out her exquisite, long-fingered hand and touch
+me very lightly, and each time she did it I felt as if she had given me
+new life.
+
+There was an interesting elderly man who came among the rest of the
+guests. I was interested in him even before she spoke to me of him. He
+had a handsome, aquiline face which looked very clever. His talk was
+brilliantly witty. When he spoke people paused as if they could not
+bear to lose a phrase or even a word. But in the midst of the trills
+of laughter surrounding him his eyes were unchangingly sad. His face
+laughed or smiled, but his eyes never.
+
+“He is the greatest artist in England and the most brilliant man,” Mrs.
+MacNairn said to me, quietly. “But he is the saddest, too. He had a
+lovely daughter who was killed instantly, in his presence, by a fall.
+They had been inseparable companions and she was the delight of his
+life. That strange, fixed look has been in his eyes ever since. I know
+you have noticed it.”
+
+We were walking about among the flower-beds after tea, and Mr. MacNairn
+was showing me a cloud of blue larkspurs in a corner when I saw
+something which made me turn toward him rather quickly.
+
+“There is one!” I said. “Do look at her! Now you see what I mean! The
+girl standing with her hand on Mr. Le Breton’s arm.”
+
+Mr. Le Breton was the brilliant man with the sad eyes. He was standing
+looking at a mass of white-and-purple iris at the other side of the
+garden. There were two or three people with him, but it seemed as if for
+a moment he had forgotten them--had forgotten where he was. I wondered
+suddenly if his daughter had been fond of irises. He was looking at them
+with such a tender, lost expression. The girl, who was a lovely, fair
+thing, was standing quite close to him with her hand in his arm, and she
+was smiling, too--such a smile!
+
+“Mr. Le Breton!” Mr. MacNairn said in a rather startled tone. “The girl
+with her hand in his arm?”
+
+“Yes. You see how fair she is,” I answered.
+
+“And she has that transparent look. It is so lovely. Don’t you think so?
+SHE is one of the White People.”
+
+He stood very still, looking across the flowers at the group. There was
+a singular interest and intensity in his expression. He watched the pair
+silently for a whole minute, I think.
+
+“Ye-es,” he said, slowly, at last, “I do see what you mean--and it IS
+lovely. I don’t seem to know her well. She must be a new friend of my
+mother’s. So she is one of the White People?”
+
+“She looks like a white iris herself, doesn’t she?” I said. “Now you
+know.”
+
+“Yes; now I know,” he answered.
+
+I asked Mrs. MacNairn later who the girl was, but she didn’t seem to
+recognize my description of her. Mr. Le Breton had gone away by that
+time, and so had the girl herself.
+
+“The tall, very fair one in the misty, pale-gray dress,” I said. “She
+was near Mr. Le Breton when he was looking at the iris-bed. You were
+cutting some roses only a few yards away from her. That VERY fair girl?”
+
+Mrs. MacNairn paused a moment and looked puzzled.
+
+“Mildred Keith is fair,” she reflected, “but she was not there then. I
+don’t recall seeing a girl. I was cutting some buds for Mrs. Anstruther.
+I--” She paused again and turned toward her son, who was standing
+watching us. I saw their eyes meet in a rather arrested way.
+
+“It was not Mildred Keith,” he said. “Miss Muircarrie is inquiring
+because this girl was one of those she calls the White People. She was
+not any one I had seen here before.”
+
+There was a second’s silence before Mrs. MacNairn smilingly gave me one
+of her light, thrilling touches on my arm.
+
+“Ah! I remember,” she said. “Hector told me about the White People. He
+rather fancied I might be one.”
+
+I am afraid I rather stared at her as I slowly shook my head. You see
+she was almost one, but not quite.
+
+“I was so busy with my roses that I did not notice who was standing near
+Mr. Le Breton,” she said. “Perhaps it was Anabel Mere. She is a more
+transparent sort of girl than Mildred, and she is more blond. And you
+don’t know her, Hector? I dare say it was she.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+I remained in London several weeks. I stayed because the MacNairns were
+so good to me. I could not have told any one how I loved Mrs. MacNairn,
+and how different everything seemed when I was with her. I was never shy
+when we were together. There seemed to be no such thing as shyness in
+the world. I was not shy with Mr. MacNairn, either. After I had sat
+under the big apple-tree boughs in the walled garden a few times I
+realized that I had begun to belong to somebody. Those two marvelous
+people cared for me in that way--in a way that made me feel as if I
+were a real girl, not merely a queer little awkward ghost in a far-away
+castle which nobody wanted to visit because it was so dull and desolate
+and far from London. They were so clever, and knew all the interesting
+things in the world, but their cleverness and experience never
+bewildered or overwhelmed me.
+
+“You were born a wonderful little creature, and Angus Macayre has filled
+your mind with strange, rich furnishings and marvelous color and form,”
+ Mrs. MacNairn actually said to me one day when we were sitting together
+and she was holding my hand and softly, slowly patting it. She had a
+way of doing that, and she had also a way of keeping me very near her
+whenever she could. She said once that she liked to touch me now and
+then to make sure that I was quite real and would not melt away. I did
+not know then why she said it, but I understood afterward.
+
+Sometimes we sat under the apple-tree until the long twilight deepened
+into shadow, which closed round us, and a nightingale that lived in the
+garden began to sing. We all three loved the nightingale, and felt as
+though it knew that we were listening to it. It is a wonderful thing to
+sit quite still listening to a bird singing in the dark, and to dare to
+feel that while it sings it knows how your soul adores it. It is like a
+kind of worship.
+
+We had been sitting listening for quite a long time, and the nightingale
+had just ceased and left the darkness an exquisite silence which fell
+suddenly but softly as the last note dropped, when Mrs. MacNairn began
+to talk for the first time of what she called The Fear.
+
+I don’t remember just how she began, and for a few minutes I did not
+quite understand what she meant. But as she went on, and Mr. MacNairn
+joined in the talk, their meaning became a clear thing to me, and I knew
+that they were only talking quite simply of something they had often
+talked of before. They were not as afraid of The Fear as most people
+are, because they had thought of and reasoned about it so much, and
+always calmly and with clear and open minds.
+
+By The Fear they meant that mysterious horror most people feel at the
+thought of passing out of the world they know into the one they don’t
+know at all.
+
+How quiet, how still it was inside the walls of the old garden, as we
+three sat under the boughs and talked about it! And what sweet night
+scents of leaves and sleeping flowers were in every breath we drew! And
+how one’s heart moved and lifted when the nightingale broke out again!
+
+“If one had seen or heard one little thing, if one’s mortal being could
+catch one glimpse of light in the dark,” Mrs. MacNairn’s low voice said
+out of the shadow near me, “The Fear would be gone forever.”
+
+“Perhaps the whole mystery is as simple as this,” said her son’s voice
+“as simple as this: that as there are tones of music too fine to be
+registered by the human ear, so there may be vibrations of light not to
+be seen by the human eye; form and color as well as sounds; just
+beyond earthly perception, and yet as real as ourselves, as formed as
+ourselves, only existing in that other dimension.”
+
+There was an intenseness which was almost a note of anguish in Mrs.
+MacNairn’s answer, even though her voice was very low. I involuntarily
+turned my head to look at her, though of course it was too dark to see
+her face. I felt somehow as if her hands were wrung together in her lap.
+
+“Oh!” she said, “if one only had some shadow of a proof that the mystery
+is only that WE cannot see, that WE cannot hear, though they are really
+quite near us, with us--the ones who seem to have gone away and whom we
+feel we cannot live without. If once we could be sure! There would be no
+Fear--there would be none!”
+
+“Dearest”--he often called her “Dearest,” and his voice had a wonderful
+sound in the darkness; it was caress and strength, and it seemed to
+speak to her of things they knew which I did not--“we have vowed to each
+other that we WILL believe there is no reason for The Fear. It was a vow
+between us.”
+
+“Yes! Yes!” she cried, breathlessly, “but sometimes,
+Hector--sometimes--”
+
+“Miss Muircarrie does not feel it--”
+
+“Please say ‘Ysobel’!” I broke in. “Please do.”
+
+He went on as quietly as if he had not even paused:
+
+“Ysobel told me the first night we met that it seemed as if she could
+not believe in it.”
+
+“It never seems real to me at all,” I said. “Perhaps that is because I
+can never forget what Jean told me about my mother lying still upon her
+bed, and listening to some one calling her.” (I had told them Jean’s
+story a few days before.) “I knew it was my father; Jean knew, too.”
+
+“How did you know?” Mrs. MacNairn’s voice was almost a whisper.
+
+“I could not tell you that. I never asked myself HOW it was. But I KNEW.
+We both KNEW. Perhaps”--I hesitated--“it was because in the Highlands
+people often believe things like that. One hears so many stories all
+one’s life that in the end they don’t seem strange. I have always heard
+them. Those things you know about people who have the second sight. And
+about the seals who change themselves into men and come on shore and
+fall in love with girls and marry them. They say they go away now and
+then, and no one really knows where but it is believed that they go
+back to their own people and change into seals again, because they
+must plunge and riot about in the sea. Sometimes they come home, but
+sometimes they do not.
+
+“A beautiful young stranger, with soft, dark eyes, appeared once not
+far from Muircarrie, and he married a boatman’s daughter. He was very
+restless one night, and got up and left her, and she never saw him
+again; but a few days later a splendid dead seal covered with wounds was
+washed up near his cottage. The fishers say that his people had wanted
+to keep him from his land wife, and they had fought with him and killed
+him. His wife had a son with strange, velvet eyes like his father’s,
+and she couldn’t keep him away from the water. When he was old enough
+to swim he swam out one day, because he thought he saw some seals and
+wanted to get near them. He swam out too far, perhaps. He never came
+back, and the fishermen said his father’s people had taken him. When one
+has heard stories like that all one’s life nothing seems very strange.”
+
+“Nothing really IS strange,” said Hector MacNairn. “Again and again
+through all the ages we have been told the secrets of the gods and the
+wonders of the Law, and we have revered and echoed but never believed.
+When we believe and know all is simple we shall not be afraid. You are
+not afraid, Ysobel. Tell my mother you are not.”
+
+I turned my face toward her again in the darkness. I felt as if
+something was going on between them which he somehow knew I could help
+them in. It was as though he were calling on something in my nature
+which I did not myself comprehend, but which his profound mind saw and
+knew was stronger than I was.
+
+Suddenly I felt as if I might trust to him and to It, and that, without
+being troubled or anxious, I would just say the first thing which came
+into my mind, because it would be put there for me by some power which
+could dictate to me. I never felt younger or less clever than I did at
+that moment; I was only Ysobel Muircarrie, who knew almost nothing. But
+that did not seem to matter. It was such a simple, almost childish thing
+I told her. It was only about The Dream.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+“The feeling you call The Fear has never come to me,” I said to her.
+“And if it had I think it would have melted away because of a dream I
+once had. I don’t really believe it was a dream, but I call it one. I
+think I really went somewhere and came back. I often wonder why I
+came back. It was only a short dream, so simple that there is scarcely
+anything to tell, and perhaps it will not convey anything to you. But it
+has been part of my life--that time when I was Out on the Hillside. That
+is what I call The Dream to myself, ‘Out on the Hillside,’ as if it were
+a kind of unearthly poem. But it wasn’t. It was more real than anything
+I have ever felt. It was real--real! I wish that I could tell it so that
+you would know how real it was.”
+
+I felt almost piteous in my longing to make her know. I knew she was
+afraid of something, and if I could make her know how REAL that one
+brief dream had been she would not be afraid any more. And I loved her,
+I loved her so much!
+
+“I was asleep one night at Muircarrie,” I went on, “and suddenly,
+without any preparatory dreaming, I was standing out on a hillside
+in moonlight softer and more exquisite than I had ever seen or known
+before. Perhaps I was still in my nightgown--I don’t know. My feet were
+bare on the grass, and I wore something light and white which did not
+seem to touch me. If it touched me I did not feel it. My bare feet did
+not feel the grass; they only knew it was beneath them.
+
+“It was a low hill I stood on, and I was only on the side of it. And in
+spite of the thrilling beauty of the moon, all but the part I stood on
+melted into soft, beautiful shadow, all below me and above me. But I did
+not turn to look at or ask myself about anything. You see the difficulty
+is that there are no earthly words to tell it! All my being was
+ecstasy--pure, light ecstasy! Oh, what poor words-- But I know no
+others. If I said that I was happy--HAPPY!--it would be nothing. I WAS
+happiness itself, I WAS pure rapture! I did not look at the beauty of
+the night, the sky, the marvelous melting shadow. I was PART of it
+all, one with it. Nothing held me nothing! The beauty of the night, the
+light, the air WERE what I was, and I was only thrilling ecstasy and
+wonder at the rapture of it.”
+
+I stopped and covered my face with my hands, and tears wet my fingers.
+
+“Oh, I cannot make it real! I was only there such a short, short time.
+Even if you had been with me I could not have found words for it, even
+then. It was such a short time. I only stood and lifted my face and felt
+the joy of it, the pure marvel of joy. I only heard myself murmuring
+over and over again: ‘Oh, how beautiful! how beautiful! Oh, how
+BEAUTIFUL!’
+
+“And then a marvel of new joy swept through me. I said, very softly and
+very slowly, as if my voice were trailing away into silence:
+‘Oh--h! I--can--lie--down--here--on--the grass--and--sleep . . .
+all--through--the night--under--this--moonlight. . . . I can
+sleep--sleep--’
+
+“I began to sink softly down, with the heavenliest feeling of relaxation
+and repose, as if there existed only the soul of beautiful rest. I sank
+so softly--and just as my cheek almost touched the grass the dream was
+over!”
+
+“Oh!” cried Mrs. MacNairn. “Did you awaken?”
+
+“No. I came back. In my sleep I suddenly found myself creeping into my
+bed again as if I had been away somewhere. I was wondering why I was
+there, how I had left the hillside, when I had left it. That part
+WAS a dream--but the other was not. I was allowed to go
+somewhere--outside--and come back.”
+
+I caught at her hand in the dark.
+
+“The words are all wrong,” I said. “It is because we have no words to
+describe that. But have I made you feel it at all? Oh! Mrs. MacNairn,
+have I been able to make you know that it was not a dream?”
+
+She lifted my hand and pressed it passionately against her cheek, and
+her cheek, too, was wet--wet.
+
+“No, it was not a dream,” she said. “You came back. Thank God you came
+back, just to tell us that those who do not come back stand awakened in
+that ecstasy--in that ecstasy. And The Fear is nothing. It is only
+The Dream. The awakening is out on the hillside, out on the hillside!
+Listen!” She started as she said it. “Listen! The nightingale is
+beginning again.”
+
+He sent forth in the dark a fountain--a rising, aspiring fountain--of
+golden notes which seemed to reach heaven itself. The night was made
+radiant by them. He flung them upward like a shower of stars into
+the sky. We sat and listened, almost holding our breath. Oh! the
+nightingale! the nightingale!
+
+“He knows,” Hector MacNairn’s low voice said, “that it was not a dream.”
+
+When there was silence again I heard him leave his chair very quietly.
+
+“Good night! good night!” he said, and went away. I felt somehow that
+he had left us together for a purpose, but, oh, I did not even remotely
+dream what the purpose was! But soon she told me, almost in a whisper.
+
+“We love you very much, Ysobel,” she said. “You know that?”
+
+“I love you both, with all my heart,” I answered. “Indeed I love you.”
+
+“We two have been more to each other than mere mother and son. We have
+been sufficient for each other. But he began to love you that first day
+when he watched you in the railway carriage. He says it was the far look
+in your eyes which drew him.”
+
+“I began to love him, too,” I said. And I was not at all ashamed or shy
+in saying it.
+
+“We three might have spent our lives together,” she went on. “It would
+have been a perfect thing. But--but--” She stood up as if she could not
+remain seated. Involuntarily I stood up with her. She was trembling, and
+she caught and held me in her arms. “He cannot stay, Ysobel,” she ended.
+
+I could scarcely hear my own voice when I echoed the words.
+
+“He cannot--stay?”
+
+“Oh! the time will come,” she said, “when people who love each other
+will not be separated, when on this very earth there will be no pain, no
+grief, no age, no death--when all the world has learned the Law at
+last. But we have not learned it yet. And here we stand! The greatest
+specialists have told us. There is some fatal flaw in his heart. At any
+moment, when he is talking to us, when he is at his work, when he is
+asleep, he may--cease. It will just be ceasing. At any moment. He cannot
+stay.”
+
+My own heart stood still for a second. Then there rose before me slowly,
+but clearly, a vision--the vision which was not a dream.
+
+“Out on the hillside,” I murmured. “Out on the hillside.”
+
+I clung to her with both arms and held her tight. I understood now why
+they had talked about The Fear. These two who were almost one soul
+were trying to believe that they were not really to be torn apart--not
+really. They were trying to heap up for themselves proof that they might
+still be near each other. And, above all, his effort was to save her
+from the worst, worst woe. And I understood, too, why something wiser
+and stronger than myself had led me to tell the dream which was not a
+dream at all.
+
+But it was as she said; the world had not learned the Secret yet. And
+there we stood. We did not cry or talk, but we clung to each other--we
+CLUNG. That is all human creatures can do until the Secret is known. And
+as we clung the nightingale broke out again.
+
+“O nightingale! O nightingale!” she said in her low wonder of a voice.
+“WHAT are you trying to tell us!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+What I feel sure I know by this time is that all the things we think
+happen by chance and accident are only part of the weaving of the scheme
+of life. When you begin to suspect this and to watch closely you also
+begin to see how trifles connect themselves with one another, and seem
+in the end to have led to a reason and a meaning, though we may not
+be clever enough to see it clearly. Nothing is an accident. We make
+everything happen ourselves: the wrong things because we do not know
+or care whether we are wrong or right, the right ones because we
+unconsciously or consciously choose the right even in the midst of our
+ignorance.
+
+I dare say it sounds audacious for an ordinary girl to say such things
+in an ordinary way; but perhaps I have said them in spite of myself,
+because it is not a bad thing that they should be said by an every-day
+sort of person in simple words which other every-day people can
+understand. I am only expressing what has gradually grown into belief in
+my mind through reading with Angus ancient books and modern ones--books
+about faiths and religions, books about philosophies and magics, books
+about what the world calls marvels, but which are not marvels at all,
+but only workings of the Law most people have not yet reasoned about or
+even accepted.
+
+Angus had read and studied them all his life before he began to read
+them with me, and we talked them over together sitting by the fire in
+the library, fascinated and staring at each other, I in one high-backed
+chair and he in another on the opposite side of the hearth. Angus is
+wonderful--wonderful! He KNOWS there is no such thing as chance.
+He KNOWS that we ourselves are the working of the Law--and that we
+ourselves could work what now are stupidly called “miracles” if we could
+only remember always what the Law is.
+
+What I intended to say at first was merely that it was not by chance
+that I climbed to the shelf in the library that afternoon and pushed
+aside the books hiding the old manuscript which told the real story of
+Dark Malcolm of the Glen and Wee Brown Elspeth. It seemed like chance
+when it happened, but it was really the first step toward my finding out
+the strange, beautiful thing I knew soon afterward.
+
+From the beginning of my friendship with the MacNairns I had hoped they
+would come and stay with me at Muircarrie. When they both seemed to
+feel such interest in all I told them of it, and not to mind its wild
+remoteness, I took courage and asked them if they would come to me. Most
+people are bored by the prospect of life in a feudal castle, howsoever
+picturesquely it is set in a place where there are no neighbors to count
+on. Its ancient stateliness is too dull. But the MacNairns were more
+allured by what Muircarrie offered than they were by other and more
+brilliant invitations. So when I went back to the castle I was only to
+be alone a week before they followed me.
+
+Jean and Angus were quite happy in their quiet way when I told them
+who I was expecting. They knew how glad I was myself. Jean was full of
+silent pleasure as she arranged the rooms I had chosen for my guests,
+rooms which had the most sweeping view of the moor. Angus knew that Mr.
+MacNairn would love the library, and he hovered about consulting his
+catalogues and looking over his shelves, taking down volumes here and
+there, holding them tenderly in his long, bony old hand as he dipped
+into them. He made notes of the manuscripts and books he thought Mr.
+MacNairn would feel the deepest interest in. He loved his library with
+all his being, and I knew he looked forward to talking to a man who
+would care for it in the same way.
+
+He had been going over one of the highest shelves one day and had left
+his step-ladder leaning against it when he went elsewhere. It was when
+I mounted the steps, as I often did when he left them, that I came
+upon the manuscript which related the old story of Dark Malcolm and his
+child. It had been pushed behind some volumes, and I took it out because
+it looked so old and yellow. And I opened at once at the page where the
+tale began.
+
+At first I stood reading, and then I sat down on the broad top of the
+ladder and forgot everything. It was a savage history of ferocious hate
+and barbarous reprisals. It had been a feud waged between two clans for
+three generations. The story of Dark Malcolm and Ian Red Hand was only
+part of it, but it was a gruesome thing. Pages told of the bloody deeds
+they wrought on each other’s houses. The one human passion of Dark
+Malcolm’s life was his love for his little daughter. She had brown
+eyes and brown hair, and those who most loved her called her Wee Brown
+Elspeth. Ian Red Hand was richer and more powerful than Malcolm of the
+Glen, and therefore could more easily work his cruel will. He knew well
+of Malcolm’s worship of his child, and laid his plans to torture him
+through her. Dark Malcolm, coming back to his rude, small castle one
+night after a raid in which he had lost followers and weapons and
+strength, found that Wee Brown Elspeth had been carried away, and
+unspeakable taunts and threats left behind by Ian and his men. With
+unbound wounds, broken dirks and hacked swords, Dark Malcolm and the
+remnant of his troop of fighting clansmen rushed forth into the night.
+
+“Neither men nor weapons have we to win her back,” screamed Dark
+Malcolm, raving mad, “but we may die fighting to get near enough to her
+to drive dirk into her little breast and save her from worse.”
+
+They were a band of madmen in their black despair. How they tore through
+the black night; what unguarded weak spot they found in Ian’s castle
+walls; how they fought their way through it, leaving their dead bodies
+in the path, none really ever knew. By what strange chance Dark Malcolm
+came upon Wee Brown Elspeth, craftily set to playing hide-and-seek with
+a child of Ian’s so that she might not cry out and betray her presence;
+how, already wounded to his death, he caught at and drove his dirk into
+her child heart, the story only offers guesses at. But kill and save her
+he did, falling dead with her body held against his breast, her brown
+hair streaming over it. Not one living man went back to the small, rude
+castle on the Glen--not one.
+
+I sat and read and read until the room grew dark. When I stopped I
+found that Angus Macayre was standing in the dimness at the foot of the
+ladder. He looked up at me and I down at him. For a few moments we were
+both quite still.
+
+“It is the tale of Ian Red Hand and Dark Malcolm you are reading?” he
+said, at last.
+
+“And Wee Brown Elspeth, who was fought for and killed,” I added, slowly.
+
+Angus nodded his head with a sad face. “It was the only way for a
+father,” he said. “A hound of hell was Ian. Such men were savage beasts
+in those days, not human.”
+
+I touched the manuscript with my hand questioningly. “Did this fall at
+the back there by accident,” I asked, “or did you hide it?”
+
+“I did,” he answered. “It was no tale for a young thing to read. I have
+hidden many from you. You were always poking about in corners, Ysobel.”
+
+Then I sat and thought over past memories for a while and the shadows in
+the room deepened.
+
+“Why,” I said, laggingly, after the silence--“why did I call the child
+who used to play with me ‘Wee Brown Elspeth’?”
+
+“It was your own fancy,” was his reply. “I used to wonder myself; but
+I made up my mind that you had heard some of the maids talking and the
+name had caught your ear. That would be a child’s way.”
+
+I put my forehead in my hands and thought again. So many years had
+passed! I had been little more than a baby; the whole thing seemed like
+a half-forgotten dream when I tried to recall it--but I seemed to dimly
+remember strange things.
+
+“Who were the wild men who brought her to me first--that day on the
+moor?” I said. “I do remember they had pale, savage, exultant faces. And
+torn, stained clothes. And broken dirks and swords. But they were glad
+of something. Who were they?”
+
+“I did not see them. The mist was too thick,” he answered. “They were
+some wild hunters, perhaps.”
+
+“It gives me such a strange feeling to try to remember, Angus,” I said,
+lifting my forehead from my hands.
+
+“Don’t try,” he said. “Give me the manuscript and get down from the
+step-ladder. Come and look at the list of books I have made for Mr.
+MacNairn.”
+
+I did as he told me, but I felt as if I were walking in a dream. My mind
+seemed to have left my body and gone back to the day when I sat a little
+child on the moor and heard the dull sound of horses’ feet and the
+jingling metal and the creak of leather coming nearer in the thick mist.
+
+I felt as if Angus were in a queer, half-awake mood, too--as if two sets
+of thoughts were working at the same time in his mind: one his thoughts
+about Hector MacNairn and the books, the other some queer thoughts which
+went on in spite of him.
+
+When I was going to leave the library and go up-stairs to dress for
+dinner he said a strange thing to me, and he said it slowly and in a
+heavy voice.
+
+“There is a thing Jean and I have often talked of telling you,” he said.
+“We have not known what it was best to do. Times we have been troubled
+because we could not make up our minds. This Mr. Hector MacNairn is
+no common man. He is one who is great and wise enough to decide things
+plain people could not be sure of. Jean and I are glad indeed that he
+and his mother are coming. Jean can talk to her and I can talk to him,
+being a man body. They will tell us whether we have been right or wrong
+and what we must do.”
+
+“They are wise enough to tell you anything,” I answered. “It sounds
+as if you and Jean had known some big secret all my life. But I am not
+frightened. You two would go to your graves hiding it if it would hurt
+me.”
+
+“Eh, bairn!” he said, suddenly, in a queer, moved way. “Eh, bairn!” And
+he took hold of both my hands and kissed them, pressing them quite
+long and emotionally to his lips. But he said nothing else, and when he
+dropped them I went out of the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+It was wonderful when Mr. MacNairn and his mother came. It was even
+more beautiful than I had thought it would be. They arrived late in
+the afternoon, and when I took them out upon the terrace the sun was
+reddening the moor, and even the rough, gray towers of the castle
+were stained rose-color. There was that lovely evening sound of birds
+twittering before they went to sleep in the ivy. The glimpses of gardens
+below seemed like glimpses of rich tapestries set with jewels. And there
+was such stillness! When we drew our three chairs in a little group
+together and looked out on it all, I felt as if we were almost in
+heaven.
+
+“Yes! yes!” Hector said, looking slowly--round; “it is all here.”
+
+“Yes,” his mother added, in her lovely, lovely voice. “It is what made
+you Ysobel.”
+
+It was so angelic of them to feel it all in that deep, quiet way, and to
+think that it was part of me and I a part of it. The climbing moon was
+trembling with beauty. Tender evening airs quivered in the heather and
+fern, and the late birds called like spirits.
+
+Ever since the night when Mrs. MacNairn had held me in her arms under
+the apple-tree while the nightingale sang I had felt toward her son as
+if he were an archangel walking on the earth. Perhaps my thoughts were
+exaggerated, but it seemed so marvelous that he should be moving among
+us, doing his work, seeing and talking to his friends, and yet that he
+should know that at any moment the great change might come and he might
+awaken somewhere else, in quite another place. If he had been like other
+men and I had been like other girls, I suppose that after that night
+when I heard the truth I should have been plunged into the darkest woe
+and have almost sobbed myself to death. Why did I not? I do not know
+except--except that I felt that no darkness could come between us
+because no darkness could touch him. He could never be anything but
+alive alive. If I could not see him it would only be because my eyes
+were not clear and strong enough. I seemed to be waiting for something.
+I wanted to keep near him.
+
+I was full of this feeling as we sat together on the terrace and watched
+the moon. I could scarcely look away from him. He was rather pale that
+evening, but there seemed to be a light behind his pallor, and his eyes
+seemed to see so much more than the purple and yellow of the heather and
+gorse as they rested on them.
+
+After I had watched him silently for a little while I leaned forward and
+pointed to a part of the moor where there was an unbroken blaze of gorse
+in full bloom like a big patch of gold.
+
+“That is where I was sitting when Wee Brown Elspeth was first brought to
+me,” I said.
+
+He sat upright and looked. “Is it?” he answered. “Will you take me there
+to-morrow? I have always wanted to see the place.”
+
+“Would you like to go early in the morning? The mist is more likely to
+be there then, as it was that day. It is so mysterious and beautiful.
+Would you like to do that?” I asked him.
+
+“Better than anything else!” he said. “Yes, let us go in the morning.”
+
+“Wee Brown Elspeth seems very near me this evening,” I said. “I feel as
+if--” I broke off and began again. “I have a puzzled feeling about her.
+This afternoon I found some manuscript pushed behind a book on a high
+shelf in the library. Angus said he had hidden it there because it was a
+savage story he did not wish me to read. It was the history of the feud
+between Ian Red Hand and Dark Malcolm of the Glen. Dark Malcolm’s child
+was called Wee Brown Elspeth hundreds of years ago--five hundred, I
+think. It makes me feel so bewildered when I remember the one I played
+with.”
+
+“It was a bloody story,” he said. “I heard it only a few days before we
+met at Sir Ian’s house in London.”
+
+That made me recall something.
+
+“Was that why you started when I told you about Elspeth?” I asked.
+
+“Yes. Perhaps the one you played with was a little descendant who had
+inherited her name,” he answered, a trifle hurriedly. “I confess I was
+startled for a moment.”
+
+I put my hand up to my forehead and rubbed it unconsciously. I could not
+help seeing a woesome picture.
+
+“Poor little soul, with the blood pouring from her heart and her brown
+hair spread over her dead father’s breast!” I stopped, because a faint
+memory came back to me. “Mine,” I stammered--“mine--how strange!--had
+a great stain on the embroideries of her dress. She looked at it--and
+looked. She looked as if she didn’t like it--as if she didn’t understand
+how it came there. She covered it with ferns and bluebells.”
+
+I felt as if I were being drawn away into a dream. I made a sudden
+effort to come back. I ceased rubbing my forehead and dropped my hand,
+sitting upright.
+
+“I must ask Angus and Jean to tell me about her,” I said. “Of course,
+they must have known. I wonder why I never thought of asking questions
+before.”
+
+It was a strange look I met when I involuntarily turned toward him--such
+an absorbed, strange, tender look!
+
+I knew he sat quite late in the library that night, talking to Angus
+after his mother and I went to our rooms. Just as I was falling asleep
+I remember there floated through my mind a vague recollection of
+what Angus had said to me of asking his advice about something; and I
+wondered if he would reach the subject in their talk, or if they would
+spend all their time in poring over manuscripts and books together.
+
+The moor wore its most mysterious look when I got up in the early
+morning. It had hidden itself in its softest snows of white, swathing
+mist. Only here and there dark fir-trees showed themselves above it, and
+now and then the whiteness thinned or broke and drifted. It was as I had
+wanted him to see it--just as I had wanted to walk through it with him.
+
+We had met in the hall as we had planned, and, wrapped in our plaids
+because the early morning air was cold, we tramped away together. No one
+but myself could ever realize what it was like. I had never known that
+there could be such a feeling of companionship in the world. It would
+not have been necessary for us to talk at all if we had felt silent. We
+should have been saying things to each other without words. But we did
+talk as we walked--in quiet voices which seemed made quieter by the
+mist, and of quiet things which such voices seemed to belong to.
+
+We crossed the park to a stile in a hedge where a path led at once on to
+the moor. Part of the park itself had once been moorland, and was dark
+with slender firs and thick grown with heather and broom. On the moor
+the mist grew thicker, and if I had not so well known the path we might
+have lost ourselves in it. Also I knew by heart certain little streams
+that rushed and made guiding sounds which were sometimes loud whispers
+and sometimes singing babbles. The damp, sweet scent of fern and heather
+was in our nostrils; as we climbed we breathed its freshness.
+
+“There is a sort of unearthly loveliness in it all,” Hector MacNairn
+said to me. His voice was rather like his mother’s. It always seemed to
+say so much more than his words.
+
+“We might be ghosts,” I answered. “We might be some of those the mist
+hides because they like to be hidden.”
+
+“You would not be afraid if you met one of them?” he said.
+
+“No. I think I am sure of that. I should feel that it was only like
+myself, and, if I could hear, might tell me things I want to know.”
+
+“What do you want to know?” he asked me, very low. “You!”
+
+“Only what everybody wants to know--that it is really AWAKENING free,
+ready for wonderful new things, finding oneself in the midst of wonders.
+I don’t mean angels with harps and crowns, but beauty such as we see
+now; only seeing it without burdens of fears before and behind us. And
+knowing there is no reason to be afraid. We have all been so afraid. We
+don’t know how afraid we have been--of everything.”
+
+I stopped among the heather and threw my arms out wide. I drew in a
+great, joyous morning breath.
+
+“Free like that! It is the freeness, the light, splendid freeness, I
+think of most.”
+
+“The freeness!” he repeated. “Yes, the freeness!”
+
+“As for beauty,” I almost whispered, in a sort of reverence for visions
+I remembered, “I have stood on this moor a thousand times and seen
+loveliness which made me tremble. One’s soul could want no more in any
+life. But ‘Out on the Hillside’ I KNEW I was part of it, and it was
+ecstasy. That was the freeness.”
+
+“Yes--it was the freeness,” he answered.
+
+We brushed through the heather and the bracken, and flower-bells shook
+showers of radiant drops upon us. The mist wavered and sometimes lifted
+before us, and opened up mystic vistas to veil them again a few minutes
+later. The sun tried to break through, and sometimes we walked in a
+golden haze.
+
+We fell into silence. Now and then I glanced sidewise at my companion as
+we made our soundless way over the thick moss. He looked so strong
+and beautiful. His tall body was so fine, his shoulders so broad and
+splendid! How could it be! How could it be! As he tramped beside me he
+was thinking deeply, and he knew he need not talk to me. That made me
+glad--that he should know me so well and feel me so near. That was what
+he felt when he was with his mother, that she understood and that at
+times neither of them needed words.
+
+Until we had reached the patch of gorse where we intended to end our
+walk we did not speak at all. He was thinking of things which led him
+far. I knew that, though I did not know what they were. When we reached
+the golden blaze we had seen the evening before it was a flame of gold
+again, because--it was only for a few moments--the mist had blown apart
+and the sun was shining on it.
+
+As we stood in the midst of it together--Oh! how strange and beautiful
+it was!--Mr. MacNairn came back. That was what it seemed to me--that he
+came back. He stood quite still a moment and looked about him, and then
+he stretched out his arms as I had stretched out mine. But he did it
+slowly, and a light came into his face.
+
+“If, after it was over, a man awakened as you said and found
+himself--the self he knew, but light, free, splendid--remembering all
+the ages of dark, unknowing dread, of horror of some black, aimless
+plunge, and suddenly seeing all the childish uselessness of it--how he
+would stand and smile! How he would stand and SMILE!”
+
+Never had I understood anything more clearly than I understood then.
+Yes, yes! That would be it. Remembering all the waste of fear, how he
+would stand and SMILE!
+
+He was smiling himself, the golden gorse about him already losing its
+flame in the light returning mist-wraiths closing again over it, when I
+heard a sound far away and high up the moor. It sounded like the playing
+of a piper. He did not seem to notice it.
+
+“We shall be shut in again,” he said. “How mysterious it is, this
+opening and closing! I like it more than anything else. Let us sit down,
+Ysobel.”
+
+He spread the plaid we had brought to sit on, and laid on it the little
+strapped basket Jean had made ready for us. He shook the mist drops from
+our own plaids, and as I was about to sit down I stopped a moment to
+listen.
+
+“That is a tune I never heard on the pipes before,” I said. “What is a
+piper doing out on the moor so early?”
+
+He listened also. “It must be far away. I don’t hear it,” he said.
+“Perhaps it is a bird whistling.”
+
+“It is far away,” I answered, “but it is not a bird. It’s the pipes, and
+playing such a strange tune. There! It has stopped!”
+
+But it was not silent long; I heard the tune begin again much nearer,
+and the piper was plainly coming toward us. I turned my head.
+
+The mist was clearing, and floated about like a thin veil through which
+one could see objects. At a short distance above us on the moor I saw
+something moving. It was a man who was playing the pipes. It was the
+piper, and almost at once I knew him, because it was actually my own
+Feargus, stepping proudly through the heather with his step like a stag
+on the hills. His head was held high, and his face had a sort of elated
+delight in it as if he were enjoying himself and the morning and the
+music in a new way. I was so surprised that I rose to my feet and called
+to him.
+
+“Feargus!” I cried. “What--”
+
+I knew he heard me, because he turned and looked at me with the most
+extraordinary smile. He was usually a rather grave-faced man, but this
+smile had a kind of startling triumph in it. He certainly heard me, for
+he whipped off his bonnet in a salute which was as triumphant as the
+smile. But he did not answer, and actually passed in and out of sight in
+the mist.
+
+When I rose Mr. MacNairn had risen, too. When I turned to speak in my
+surprise, he had fixed on me his watchful look.
+
+“Imagine its being Feargus at this hour!” I exclaimed. “And why did
+he pass by in such a hurry without answering? He must have been to a
+wedding and have been up all night. He looked--” I stopped a second and
+laughed.
+
+“How did he look?” Mr. MacNairn asked.
+
+“Pale! That won’t do--though he certainly didn’t look ill.” I laughed
+again. “I’m laughing because he looked almost like one of the White
+People.”
+
+“Are you sure it was Feargus?” he said.
+
+“Quite sure. No one else is the least like Feargus. Didn’t you see him
+yourself?”
+
+“I don’t know him as well as you do; and there was the mist,” was his
+answer. “But he certainly was not one of the White People when I saw him
+last night.”
+
+I wondered why he looked as he did when he took my hand and drew me down
+to my place on the plaid again. He did not let it go when he sat down by
+my side. He held it in his own large, handsome one, looking down on it
+a moment or so; and then he bent his head and kissed it long and slowly
+two or three times.
+
+“Dear little Ysobel!” he said. “Beloved, strange little Ysobel.”
+
+“Am I strange!” I said, softly.
+
+“Yes, thank God!” he answered.
+
+I had known that some day when we were at Muircarrie together he would
+tell me what his mother had told me--about what we three might have been
+to one another. I trembled with happiness at the thought of hearing him
+say it himself. I knew he was going to say it now.
+
+He held my hand and stroked it. “My mother told you, Ysobel--what I am
+waiting for?” he said.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Do you know I love you?” he said, very low.
+
+“Yes. I love you, too. My whole life would have been heaven if we could
+always have been together,” was my answer.
+
+He drew me up into his arms so that my cheek lay against his breast as
+I went on, holding fast to the rough tweed of his jacket and whispering:
+“I should have belonged to you two, heart and body and soul. I should
+never have been lonely again. I should have known nothing, whatsoever
+happened, but tender joy.”
+
+“Whatsoever happened?” he murmured.
+
+“Whatsoever happens now, Ysobel, know nothing but tender joy. I think
+you CAN. ‘Out on the Hillside!’ Let us remember.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” I said; “‘Out on the Hillside.’” And our two faces, damp
+with the sweet mist, were pressed together.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The mist had floated away, and the moor was drenched with golden
+sunshine when we went back to the castle. As we entered the hall I heard
+the sound of a dog howling, and spoke of it to one of the men-servants
+who had opened the door.
+
+“That sounds like Gelert. Is he shut up somewhere?”
+
+Gelert was a beautiful sheep-dog who belonged to Feargus and was his
+heart’s friend. I allowed him to be kept in the courtyard.
+
+The man hesitated before he answered me, with a curiously grave face.
+
+“It is Gelert, miss. He is howling for his master. We were obliged to
+shut him in the stables.”
+
+“But Feargus ought to have reached here by this time,” I was beginning.
+
+I was stopped because I found Angus Macayre almost at my elbow. He had
+that moment come out of the library. He put his hand on my arm.
+
+“Will ye come with me?” he said, and led me back to the room he had
+just left. He kept his hand on my arm when we all stood together inside,
+Hector and I looking at him in wondering question. He was going to tell
+me something--we both saw that.
+
+“It is a sad thing you have to hear,” he said. “He was a fine man,
+Feargus, and a most faithful servant. He went to see his mother last
+night and came back late across the moor. There was a heavy mist, and he
+must have lost his way. A shepherd found his body in a tarn at daybreak.
+They took him back to his father’s home.”
+
+I looked at Hector MacNairn and again at Angus. “But it couldn’t be
+Feargus,” I cried. “I saw him an hour ago. He passed us playing on his
+pipes. He was playing a new tune I had never heard before a wonderful,
+joyous thing. I both heard and SAW him!”
+
+Angus stood still and watched me. They both stood still and watched me,
+and even in my excitement I saw that each of them looked a little pale.
+
+“You said you did not hear him at first, but you surely saw him when
+he passed so near,” I protested. “I called to him, and he took off his
+bonnet, though he did not stop. He was going so quickly that perhaps he
+did not hear me call his name.”
+
+What strange thing in Hector’s look checked me? Who knows?
+
+“You DID see him, didn’t you?” I asked of him.
+
+Then he and Angus exchanged glances, as if asking each other to decide
+some grave thing. It was Hector MacNairn who decided it.
+
+“No,” he answered, very quietly, “I neither saw nor heard him, even when
+he passed. But you did.”
+
+“I did, quite plainly,” I went on, more and more bewildered by the
+way in which they kept a sort of tender, awed gaze fixed on me. “You
+remember I even noticed that he looked pale. I laughed, you know, when I
+said he looked almost like one of the White People--”
+
+Just then my breath caught itself and I stopped. I began to remember
+things--hundreds of things.
+
+Angus spoke to me again as quietly as Hector had spoken.
+
+“Neither Jean nor I ever saw Wee Brown Elspeth,” he said--“neither Jean
+nor I. But you did. You have always seen what the rest of us did not
+see, my bairn--always.”
+
+I stammered out a few words, half in a whisper. “I have always seen what
+you others could not see? WHAT--HAVE--I--SEEN?”
+
+But I was not frightened. I suppose I could never tell any one what
+strange, wide, bright places seemed suddenly to open and shine before
+me. Not places to shrink back from--oh no! no! One could be sure,
+then--SURE! Feargus had lifted his bonnet with that extraordinary
+triumph in his look--even Feargus, who had been rather dour.
+
+“You called them the White People,” Hector MacNairn said.
+
+
+Angus and Jean had known all my life. A very old shepherd who had looked
+in my face when I was a baby had said I had the eyes which “SAW.” It
+was only the saying of an old Highlander, and might not have been
+remembered. Later the two began to believe I had a sight they had not.
+The night before Wee Brown Elspeth had been brought to me Angus had read
+for the first time the story of Dark Malcolm, and as they sat near me on
+the moor they had been talking about it. That was why he forgot himself
+when I came to ask them where the child had gone, and told him of the
+big, dark man with the scar on his forehead. After that they were sure.
+
+They had always hidden their knowledge from me because they were afraid
+it might frighten me to be told. I had not been a strong child. They
+kept the secret from my relatives because they knew they would dislike
+to hear it and would not believe, and also would dislike me as a queer,
+abnormal creature. Angus had fears of what they might do with doctors
+and severe efforts to obliterate from my mind my “nonsense,” as they
+would have been sure to call it. The two wise souls had shielded me on
+every side.
+
+“It was better that you should go on thinking it only a simple, natural
+thing,” Angus said. “And as to natural, what IS natural and what is not?
+Man has not learned all the laws of nature yet. Nature’s a grand, rich,
+endless thing, always unrolling her scroll with writings that seem new
+on it. They’re not new. They were always written there. But they were
+not unrolled. Never a law broken, never a new law, only laws read with
+stronger eyes.”
+
+Angus and I had always been very fond of the Bible--the strange old
+temple of wonders, full of all the poems and tragedies and histories of
+man, his hates and battles and loves and follies, and of the Wisdom of
+the universe and the promises of the splendors of it, and which even
+those of us who think ourselves the most believing neither wholly
+believe nor will understand. We had pored over and talked of it. We had
+never thought of it as only a pious thing to do. The book was to us one
+of the mystic, awe-inspiring, prophetic marvels of the world.
+
+That was what made me say, half whispering: “I have wondered and
+wondered what it meant--that verse in Isaiah: ‘Behold the former things
+are come to pass and new things do I declare; before they spring forth I
+tell you of them.’ Perhaps it means only the unrolling of the scroll.”
+
+“Aye, aye!” said Angus; “it is full of such deep sayings, and none of us
+will listen to them.”
+
+“It has taken man eons of time,” Hector MacNairn said, thinking it out
+as he spoke--“eons of time to reach the point where he is beginning to
+know that in every stock and stone in his path may lie hidden some
+power he has not yet dreamed of. He has learned that lightning may be
+commanded, distance conquered, motion chained and utilized; but he, the
+one CONSCIOUS force, has never yet begun to suspect that of all others
+he may be the one as yet the least explored. How do we know that there
+does not lie in each of us a wholly natural but, so far, dormant power
+of sight--a power to see what has been called The Unseen through all the
+Ages whose sightlessness has made them Dark? Who knows when the
+Shadow around us may begin to clear? Oh, we are a dull lot--we human
+things--with a queer, obstinate conceit of ourselves.”
+
+“Complete we think we are,” Angus murmured half to himself. “Finished
+creatures! And look at us! How many of us in a million have beauty
+and health and full power? And believing that the law is that we must
+crumple and go to pieces hour by hour! Who’d waste the time making a
+clock that went wrong as often? Nay, nay! We shall learn better than
+this as time goes on. And we’d better be beginning and setting our minds
+to work on it. ‘Tis for us to do--the minds of us. And what’s the mind
+of us but the Mind that made us? Simple and straight enough it is when
+once you begin to think it out. The spirit of you sees clearer than we
+do, that’s all,” he said to me. “When your mother brought you into the
+world she was listening to one outside calling to her, and it opened the
+way for you.”
+
+At night Hector MacNairn and his mother and I sat on the terrace under
+stars which seemed listening things, and we three drew nearer to one
+another, and nearer and nearer.
+
+“When the poor mother stumbled into the train that day,” was one of the
+things Hector told me, “I was thinking of The Fear and of my own mother.
+You looked so slight and small as you sat in your corner that I thought
+at first you were almost a child. Then a far look in your eyes made me
+begin to watch you. You were so sorry for the poor woman that you could
+not look away from her, and something in your face touched and puzzled
+me. You leaned forward suddenly and put out your hand protectingly as
+she stepped down on to the platform.
+
+“That night when you spoke quite naturally of the child, never doubting
+that I had seen it, I suddenly began to suspect. Because of The
+Fear”--he hesitated--“I had been reading and thinking many things new to
+me. I did not know what I believed. But you spoke so simply, and I knew
+you were speaking the truth. Then you spoke just as naturally of Wee
+Brown Elspeth. That startled me because not long before I had been told
+the tale in the Highlands by a fine old story-teller who is the head of
+his clan. I saw you had never heard the story before. And yet you were
+telling me that you had played with the child.”
+
+“He came home and told me about you,” Mrs. MacNairn said. “His fear of
+The Fear was more for me than for himself. He knew that if he brought
+you to me, you who are more complete than we are, clearer-eyed and
+nearer, nearer, I should begin to feel that he was not going--out. I
+should begin to feel a reality and nearness myself. Ah, Ysobel! How we
+have clung to you and loved you! And then that wonderful afternoon! I
+saw no girl with her hand through Mr. Le Breton’s arm; Hector saw none.
+But you saw her. She was THERE!”
+
+“Yes, she was there,” I answered. “She was there, smiling up at him. I
+wish he could have known.”
+
+
+What does it matter if this seems a strange story? To some it will mean
+something; to some it will mean nothing. To those it has a meaning for
+it will open wide windows into the light and lift heavy loads. That
+would be quite enough, even if the rest thought it only the weird fancy
+of a queer girl who had lived alone and given rein to her silliest
+imaginings. I wanted to tell it, howsoever poorly and ineffectively
+it was done. Since I KNEW I have dropped the load of ages--the black
+burden. Out on the hillside my feet did not even feel the grass, and yet
+I was standing, not floating. I had no wings or crown. I was only Ysobel
+out on the hillside, free!
+
+
+This is the way it all ended.
+
+For three weeks that were like heaven we three lived together at
+Muircarrie. We saw every beauty and shared every joy of sun and dew and
+love and tender understanding.
+
+After one lovely day we had spent on the moor in a quiet dream of joy
+almost strange in its perfectness, we came back to the castle; and,
+because the sunset was of such unearthly radiance and changing wonder
+we sat on the terrace until the last soft touch of gold had died out and
+left the pure, still, clear, long summer twilight.
+
+When Mrs. MacNairn and I went in to dress for dinner, Hector lingered a
+little behind us because the silent beauty held him.
+
+I came down before his mother did, and I went out upon the terrace again
+because I saw he was still sitting there. I went to the stone balustrade
+very quietly and leaned against it as I turned to look at him and speak.
+
+Then I stood quite still and looked long--for some reason not startled,
+not anguished, not even feeling that he had gone. He was more beautiful
+than any human creature I had ever seen before. But It had happened as
+they said it would. He had not ceased--but something else had. Something
+had ceased.
+
+
+It was the next evening before I came out on the terrace again. The day
+had been more exquisite and the sunset more wonderful than before. Mrs.
+MacNairn was sitting by her son’s side in the bedroom whose windows
+looked over the moor. I am not going to say one word of what had come
+between the two sunsets. Mrs. MacNairn and I had clung--and clung. We
+had promised never to part from each other. I did not quite know why I
+went out on the terrace; perhaps it was because I had always loved to
+sit or stand there.
+
+This evening I stood and leaned upon the balustrade, looking out far,
+far, far over the moor. I stood and gazed and gazed. I was thinking
+about the Secret and the Hillside. I was very quiet--as quiet as the
+twilight’s self. And there came back to me the memory of what Hector had
+said as we stood on the golden patch of gorse when the mist had for
+a moment or so blown aside, what he had said of man’s awakening, and,
+remembering all the ages of--childish, useless dread, how he would
+stand-- I did not turn suddenly, but slowly. I was not startled in the
+faintest degree. He stood there close to me as he had so often stood.
+
+And he stood--and smiled.
+
+I have seen him many times since. I shall see him many times again. And
+when I see him he always stands--and smiles.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s The White People, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
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+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The White People, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The White People, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The White People
+
+Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+Release Date: March 14, 2006 [EBook #459]
+Last Updated: September 17, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE PEOPLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Keller and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE WHITE PEOPLE
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Frances Hodgson Burnett
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>THE WHITE PEOPLE</b> </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        TO LIONEL<br /> <br /> &ldquo;The stars come nightly to the sky; <br /> The tidal
+        wave unto the sea; <br /> Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high <br />
+        Can keep my own away from me.&rdquo; <br />
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      THE WHITE PEOPLE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the things which happened could only have happened to me. I do not
+      know. I never heard of things like them happening to any one else. But I
+      am not sorry they did happen. I am in secret deeply and strangely glad. I
+      have heard other people say things&mdash;and they were not always sad
+      people, either&mdash;which made me feel that if they knew what I know it
+      would seem to them as though some awesome, heavy load they had always
+      dragged about with them had fallen from their shoulders. To most people
+      everything is so uncertain that if they could only see or hear and know
+      something clear they would drop upon their knees and give thanks. That was
+      what I felt myself before I found out so strangely, and I was only a girl.
+      That is why I intend to write this down as well as I can. It will not be
+      very well done, because I never was clever at all, and always found it
+      difficult to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I say that perhaps these things could only have happened to me, because,
+      as I look back over my life, I realize that it has always been a rather
+      curious one. Even when those who took care of me did not know I was
+      thinking at all, I had begun to wonder if I were not different from other
+      children. That was, of course, largely because Muircarrie Castle was in
+      such a wild and remote part of Scotland that when my few relations felt
+      they must pay me a visit as a mere matter of duty, their journey from
+      London, or their pleasant places in the south of England, seemed to them
+      like a pilgrimage to a sort of savage land; and when a conscientious one
+      brought a child to play with me, the little civilized creature was as
+      frightened of me as I was of it. My shyness and fear of its strangeness
+      made us both dumb. No doubt I seemed like a new breed of inoffensive
+      little barbarian, knowing no tongue but its own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A certain clannish etiquette made it seem necessary that a relation should
+      pay me a visit sometimes, because I was in a way important. The huge,
+      frowning feudal castle standing upon its battlemented rock was mine; I was
+      a great heiress, and I was, so to speak, the chieftainess of the clan. But
+      I was a plain, undersized little child, and had no attraction for any one
+      but Jean Braidfute, a distant cousin, who took care of me, and Angus
+      Macayre, who took care of the library, and who was a distant relative
+      also. They were both like me in the fact that they were not given to
+      speech; but sometimes we talked to one another, and I knew they were fond
+      of me, as I was fond of them. They were really all I had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I was a little girl I did not, of course, understand that I was an
+      important person, and I could not have realized the significance of being
+      an heiress. I had always lived in the castle, and was used to its
+      hugeness, of which I only knew corners. Until I was seven years old, I
+      think, I imagined all but very poor people lived in castles and were
+      saluted by every one they passed. It seemed probable that all little girls
+      had a piper who strode up and down the terrace and played on the bagpipes
+      when guests were served in the dining-hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My piper&rsquo;s name was Feargus, and in time I found out that the guests from
+      London could not endure the noise he made when he marched to and fro,
+      proudly swinging his kilts and treading like a stag on a hillside. It was
+      an insult to tell him to stop playing, because it was his religion to
+      believe that The Muircarrie must be piped proudly to; and his ancestors
+      had been pipers to the head of the clan for five generations. It was his
+      duty to march round the dining-hall and play while the guests feasted, but
+      I was obliged in the end to make him believe that he could be heard better
+      from the terrace&mdash;because when he was outside his music was not
+      spoiled by the sound of talking. It was very difficult, at first. But
+      because I was his chieftainess, and had learned how to give orders in a
+      rather proud, stern little voice, he knew he must obey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even this kind of thing may show that my life was a peculiar one; but the
+      strangest part of it was that, while I was at the head of so many people,
+      I did not really belong to any one, and I did not know that this was
+      unusual. One of my early memories is that I heard an under-nursemaid say
+      to another this curious thing: &ldquo;Both her father and mother were dead when
+      she was born.&rdquo; I did not even know that was a remarkable thing to say
+      until I was several years older and Jean Braidfute told me what had been
+      meant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My father and mother had both been very young and beautiful and wonderful.
+      It was said that my father was the handsomest chieftain in Scotland, and
+      that his wife was as beautiful as he was. They came to Muircarrie as soon
+      as they were married and lived a splendid year there together. Sometimes
+      they were quite alone, and spent their days fishing or riding or wandering
+      on the moor together, or reading by the fire in the library the ancient
+      books Angus Macayre found for them. The library was a marvelous place, and
+      Macayre knew every volume in it. They used to sit and read like children
+      among fairy stories, and then they would persuade Macayre to tell them the
+      ancient tales he knew&mdash;of the days when Agricola forced his way in
+      among the Men of the Woods, who would die any savage death rather than be
+      conquered. Macayre was a sort of heirloom himself, and he knew and
+      believed them all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don&rsquo;t know how it was that I myself seemed to see my young father and
+      mother so clearly and to know how radiant and wildly in love they were.
+      Surely Jean Braidfute had not words to tell me. But I knew. So I
+      understood, in a way of my own, what happened to my mother one brilliant
+      late October afternoon when my father was brought home dead&mdash;followed
+      by the guests who had gone out shooting with him. His foot had caught in a
+      tuft of heather, and his gun in going off had killed him. One moment he
+      had been the handsomest young chieftain in Scotland, and when he was
+      brought home they could not have let my mother see his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she never asked to see it. She was on the terrace which juts over the
+      rock the castle is built on, and which looks out over the purple world of
+      climbing moor. She saw from there the returning party of shooters and
+      gillies winding its way slowly through the heather, following a burden
+      carried on a stretcher of fir boughs. Some of her women guests were with
+      her, and one of them said afterward that when she first caught sight of
+      the moving figures she got up slowly and crept to the stone balustrade
+      with a crouching movement almost like a young leopardess preparing to
+      spring. But she only watched, making neither sound nor movement until the
+      cortege was near enough for her to see that every man&rsquo;s head was bowed
+      upon his breast, and not one was covered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she said, quite slowly, &ldquo;They&mdash;have&mdash;taken off&mdash;their
+      bonnets,&rdquo; and fell upon the terrace like a dropped stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was because of this that the girl said that she was dead when I was
+      born. It must have seemed almost as if she were not a living thing. She
+      did not open her eyes or make a sound; she lay white and cold. The
+      celebrated physicians who came from London talked of catalepsy and
+      afterward wrote scientific articles which tried to explain her condition.
+      She did not know when I was born. She died a few minutes after I uttered
+      my first cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know only one thing more, and that Jean Braidfute told me after I grew
+      up. Jean had been my father&rsquo;s nursery governess when he wore his first
+      kilts, and she loved my mother fondly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knelt by her bed and held her hand and watched her face for three hours
+      after they first laid her down,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And my eyes were so near her
+      every moment that I saw a thing the others did not know her well enough,
+      or love her well enough, to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first hour she was like a dead thing&mdash;aye, like a dead thing
+      that had never lived. But when the hand of the clock passed the last
+      second, and the new hour began, I bent closer to her because I saw a
+      change stealing over her. It was not color&mdash;it was not even a shadow
+      of a motion. It was something else. If I had spoken what I felt, they
+      would have said I was light-headed with grief and have sent me away. I
+      have never told man or woman. It was my secret and hers. I can tell you,
+      Ysobel. The change I saw was as if she was beginning to listen to
+      something&mdash;to listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was as if to a sound&mdash;far, far away at first. But cold and white
+      as stone she lay content, and listened. In the next hour the far-off sound
+      had drawn nearer, and it had become something else&mdash;something she saw&mdash;something
+      which saw her. First her young marble face had peace in it; then it had
+      joy. She waited in her young stone body until you were born and she could
+      break forth. She waited no longer then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ysobel, my bairn, what I knew was that he had not gone far from the body
+      that had held him when he fell. Perhaps he had felt lost for a bit when he
+      found himself out of it. But soon he had begun to call to her that was
+      like his own heart to him. And she had heard. And then, being half away
+      from earth herself, she had seen him and known he was waiting, and that he
+      would not leave for any far place without her. She was so still that the
+      big doctors thought more than once she had passed. But I knew better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was long before I was old enough to be told anything like this that I
+      began to feel that the moor was in secret my companion and friend, that it
+      was not only the moor to me, but something else. It was like a thing alive&mdash;a
+      huge giant lying spread out in the sun warming itself, or covering itself
+      with thick, white mist which sometimes writhed and twisted itself into
+      wraiths. First I noticed and liked it some day, perhaps, when it was
+      purple and yellow with gorse and heather and broom, and the honey scents
+      drew bees and butterflies and birds. But soon I saw and was drawn by
+      another thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How young was I that afternoon when I sat in the deep window and watched
+      the low, soft whiteness creeping out and hovering over the heather as if
+      the moor had breathed it? I do not remember. It was such a low little mist
+      at first; and it crept and crept until its creeping grew into something
+      heavier and whiter, and it began to hide the heather and the gorse and
+      broom, and then the low young fir-trees. It mounted and mounted, and
+      sometimes a breath of wind twisted it into weird shapes, almost like human
+      creatures. It opened and closed again, and then it dragged and crept and
+      grew thicker. And as I pressed my face against the window-pane, it mounted
+      still higher and got hold of the moor and hid it, hanging heavy and white
+      and waiting. That was what came into my child mind: that it had done what
+      the moor had told it to do; had hidden things which wanted to be hidden,
+      and then it waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strangers say that Muircarrie moor is the most beautiful and the most
+      desolate place in the world, but it never seemed desolate to me. From my
+      first memory of it I had a vague, half-comforted feeling that there was
+      some strange life on it one could not exactly see, but was always
+      conscious of. I know now why I felt this, but I did not know then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I had been older when I first began to see what I did see there, I
+      should no doubt have read things in books which would have given rise in
+      my mind to doubts and wonders; but I was only a little child who had lived
+      a life quite apart from the rest of the world. I was too silent by nature
+      to talk and ask questions, even if I had had others to talk to. I had only
+      Jean and Angus, and, as I found out years later, they knew what I did not,
+      and would have put me off with adroit explanations if I had been curious.
+      But I was not curious. I accepted everything as it came and went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I only six when Wee Brown Elspeth was brought to me. Jean and Angus were
+      as fond of each other in their silent way as they were of me, and they
+      often went together with me when I was taken out for my walks. I was kept
+      in the open air a great deal, and Angus would walk by the side of my
+      small, shaggy Shetland pony and lead him over rough or steep places.
+      Sheltie, the pony, was meant for use when we wished to fare farther than a
+      child could walk; but I was trained to sturdy marching and climbing even
+      from my babyhood. Because I so loved the moor, we nearly always rambled
+      there. Often we set out early in the morning, and some simple food was
+      carried, so that we need not return to the castle until we chose. I would
+      ride Sheltie and walk by turns until we found a place I liked; then Jean
+      and Angus would sit down among the heather, Sheltie would be secured, and
+      I would wander about and play in my own way. I do not think it was in a
+      strange way. I think I must have played as almost any lonely little girl
+      might have played. I used to find a corner among the bushes and pretend it
+      was my house and that I had little friends who came to play with me. I
+      only remember one thing which was not like the ordinary playing of
+      children. It was a habit I had of sitting quite still a long time and
+      listening. That was what I called it&mdash;&ldquo;listening.&rdquo; I was listening to
+      hear if the life on the moor made any sound I could understand. I felt as
+      if it might, if I were very still and listened long enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Angus and Jean and I were not afraid of rain and mist and change of
+      weather. If we had been we could have had little outdoor life. We always
+      carried plaids enough to keep us warm and dry. So on this day I speak of
+      we did not turn back when we found ourselves in the midst of a sudden
+      mist. We sat down in a sheltered place and waited, knowing it would lift
+      in time. The sun had been shining when we set out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Angus and Jean were content to sit and guard me while I amused myself.
+      They knew I would keep near them and run into no danger. I was not an
+      adventurous child. I was, in fact, in a more than usually quiet mood that
+      morning. The quiet had come upon me when the mist had begun to creep about
+      and inclose us. I liked it. I liked the sense of being shut in by the soft
+      whiteness I had so often watched from my nursery window in the castle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People might be walking about,&rdquo; I said to Angus when he lifted me from
+      Sheltie&rsquo;s back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We couldn&rsquo;t see them. They might be walking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing that would hurt ye, bairnie,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, they wouldn&rsquo;t hurt me,&rdquo; I said. I had never been afraid that anything
+      on the moor would hurt me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I played very little that day. The quiet and the mist held me still. Soon
+      I sat down and began to &ldquo;listen.&rdquo; After a while I knew that Jean and Angus
+      were watching me, but it did not disturb me. They often watched me when
+      they thought I did not know they were doing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had sat listening for nearly half an hour when I heard the first
+      muffled, slow trampling of horses&rsquo; hoofs. I knew what it was even before
+      it drew near enough for me to be conscious of the other sounds&mdash;the
+      jingling of arms and chains and the creaking of leather one notices as
+      troopers pass by. Armed and mounted men were coming toward me. That was
+      what the sounds meant; but they seemed faint and distant, though I knew
+      they were really quite near. Jean and Angus did not appear to hear them. I
+      knew that I only heard them because I had been listening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of the mist they rode a company of wild-looking men wearing garments
+      such as I had never seen before. Most of them were savage and uncouth, and
+      their clothes were disordered and stained as if with hard travel and
+      fight. I did not know&mdash;or even ask myself&mdash;why they did not
+      frighten me, but they did not. Suddenly I seemed to know that they were
+      brave men and had been doing some brave, hard thing. Here and there among
+      them I caught sight of a broken and stained sword, or a dirk with only a
+      hilt left. They were all pale, but their wild faces were joyous and
+      triumphant. I saw it as they drew near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who seemed their chieftain was a lean giant who was darker but,
+      under his darkness, paler than the rest. On his forehead was a queer,
+      star-shaped scar. He rode a black horse, and before him he held close with
+      his left arm a pretty little girl dressed in strange, rich clothes. The
+      big man&rsquo;s hand was pressed against her breast as he held her; but though
+      it was a large hand, it did not quite cover a dark-red stain on the
+      embroideries of her dress. Her dress was brown, and she had brown hair and
+      soft brown eyes like a little doe&rsquo;s. The moment I saw her I loved her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The black horse stopped before me. The wild troop drew up and waited
+      behind. The great, lean rider looked at me a moment, and then, lifting the
+      little girl in his long arms, bent down and set her gently on her feet on
+      the mossy earth in the mist beside me. I got up to greet her, and we stood
+      smiling at each other. And in that moment as we stood the black horse
+      moved forward, the muffled trampling began again, the wild company swept
+      on its way, and the white mist closed behind it as if it had never passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course I know how strange this will seem to people who read it, but
+      that cannot be helped and does not really matter. It was in that way the
+      thing happened, and it did not even seem strange to me. Anything might
+      happen on the moor&mdash;anything. And there was the fair little girl with
+      the eyes like a doe&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew she had come to play with me, and we went together to my house
+      among the bushes of broom and gorse and played happily. But before we
+      began I saw her stand and look wonderingly at the dark-red stain on the
+      embroideries on her childish breast. It was as if she were asking herself
+      how it came there and could not understand. Then she picked a fern and a
+      bunch of the thick-growing bluebells and put them in her girdle in such a
+      way that they hid its ugliness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not really know how long she stayed. I only knew that we were happy,
+      and that, though her way of playing was in some ways different from mine,
+      I loved it and her. Presently the mist lifted and the sun shone, and we
+      were deep in a wonderful game of being hidden in a room in a castle
+      because something strange was going to happen which we were not told
+      about. She ran behind a big gorse bush and did not come back. When I ran
+      to look for her she was nowhere. I could not find her, and I went back to
+      Jean and Angus, feeling puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did she go?&rdquo; I asked them, turning my head from side to side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were looking at me strangely, and both of them were pale. Jean was
+      trembling a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who was she, Ysobel?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The little girl the men brought to play with me,&rdquo; I answered, still
+      looking about me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The big one on the black horse put her down&mdash;the big one with the
+      star here.&rdquo; I touched my forehead where the queer scar had been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a minute Angus forgot himself. Years later he told me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dark Malcolm of the Glen,&rdquo; he broke out. &ldquo;Wee Brown Elspeth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she is white&mdash;quite white!&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did she go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jean swept me in her warm, shaking arms and hugged me close to her breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s one of the fair ones,&rdquo; she said, kissing and patting me. &ldquo;She will
+      come again. She&rsquo;ll come often, I dare say. But she&rsquo;s gone now and we must
+      go, too. Get up, Angus, man. We&rsquo;re for the castle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If we three had been different&mdash;if we had ever had the habit of
+      talking and asking questions&mdash;we might surely have asked one another
+      questions as I rode on Sheltie&rsquo;s back, with Angus leading us. But they
+      asked me nothing, and I said very little except that I once spoke of the
+      wild-looking horsemen and their pale, joyous faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were glad,&rdquo; was all I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was also one brief query from Angus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did she talk to you, bairnie?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hesitated and stared at him quite a long time. Then I shook my head and
+      answered, slowly, &ldquo;N-no.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Because I realized then, for the first time, that we had said no words at
+      all. But I had known what she wanted me to understand, and she had known
+      what I might have said to her if I had spoken&mdash;and no words were
+      needed. And it was better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They took me home to the castle, and I was given my supper and put to bed.
+      Jean sat by me until I fell asleep; she was obliged to sit rather a long
+      time, because I was so happy with my memories of Wee Brown Elspeth and the
+      certainty that she would come again. It was not Jean&rsquo;s words which had
+      made me sure. I knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came many times. Through all my childish years I knew that she would
+      come and play with me every few days&mdash;though I never saw the wild
+      troopers again or the big, lean man with the scar. Children who play
+      together are not very curious about one another, and I simply accepted her
+      with delight. Somehow I knew that she lived happily in a place not far
+      away. She could come and go, it seemed, without trouble. Sometimes I found
+      her&mdash;or she found me upon the moor; and often she appeared in my
+      nursery in the castle. When we were together Jean Braidfute seemed to
+      prefer that we should be alone, and was inclined to keep the under-nurse
+      occupied in other parts of the wing I lived in. I never asked her to do
+      this, but I was glad that it was done. Wee Elspeth was glad, too. After
+      our first meeting she was dressed in soft blue or white, and the red stain
+      was gone; but she was always Wee Brown Elspeth with the doelike eyes and
+      the fair, transparent face, the very fair little face. As I had noticed
+      the strange, clear pallor of the rough troopers, so I noticed that she was
+      curiously fair. And as I occasionally saw other persons with the same sort
+      of fairness, I thought it was a purity of complexion special to some, but
+      not to all. I was not fair like that, and neither was any one else I knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was when I was ten years old that Wee Elspeth ceased coming to me, and
+      though I missed her at first, it was not with a sense of grief or final
+      loss. She had only gone somewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was then that Angus Macayre began to be my tutor. He had been a
+      profound student and had lived among books all his life. He had helped
+      Jean in her training of me, and I had learned more than is usually taught
+      to children in their early years. When a grand governess was sent to
+      Muircarrie by my guardian, she was amazed at the things I was familiar
+      with, but she abhorred the dark, frowning castle and the loneliness of the
+      place and would not stay. In fact, no governess would stay, and so Angus
+      became my tutor and taught me old Gaelic and Latin and Greek, and we read
+      together and studied the ancient books in the library. It was a strange
+      education for a girl, and no doubt made me more than ever unlike others.
+      But my life was the life I loved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When my guardian decided that I must live with him in London and be
+      educated as modern girls were, I tried to be obedient and went to him; but
+      before two months had passed my wretchedness had made me so ill that the
+      doctor said I should go into a decline and die if I were not sent back to
+      Muircarrie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not only the London air that seems to poison her,&rdquo; he said when Jean
+      talked to him about me; &ldquo;it is something else. She will not live, that&rsquo;s
+      all. Sir Ian must send her home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As I have said before, I had been an unattractive child and I was a plain,
+      uninteresting sort of girl. I was shy and could not talk to people, so of
+      course I bored them. I knew I did not look well when I wore beautiful
+      clothes. I was little and unimportant and like a reed for thinness.
+      Because I was rich and a sort of chieftainess I ought to have been tall
+      and rather stately, or at least I ought to have had a bearing which would
+      have made it impossible for people to quite overlook me. But; any one
+      could overlook me&mdash;an insignificant, thin girl who slipped in and out
+      of places and sat and stared and listened to other people instead of
+      saying things herself; I liked to look on and be forgotten. It interested
+      me to watch people if they did not notice me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course, my relatives did not really like me. How could they? They were
+      busy in their big world and did not know what to do with a girl who ought
+      to have been important and was not. I am sure that in secret they were
+      relieved when I was sent back to Muircarrie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that the life I loved went on quietly. I studied with Angus, and
+      made the book-walled library my own room. I walked and rode on the moor,
+      and I knew the people who lived in the cottages and farms on the estate. I
+      think they liked me, but I am not sure, because I was too shy to seem very
+      friendly. I was more at home with Feargus, the piper, and with some of the
+      gardeners than I was with any one else. I think I was lonely without
+      knowing; but I was never unhappy. Jean and Angus were my nearest and
+      dearest. Jean was of good blood and a stanch gentlewoman, quite
+      sufficiently educated to be my companion as she had been my early
+      governess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Jean who told Angus that I was giving myself too entirely to the
+      study of ancient books and the history of centuries gone by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is living to-day, and she must not pass through this life without
+      gathering anything from it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This life,&rdquo; she put it, as if I had passed through others before, and
+      might pass through others again. That was always her way of speaking, and
+      she seemed quite unconscious of any unusualness in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a wise woman, Jean,&rdquo; Angus said, looking long at her grave face.
+      &ldquo;A wise woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He wrote to the London book-shops for the best modern books, and I began
+      to read them. I felt at first as if they plunged me into a world I did not
+      understand, and many of them I could not endure. But I persevered, and
+      studied them as I had studied the old ones, and in time I began to feel as
+      if perhaps they were true. My chief weariness with them came from the way
+      they had of referring to the things I was so intimate with as though they
+      were only the unauthenticated history of a life so long passed by that it
+      could no longer matter to any one. So often the greatest hours of great
+      lives were treated as possible legends. I knew why men had died or were
+      killed or had borne black horror. I knew because I had read old books and
+      manuscripts and had heard the stories which had come down through
+      centuries by word of mouth, passed from father to son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was one man who did not write as if he believed the world had
+      begun and would end with him. He knew he was only one, and part of all the
+      rest. The name I shall give him is Hector MacNairn. He was a Scotchman,
+      but he had lived in many a land. The first time I read a book he had
+      written I caught my breath with joy, again and again. I knew I had found a
+      friend, even though there was no likelihood that I should ever see his
+      face. He was a great and famous writer, and all the world honored him;
+      while I, hidden away in my castle on a rock on the edge of Muircarrie, was
+      so far from being interesting or clever that even in my grandest evening
+      dress and tiara of jewels I was as insignificant as a mouse. In fact, I
+      always felt rather silly when I was obliged to wear my diamonds on state
+      occasions as custom sometimes demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. MacNairn wrote essays and poems, and marvelous stories which were
+      always real though they were called fiction. Wheresoever his story was
+      placed&mdash;howsoever remote and unknown the scene&mdash;it was a real
+      place, and the people who lived in it were real, as if he had some magic
+      power to call up human things to breathe and live and set one&rsquo;s heart
+      beating. I read everything he wrote. I read every word of his again and
+      again. I always kept some book of his near enough to be able to touch it
+      with my hand; and often I sat by the fire in the library holding one open
+      on my lap for an hour or more, only because it meant a warm, close
+      companionship. It seemed at those times as if he sat near me in the dim
+      glow and we understood each other&rsquo;s thoughts without using words, as Wee
+      Brown Elspeth and I had understood&mdash;only this was a deeper thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had felt near him in this way for several years, and every year he had
+      grown more famous, when it happened that one June my guardian, Sir Ian,
+      required me to go to London to see my lawyers and sign some important
+      documents connected with the management of the estate. I was to go to his
+      house to spend a week or more, attend a Drawing-Room, and show myself at a
+      few great parties in a proper manner, this being considered my duty toward
+      my relatives. These, I believe, were secretly afraid that if I were never
+      seen their world would condemn my guardian for neglect of his charge, or
+      would decide that I was of unsound mind and intentionally kept hidden away
+      at Muircarrie. He was an honorable man, and his wife was a well-meaning
+      woman. I did not wish to do them an injustice, so I paid them yearly
+      visits and tried to behave as they wished, much as I disliked to be
+      dressed in fine frocks and to wear diamonds on my little head and round my
+      thin neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an odd thing that this time I found I did not dread the visit to
+      London as much as I usually did. For some unknown reason I became
+      conscious that I was not really reluctant to go. Usually the thought of
+      the days before me made me restless and low-spirited. London always seemed
+      so confused and crowded, and made me feel as if I were being pushed and
+      jostled by a mob always making a tiresome noise. But this time I felt as
+      if I should somehow find a clear place to stand in, where I could look on
+      and listen without being bewildered. It was a curious feeling; I could not
+      help noticing and wondering about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew afterward that it came to me because a change was drawing near. I
+      wish so much that I could tell about it in a better way. But I have only
+      my own way, which I am afraid seems very like a school-girl&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jean Braidfute made the journey with me, as she always did, and it was
+      like every other journey. Only one incident made it different, and when it
+      occurred there seemed nothing unusual in it. It was only a bit of sad,
+      everyday life which touched me. There is nothing new in seeing a poor
+      woman in deep mourning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jean and I had been alone in our railway carriage for a great part of the
+      journey; but an hour or two before we reached London a man got in and took
+      a seat in a corner. The train had stopped at a place where there is a
+      beautiful and well-known cemetery. People bring their friends from long
+      distances to lay them there. When one passes the station, one nearly
+      always sees sad faces and people in mourning on the platform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was more than one group there that day, and the man who sat in the
+      corner looked out at them with gentle eyes. He had fine, deep eyes and a
+      handsome mouth. When the poor woman in mourning almost stumbled into the
+      carriage, followed by her child, he put out his hand to help her and gave
+      her his seat. She had stumbled because her eyes were dim with dreadful
+      crying, and she could scarcely see. It made one&rsquo;s heart stand still to see
+      the wild grief of her, and her unconsciousness of the world about her. The
+      world did not matter. There was no world. I think there was nothing left
+      anywhere but the grave she had just staggered blindly away from. I felt as
+      if she had been lying sobbing and writhing and beating the new turf on it
+      with her poor hands, and I somehow knew that it had been a child&rsquo;s grave
+      she had been to visit and had felt she left to utter loneliness when she
+      turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was because I thought this that I wished she had not seemed so
+      unconscious of and indifferent to the child who was with her and clung to
+      her black dress as if it could not bear to let her go. This one was alive
+      at least, even if she had lost the other one, and its little face was so
+      wistful! It did not seem fair to forget and ignore it, as if it were not
+      there. I felt as if she might have left it behind on the platform if it
+      had not so clung to her skirt that it was almost dragged into the railway
+      carriage with her. When she sank into her seat she did not even lift the
+      poor little thing into the place beside her, but left it to scramble up as
+      best it could. She buried her swollen face in her handkerchief and sobbed
+      in a smothered way as if she neither saw, heard, nor felt any living thing
+      near her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How I wished she would remember the poor child and let it comfort her! It
+      really was trying to do it in its innocent way. It pressed close to her
+      side, it looked up imploringly, it kissed her arm and her crape veil over
+      and over again, and tried to attract her attention. It was a little,
+      lily-fair creature not more than five or six years old and perhaps too
+      young to express what it wanted to say. It could only cling to her and
+      kiss her black dress, and seem to beg her to remember that it, at least,
+      was a living thing. But she was too absorbed in her anguish to know that
+      it was in the world. She neither looked at nor touched it, and at last it
+      sat with its cheek against her sleeve, softly stroking her arm, and now
+      and then kissing it longingly. I was obliged to turn my face away and look
+      out of the window, because I knew the man with the kind face saw the tears
+      well up into my eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor woman did not travel far with us. She left the train after a few
+      stations were passed. Our fellow-traveler got out before her to help her
+      on to the platform. He stood with bared head while he assisted her, but
+      she scarcely saw him. And even then she seemed to forget the child. The
+      poor thing was dragged out by her dress as it had been dragged in. I put
+      out my hand involuntarily as it went through the door, because I was
+      afraid it might fall. But it did not. It turned its fair little face and
+      smiled at me. When the kind traveler returned to his place in the carriage
+      again, and the train left the station, the black-draped woman was walking
+      slowly down the platform and the child was still clinging to her skirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      My guardian was a man whose custom it was to give large and dignified
+      parties. Among his grand and fashionable guests there was nearly always a
+      sprinkling of the more important members of the literary world. The night
+      after I arrived there was to be a particularly notable dinner. I had come
+      prepared to appear at it. Jean had brought fine array for me and a case of
+      jewels. I knew I must be &ldquo;dressed up&rdquo; and look as important as I could.
+      When I went up-stairs after tea, Jean was in my room laying things out on
+      the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man you like so much is to dine here to-night, Ysobel,&rdquo; she said.
+      &ldquo;Mr. Hector MacNairn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe I even put my hand suddenly to my heart as I stood and looked at
+      her, I was so startled and so glad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must tell him how much you love his books,&rdquo; she said. She had a
+      quiet, motherly way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will be so many other people who will want to talk to him,&rdquo; I
+      answered, and I felt a little breathless with excitement as I said it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I should be too shy to know how to say such things properly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid of him,&rdquo; was her advice. &ldquo;The man will be like his books,
+      and they&rsquo;re the joy of your life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made me look as nice as she could in the new dress she had brought;
+      she made me wear the Muircarrie diamonds and sent me downstairs. It does
+      not matter who the guests were; I scarcely remember. I was taken in to
+      dinner by a stately elderly man who tried to make me talk, and at last was
+      absorbed by the clever woman on his other side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found myself looking between the flowers for a man&rsquo;s face I could
+      imagine was Hector MacNairn&rsquo;s. I looked up and down and saw none I could
+      believe belonged to him. There were handsome faces and individual ones,
+      but at first I saw no Hector MacNairn. Then, on bending forward a little
+      to glance behind an epergne, I found a face which it surprised and pleased
+      me to see. It was the face of the traveler who had helped the woman in
+      mourning out of the railway carriage, baring his head before her grief. I
+      could not help turning and speaking to my stately elderly partner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know who that is&mdash;the man at the other side of the table?&rdquo; I
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Lord Armour looked across and answered with an amiable smile. &ldquo;It is
+      the author the world is talking of most in these days, and the talking is
+      no new thing. It&rsquo;s Mr. Hector MacNairn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No one but myself could tell how glad I was. It seemed so right that he
+      should be the man who had understood the deeps of a poor, passing stranger
+      woman&rsquo;s woe. I had so loved that quiet baring of his head! All at once I
+      knew I should not be afraid of him. He would understand that I could not
+      help being shy, that it was only my nature, and that if I said things
+      awkwardly my meanings were better than my words. Perhaps I should be able
+      to tell him something of what his books had been to me. I glanced through
+      the flowers again&mdash;and he was looking at me! I could scarcely believe
+      it for a second. But he was. His eyes&mdash;his wonderful eyes&mdash;met
+      mine. I could not explain why they were wonderful. I think it was the
+      clearness and understanding in them, and a sort of great interestedness.
+      People sometimes look at me from curiosity, but they do not look because
+      they are really interested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could scarcely look away, though I knew I must not be guilty of staring.
+      A footman was presenting a dish at my side. I took something from it
+      without knowing what it was. Lord Armour began to talk kindly. He was
+      saying beautiful, admiring things of Mr. MacNairn and his work. I listened
+      gratefully, and said a few words myself now and then. I was only too glad
+      to be told of the great people and the small ones who were moved and
+      uplifted by his thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You admire him very much, I can see,&rdquo; the amiable elderly voice said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could not help turning and looking up. &ldquo;It is as if a great, great
+      genius were one&rsquo;s friend&mdash;as if he talked and one listened,&rdquo; I said.
+      &ldquo;He is like a splendid dream which has come true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Lord Armour looked at me quite thoughtfully, as if he saw something
+      new in me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a good way of putting it, Miss Muircarrie,&rdquo; he answered.
+      &ldquo;MacNairn would like that. You must tell him about it yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not mean to glance through the flowers again, but I did it
+      involuntarily. And I met the other eyes&mdash;the wonderful, interested
+      ones just as I had met them before. It almost seemed as if he had been
+      watching me. It might be, I thought, because he only vaguely remembered
+      seeing me before and was trying to recall where we had met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When my guardian brought his men guests to the drawing-room after dinner,
+      I was looking over some old prints at a quiet, small table. There were a
+      few minutes of smiling talk, and then Sir Ian crossed the room toward me,
+      bringing some one with him. It was Hector MacNairn he brought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. MacNairn tells me you traveled together this afternoon without
+      knowing each other,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He has heard something of Muircarrie and
+      would like to hear more, Ysobel. She lives like a little ghost all alone
+      in her feudal castle, Mr. MacNairn. We can&rsquo;t persuade her to like London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I think he left us alone together because he realized that we should get
+      on better without a companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. MacNairn sat down near me and began to talk about Muircarrie. There
+      were very few places like it, and he knew about each one of them. He knew
+      the kind of things Angus Macayre knew&mdash;the things most people had
+      either never heard of or had only thought of as legends. He talked as he
+      wrote, and I scarcely knew when he led me into talking also. Afterward I
+      realized that he had asked me questions I could not help answering because
+      his eyes were drawing me on with that quiet, deep interest. It seemed as
+      if he saw something in my face which made him curious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think I saw this expression first when we began to speak of our meeting
+      in the railway carriage, and I mentioned the poor little fair child my
+      heart had ached so for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was such a little thing and it did so want to comfort her! Its white
+      little clinging hands were so pathetic when they stroked and patted her,&rdquo;
+       I said. &ldquo;And she did not even look at it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not start, but he hesitated in a way which almost produced the
+      effect of a start. Long afterward I remembered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The child!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Yes. But I was sitting on the other side. And I was
+      so absorbed in the poor mother that I am afraid I scarcely saw it. Tell me
+      about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not six years old, poor mite,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;It was one of those
+      very fair children one sees now and then. It was not like its mother. She
+      was not one of the White People.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The White People?&rdquo; he repeated quite slowly after me. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean
+      that she was not a Caucasian? Perhaps I don&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That made me feel a trifle shy again. Of course he could not know what I
+      meant. How silly of me to take it for granted that he would!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg pardon. I forgot,&rdquo; I even stammered a little. &ldquo;It is only my way of
+      thinking of those fair people one sees, those very fair ones, you know&mdash;the
+      ones whose fairness looks almost transparent. There are not many of them,
+      of course; but one can&rsquo;t help noticing them when they pass in the street
+      or come into a room. You must have noticed them, too. I always call them,
+      to myself, the White People, because they are different from the rest of
+      us. The poor mother wasn&rsquo;t one, but the child was. Perhaps that was why I
+      looked at it, at first. It was such a lovely little thing; and the
+      whiteness made it look delicate, and I could not help thinking&mdash;&rdquo; I
+      hesitated, because it seemed almost unkind to finish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You thought that if she had just lost one child she ought to take more
+      care of the other,&rdquo; he ended for me. There was a deep thoughtfulness in
+      his look, as if he were watching me. I wondered why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I had paid more attention to the little creature,&rdquo; he said, very
+      gently. &ldquo;Did it cry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;It only clung to her and patted her black sleeve and
+      kissed it, as if it wanted to comfort her. I kept expecting it to cry, but
+      it didn&rsquo;t. It made me cry because it seemed so sure that it could comfort
+      her if she would only remember that it was alive and loved her. I wish, I
+      wish death did not make people feel as if it filled all the world&mdash;as
+      if, when it happens, there is no life left anywhere. The child who was
+      alive by her side did not seem a living thing to her. It didn&rsquo;t matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had never said as much to any one before, but his watching eyes made me
+      forget my shy worldlessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you feel about it&mdash;death?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The low gentleness of his voice seemed something I had known always.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never saw it,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;I have never even seen any one dangerously
+      ill. I&mdash;It is as if I can&rsquo;t believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t believe it? That is a wonderful thing,&rdquo; he said, even more
+      quietly than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If none of us believed, how wonderful that would be! Beautiful, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How that poor mother believed it!&rdquo; I said, remembering her swollen,
+      distorted, sobbing face. &ldquo;She believed nothing else; everything else was
+      gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder what would have happened if you had spoken to her about the
+      child?&rdquo; he said, slowly, as if he were trying to imagine it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a very shy person. I should never have courage to speak to a
+      stranger,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I&rsquo;m a coward, too. She might have thought me interfering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She might not have understood,&rdquo; he murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was clinging to her dress when she walked away down the platform,&rdquo; I
+      went on. &ldquo;I dare say you noticed it then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not as you did. I wish I had noticed it more,&rdquo; was his answer. &ldquo;Poor
+      little White One!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That led us into our talk about the White People. He said he did not think
+      he was exactly an observant person in some respects. Remembering his
+      books, which seemed to me the work of a man who saw and understood
+      everything in the world, I could not comprehend his thinking that, and I
+      told him so. But he replied that what I had said about my White People
+      made him feel that he must be abstracted sometimes and miss things. He did
+      not remember having noticed the rare fairness I had seen. He smiled as he
+      said it, because, of course, it was only a little thing&mdash;that he had
+      not seen that some people were so much fairer than others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it has not been a little thing to you, evidently. That is why I am
+      even rather curious about it,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;It is a difference definite
+      enough to make you speak almost as if they were of a different race from
+      ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I sat silent a few seconds, thinking it over. Suddenly I realized what I
+      had never realized before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; I said, as slowly as he himself had spoken, &ldquo;I did not know
+      that was true until you put it into words. I am so used to thinking of
+      them as different, somehow, that I suppose I do feel as if they were
+      almost like another race, in a way. Perhaps one would feel like that with
+      a native Indian, or a Japanese.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say that is a good simile,&rdquo; he reflected. &ldquo;Are they different when
+      you know them well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have never known one but Wee Brown Elspeth,&rdquo; I answered, thinking it
+      over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did start then, in the strangest way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;What did you say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was quite startled myself. Suddenly he looked pale, and his breath
+      caught itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said Wee Elspeth, Wee Brown Elspeth. She was only a child who played
+      with me,&rdquo; I stammered, &ldquo;when I was little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pulled himself together almost instantly, though the color did not come
+      back to his face at once and his voice was not steady for a few seconds.
+      But he laughed outright at himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; he apologized. &ldquo;I have been ill and am rather
+      nervous. I thought you said something you could not possibly have said. I
+      almost frightened you. And you were only speaking of a little playmate.
+      Please go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was only going to say that she was fair like that, fairer than any one
+      I had ever seen; but when we played together she seemed like any other
+      child. She was the first I ever knew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him about the misty day on the moor, and about the pale troopers
+      and the big, lean leader who carried Elspeth before him on his saddle. I
+      had never talked to any one about it before, not even to Jean Braidfute.
+      But he seemed to be so interested, as if the little story quite fascinated
+      him. It was only an episode, but it brought in the weirdness of the moor
+      and my childish fancies about the things hiding in the white mist, and the
+      castle frowning on its rock, and my baby face pressed against the nursery
+      window in the tower, and Angus and the library, and Jean and her goodness
+      and wise ways. It was dreadful to talk so much about oneself. But he
+      listened so. His eyes never left my face&mdash;they watched and held me as
+      if he were enthralled. Sometimes he asked a question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder who they were&mdash;the horsemen?&rdquo; he pondered. &ldquo;Did you ever
+      ask Wee Elspeth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were both too little to care. We only played,&rdquo; I answered him. &ldquo;And
+      they came and went so quickly that they were only a sort of dream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They seem to have been a strange lot. Wasn&rsquo;t Angus curious about them?&rdquo;
+       he suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Angus never was curious about anything,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Perhaps he knew
+      something about them and would not tell me. When I was a little thing I
+      always knew he and Jean had secrets I was too young to hear. They hid sad
+      and ugly things from me, or things that might frighten a child. They were
+      very good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, they were good,&rdquo; he said, thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think any one would have been pleased to find herself talking quietly to
+      a great genius&mdash;as quietly as if he were quite an ordinary person;
+      but to me the experience was wonderful. I had thought about him so much
+      and with such adoring reverence. And he looked at me as if he truly liked
+      me, even as if I were something new&mdash;a sort of discovery which
+      interested him. I dare say that he had never before seen a girl who had
+      lived so much alone and in such a remote and wild place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe Sir Ian and his wife were pleased, too, to see that I was
+      talking. They were glad that their guests should see that I was
+      intelligent enough to hold the attention even of a clever man. If Hector
+      MacNairn was interested in me I could not be as silly and dull as I
+      looked. But on my part I was only full of wonder and happiness. I was a
+      girl, and he had been my only hero; and it seemed even as if he liked me
+      and cared about my queer life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not a man who had the air of making confidences or talking about
+      himself, but before we parted I seemed to know him and his surroundings as
+      if he had described them. A mere phrase of his would make a picture. Such
+      a few words made his mother quite clear to me. They loved each other in an
+      exquisite, intimate way. She was a beautiful person. Artists had always
+      painted her. He and she were completely happy when they were together.
+      They lived in a house in the country, and I could not at all tell how I
+      discovered that it was an old house with beautiful chimneys and a very big
+      garden with curious high walls with corner towers round it. He only spoke
+      of it briefly, but I saw it as a picture; and always afterward, when I
+      thought of his mother, I thought of her as sitting under a great and
+      ancient apple-tree with the long, late-afternoon shadows stretching on the
+      thick, green grass. I suppose I saw that just because he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you come to tea under the big apple-tree some afternoon when the
+      late shadows are like velvet on the grass? That is perhaps the loveliest
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When we rose to go and join the rest of the party, he stood a moment and
+      glanced round the room at our fellow-guests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are there any of your White People here to-night?&rdquo; he said, smiling. &ldquo;I
+      shall begin to look for them everywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I glanced over the faces carelessly. &ldquo;There are none here to-night,&rdquo; I
+      answered, and then I flushed because he had smiled. &ldquo;It was only a
+      childish name I gave them,&rdquo; I hesitated. &ldquo;I forgot you wouldn&rsquo;t
+      understand. I dare say it sounds silly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at me so quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no! no!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t think that! Certainly not silly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not think he knew that he put out his hand and gently touched my arm,
+      as one might touch a child to make it feel one wanted it to listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; he said in his low, slow voice, &ldquo;how glad I am that you
+      have talked to me. Sir Ian said you were not fond of talking to people,
+      and I wanted to know you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You care about places like Muircarrie. That is why,&rdquo; I answered, feeling
+      at once how much he understood. &ldquo;I care for Muircarrie more than for all
+      the rest of the world. And I suppose you saw it in my face. I dare say
+      that the people who love that kind of life cannot help seeing it there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it is in your eyes. It was what I saw and found myself
+      wondering about when I watched you in the train. It was really the moor
+      and the mist and the things you think are hidden in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you watch me?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;I could not help watching you a little, when
+      you were so kind to the poor woman. I was afraid you would see me and
+      think me rude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the far look in your face I watched,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you will come
+      to tea under the big apple-tree I will tell you more about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed I will come,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;Now we must go and sit among the other
+      people&mdash;those who don&rsquo;t care about Muircarrie at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I went to tea under the big apple-tree. It was very big and old and
+      wonderful. No wonder Mr. MacNairn and his mother loved it. Its great
+      branches spread out farther than I had ever seen the branches of an
+      apple-tree spread before. They were gnarled and knotted and beautiful with
+      age. Their shadows upon the grass were velvet, deep and soft. Such a tree
+      could only have lived its life in such a garden. At least it seemed so to
+      me. The high, dim-colored walls, with their curious, low corner towers and
+      the leafage of the wall fruits spread against their brick, inclosed it
+      embracingly, as if they were there to take care of it and its beauty. But
+      the tree itself seemed to have grown there in all its dignified loveliness
+      of shadow to take care of Mrs. MacNairn, who sat under it. I felt as if it
+      loved and was proud of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have heard clever literary people speak of Mrs. MacNairn as a &ldquo;survival
+      of type.&rdquo; Sometimes clever people bewilder me by the terms they use, but I
+      thought I understood what they meant in her case. She was quite unlike the
+      modern elderly woman, and yet she was not in the least old-fashioned or
+      demodee. She was only exquisitely distinct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she rose from her chair under the apple-tree boughs and came forward
+      to meet me that afternoon, the first things which struck me were her
+      height and slenderness and her light step. Then I saw that her clear
+      profile seemed cut out of ivory and that her head was a beautiful shape
+      and was beautifully set. Its every turn and movement was exquisite. The
+      mere fact that both her long, ivory hands enfolded mine thrilled me. I
+      wondered if it were possible that she could be unaware of her loveliness.
+      Beautiful people are thrilling to me, and Mrs. MacNairn has always seemed
+      more so than any one else. This is what her son once said of her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not merely beautiful; she is Beauty&mdash;Beauty&rsquo;s very spirit
+      moving about among us mortals; pure Beauty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew me to a chair under her tree, and we sat down together. I felt as
+      if she were glad that I had come. The watching look I had seen in her
+      son&rsquo;s eyes was in hers also. They watched me as we talked, and I found
+      myself telling her about my home as I had found myself telling him. He had
+      evidently talked to her about it himself. I had never met any one who
+      thought of Muircarrie as I did, but it seemed as if they who were
+      strangers were drawn by its wild, beautiful loneliness as I was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was happy. In my secret heart I began to ask myself if it could be true
+      that they made me feel a little as if I somehow belonged to some one. I
+      had always seemed so detached from every one. I had not been miserable
+      about it, and I had not complained to myself; I only accepted the
+      detachment as part of my kind of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. MacNairn came into the garden later and several other people came in
+      to tea. It was apparently a sort of daily custom&mdash;that people who
+      evidently adored Mrs. MacNairn dropped in to see and talk to her every
+      afternoon. She talked wonderfully, and her friends&rsquo; joy in her was
+      wonderful, too. It evidently made people happy to be near her. All she
+      said and did was like her light step and the movements of her delicate,
+      fine head&mdash;gracious and soft and arrestingly lovely. She did not let
+      me drift away and sit in a corner looking on, as I usually did among
+      strangers. She kept me near her, and in some subtle, gentle way made me a
+      part of all that was happening&mdash;the talk, the charming circle under
+      the spreading boughs of the apple-tree, the charm of everything. Sometimes
+      she would put out her exquisite, long-fingered hand and touch me very
+      lightly, and each time she did it I felt as if she had given me new life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an interesting elderly man who came among the rest of the
+      guests. I was interested in him even before she spoke to me of him. He had
+      a handsome, aquiline face which looked very clever. His talk was
+      brilliantly witty. When he spoke people paused as if they could not bear
+      to lose a phrase or even a word. But in the midst of the trills of
+      laughter surrounding him his eyes were unchangingly sad. His face laughed
+      or smiled, but his eyes never.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is the greatest artist in England and the most brilliant man,&rdquo; Mrs.
+      MacNairn said to me, quietly. &ldquo;But he is the saddest, too. He had a lovely
+      daughter who was killed instantly, in his presence, by a fall. They had
+      been inseparable companions and she was the delight of his life. That
+      strange, fixed look has been in his eyes ever since. I know you have
+      noticed it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were walking about among the flower-beds after tea, and Mr. MacNairn
+      was showing me a cloud of blue larkspurs in a corner when I saw something
+      which made me turn toward him rather quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Do look at her! Now you see what I mean! The girl
+      standing with her hand on Mr. Le Breton&rsquo;s arm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Le Breton was the brilliant man with the sad eyes. He was standing
+      looking at a mass of white-and-purple iris at the other side of the
+      garden. There were two or three people with him, but it seemed as if for a
+      moment he had forgotten them&mdash;had forgotten where he was. I wondered
+      suddenly if his daughter had been fond of irises. He was looking at them
+      with such a tender, lost expression. The girl, who was a lovely, fair
+      thing, was standing quite close to him with her hand in his arm, and she
+      was smiling, too&mdash;such a smile!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Le Breton!&rdquo; Mr. MacNairn said in a rather startled tone. &ldquo;The girl
+      with her hand in his arm?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You see how fair she is,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she has that transparent look. It is so lovely. Don&rsquo;t you think so?
+      SHE is one of the White People.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood very still, looking across the flowers at the group. There was a
+      singular interest and intensity in his expression. He watched the pair
+      silently for a whole minute, I think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es,&rdquo; he said, slowly, at last, &ldquo;I do see what you mean&mdash;and it IS
+      lovely. I don&rsquo;t seem to know her well. She must be a new friend of my
+      mother&rsquo;s. So she is one of the White People?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She looks like a white iris herself, doesn&rsquo;t she?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Now you
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; now I know,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I asked Mrs. MacNairn later who the girl was, but she didn&rsquo;t seem to
+      recognize my description of her. Mr. Le Breton had gone away by that time,
+      and so had the girl herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The tall, very fair one in the misty, pale-gray dress,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;She was
+      near Mr. Le Breton when he was looking at the iris-bed. You were cutting
+      some roses only a few yards away from her. That VERY fair girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. MacNairn paused a moment and looked puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mildred Keith is fair,&rdquo; she reflected, &ldquo;but she was not there then. I
+      don&rsquo;t recall seeing a girl. I was cutting some buds for Mrs. Anstruther. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She paused again and turned toward her son, who was standing watching us.
+      I saw their eyes meet in a rather arrested way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not Mildred Keith,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Miss Muircarrie is inquiring because
+      this girl was one of those she calls the White People. She was not any one
+      I had seen here before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a second&rsquo;s silence before Mrs. MacNairn smilingly gave me one of
+      her light, thrilling touches on my arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I remember,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Hector told me about the White People. He
+      rather fancied I might be one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I am afraid I rather stared at her as I slowly shook my head. You see she
+      was almost one, but not quite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was so busy with my roses that I did not notice who was standing near
+      Mr. Le Breton,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Perhaps it was Anabel Mere. She is a more
+      transparent sort of girl than Mildred, and she is more blond. And you
+      don&rsquo;t know her, Hector? I dare say it was she.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I remained in London several weeks. I stayed because the MacNairns were so
+      good to me. I could not have told any one how I loved Mrs. MacNairn, and
+      how different everything seemed when I was with her. I was never shy when
+      we were together. There seemed to be no such thing as shyness in the
+      world. I was not shy with Mr. MacNairn, either. After I had sat under the
+      big apple-tree boughs in the walled garden a few times I realized that I
+      had begun to belong to somebody. Those two marvelous people cared for me
+      in that way&mdash;in a way that made me feel as if I were a real girl, not
+      merely a queer little awkward ghost in a far-away castle which nobody
+      wanted to visit because it was so dull and desolate and far from London.
+      They were so clever, and knew all the interesting things in the world, but
+      their cleverness and experience never bewildered or overwhelmed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were born a wonderful little creature, and Angus Macayre has filled
+      your mind with strange, rich furnishings and marvelous color and form,&rdquo;
+       Mrs. MacNairn actually said to me one day when we were sitting together
+      and she was holding my hand and softly, slowly patting it. She had a way
+      of doing that, and she had also a way of keeping me very near her whenever
+      she could. She said once that she liked to touch me now and then to make
+      sure that I was quite real and would not melt away. I did not know then
+      why she said it, but I understood afterward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes we sat under the apple-tree until the long twilight deepened
+      into shadow, which closed round us, and a nightingale that lived in the
+      garden began to sing. We all three loved the nightingale, and felt as
+      though it knew that we were listening to it. It is a wonderful thing to
+      sit quite still listening to a bird singing in the dark, and to dare to
+      feel that while it sings it knows how your soul adores it. It is like a
+      kind of worship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had been sitting listening for quite a long time, and the nightingale
+      had just ceased and left the darkness an exquisite silence which fell
+      suddenly but softly as the last note dropped, when Mrs. MacNairn began to
+      talk for the first time of what she called The Fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don&rsquo;t remember just how she began, and for a few minutes I did not quite
+      understand what she meant. But as she went on, and Mr. MacNairn joined in
+      the talk, their meaning became a clear thing to me, and I knew that they
+      were only talking quite simply of something they had often talked of
+      before. They were not as afraid of The Fear as most people are, because
+      they had thought of and reasoned about it so much, and always calmly and
+      with clear and open minds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By The Fear they meant that mysterious horror most people feel at the
+      thought of passing out of the world they know into the one they don&rsquo;t know
+      at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How quiet, how still it was inside the walls of the old garden, as we
+      three sat under the boughs and talked about it! And what sweet night
+      scents of leaves and sleeping flowers were in every breath we drew! And
+      how one&rsquo;s heart moved and lifted when the nightingale broke out again!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If one had seen or heard one little thing, if one&rsquo;s mortal being could
+      catch one glimpse of light in the dark,&rdquo; Mrs. MacNairn&rsquo;s low voice said
+      out of the shadow near me, &ldquo;The Fear would be gone forever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps the whole mystery is as simple as this,&rdquo; said her son&rsquo;s voice &ldquo;as
+      simple as this: that as there are tones of music too fine to be registered
+      by the human ear, so there may be vibrations of light not to be seen by
+      the human eye; form and color as well as sounds; just beyond earthly
+      perception, and yet as real as ourselves, as formed as ourselves, only
+      existing in that other dimension.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an intenseness which was almost a note of anguish in Mrs.
+      MacNairn&rsquo;s answer, even though her voice was very low. I involuntarily
+      turned my head to look at her, though of course it was too dark to see her
+      face. I felt somehow as if her hands were wrung together in her lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;if one only had some shadow of a proof that the mystery
+      is only that WE cannot see, that WE cannot hear, though they are really
+      quite near us, with us&mdash;the ones who seem to have gone away and whom
+      we feel we cannot live without. If once we could be sure! There would be
+      no Fear&mdash;there would be none!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dearest&rdquo;&mdash;he often called her &ldquo;Dearest,&rdquo; and his voice had a
+      wonderful sound in the darkness; it was caress and strength, and it seemed
+      to speak to her of things they knew which I did not&mdash;&ldquo;we have vowed
+      to each other that we WILL believe there is no reason for The Fear. It was
+      a vow between us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! Yes!&rdquo; she cried, breathlessly, &ldquo;but sometimes, Hector&mdash;sometimes&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Muircarrie does not feel it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please say &lsquo;Ysobel&rsquo;!&rdquo; I broke in. &ldquo;Please do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on as quietly as if he had not even paused:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ysobel told me the first night we met that it seemed as if she could not
+      believe in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It never seems real to me at all,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Perhaps that is because I can
+      never forget what Jean told me about my mother lying still upon her bed,
+      and listening to some one calling her.&rdquo; (I had told them Jean&rsquo;s story a
+      few days before.) &ldquo;I knew it was my father; Jean knew, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you know?&rdquo; Mrs. MacNairn&rsquo;s voice was almost a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not tell you that. I never asked myself HOW it was. But I KNEW.
+      We both KNEW. Perhaps&rdquo;&mdash;I hesitated&mdash;&ldquo;it was because in the
+      Highlands people often believe things like that. One hears so many stories
+      all one&rsquo;s life that in the end they don&rsquo;t seem strange. I have always
+      heard them. Those things you know about people who have the second sight.
+      And about the seals who change themselves into men and come on shore and
+      fall in love with girls and marry them. They say they go away now and
+      then, and no one really knows where but it is believed that they go back
+      to their own people and change into seals again, because they must plunge
+      and riot about in the sea. Sometimes they come home, but sometimes they do
+      not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A beautiful young stranger, with soft, dark eyes, appeared once not far
+      from Muircarrie, and he married a boatman&rsquo;s daughter. He was very restless
+      one night, and got up and left her, and she never saw him again; but a few
+      days later a splendid dead seal covered with wounds was washed up near his
+      cottage. The fishers say that his people had wanted to keep him from his
+      land wife, and they had fought with him and killed him. His wife had a son
+      with strange, velvet eyes like his father&rsquo;s, and she couldn&rsquo;t keep him
+      away from the water. When he was old enough to swim he swam out one day,
+      because he thought he saw some seals and wanted to get near them. He swam
+      out too far, perhaps. He never came back, and the fishermen said his
+      father&rsquo;s people had taken him. When one has heard stories like that all
+      one&rsquo;s life nothing seems very strange.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing really IS strange,&rdquo; said Hector MacNairn. &ldquo;Again and again
+      through all the ages we have been told the secrets of the gods and the
+      wonders of the Law, and we have revered and echoed but never believed.
+      When we believe and know all is simple we shall not be afraid. You are not
+      afraid, Ysobel. Tell my mother you are not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned my face toward her again in the darkness. I felt as if something
+      was going on between them which he somehow knew I could help them in. It
+      was as though he were calling on something in my nature which I did not
+      myself comprehend, but which his profound mind saw and knew was stronger
+      than I was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly I felt as if I might trust to him and to It, and that, without
+      being troubled or anxious, I would just say the first thing which came
+      into my mind, because it would be put there for me by some power which
+      could dictate to me. I never felt younger or less clever than I did at
+      that moment; I was only Ysobel Muircarrie, who knew almost nothing. But
+      that did not seem to matter. It was such a simple, almost childish thing I
+      told her. It was only about The Dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The feeling you call The Fear has never come to me,&rdquo; I said to her. &ldquo;And
+      if it had I think it would have melted away because of a dream I once had.
+      I don&rsquo;t really believe it was a dream, but I call it one. I think I really
+      went somewhere and came back. I often wonder why I came back. It was only
+      a short dream, so simple that there is scarcely anything to tell, and
+      perhaps it will not convey anything to you. But it has been part of my
+      life&mdash;that time when I was Out on the Hillside. That is what I call
+      The Dream to myself, &lsquo;Out on the Hillside,&rsquo; as if it were a kind of
+      unearthly poem. But it wasn&rsquo;t. It was more real than anything I have ever
+      felt. It was real&mdash;real! I wish that I could tell it so that you
+      would know how real it was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt almost piteous in my longing to make her know. I knew she was
+      afraid of something, and if I could make her know how REAL that one brief
+      dream had been she would not be afraid any more. And I loved her, I loved
+      her so much!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was asleep one night at Muircarrie,&rdquo; I went on, &ldquo;and suddenly, without
+      any preparatory dreaming, I was standing out on a hillside in moonlight
+      softer and more exquisite than I had ever seen or known before. Perhaps I
+      was still in my nightgown&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know. My feet were bare on the
+      grass, and I wore something light and white which did not seem to touch
+      me. If it touched me I did not feel it. My bare feet did not feel the
+      grass; they only knew it was beneath them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a low hill I stood on, and I was only on the side of it. And in
+      spite of the thrilling beauty of the moon, all but the part I stood on
+      melted into soft, beautiful shadow, all below me and above me. But I did
+      not turn to look at or ask myself about anything. You see the difficulty
+      is that there are no earthly words to tell it! All my being was ecstasy&mdash;pure,
+      light ecstasy! Oh, what poor words&mdash; But I know no others. If I said
+      that I was happy&mdash;HAPPY!&mdash;it would be nothing. I WAS happiness
+      itself, I WAS pure rapture! I did not look at the beauty of the night, the
+      sky, the marvelous melting shadow. I was PART of it all, one with it.
+      Nothing held me nothing! The beauty of the night, the light, the air WERE
+      what I was, and I was only thrilling ecstasy and wonder at the rapture of
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I stopped and covered my face with my hands, and tears wet my fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I cannot make it real! I was only there such a short, short time.
+      Even if you had been with me I could not have found words for it, even
+      then. It was such a short time. I only stood and lifted my face and felt
+      the joy of it, the pure marvel of joy. I only heard myself murmuring over
+      and over again: &lsquo;Oh, how beautiful! how beautiful! Oh, how BEAUTIFUL!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then a marvel of new joy swept through me. I said, very softly and
+      very slowly, as if my voice were trailing away into silence: &lsquo;Oh&mdash;h!
+      I&mdash;can&mdash;lie&mdash;down&mdash;here&mdash;on&mdash;the grass&mdash;and&mdash;sleep
+      . . . all&mdash;through&mdash;the night&mdash;under&mdash;this&mdash;moonlight.
+      . . . I can sleep&mdash;sleep&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I began to sink softly down, with the heavenliest feeling of relaxation
+      and repose, as if there existed only the soul of beautiful rest. I sank so
+      softly&mdash;and just as my cheek almost touched the grass the dream was
+      over!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried Mrs. MacNairn. &ldquo;Did you awaken?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I came back. In my sleep I suddenly found myself creeping into my bed
+      again as if I had been away somewhere. I was wondering why I was there,
+      how I had left the hillside, when I had left it. That part WAS a dream&mdash;but
+      the other was not. I was allowed to go somewhere&mdash;outside&mdash;and
+      come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I caught at her hand in the dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The words are all wrong,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;It is because we have no words to
+      describe that. But have I made you feel it at all? Oh! Mrs. MacNairn, have
+      I been able to make you know that it was not a dream?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted my hand and pressed it passionately against her cheek, and her
+      cheek, too, was wet&mdash;wet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it was not a dream,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You came back. Thank God you came
+      back, just to tell us that those who do not come back stand awakened in
+      that ecstasy&mdash;in that ecstasy. And The Fear is nothing. It is only
+      The Dream. The awakening is out on the hillside, out on the hillside!
+      Listen!&rdquo; She started as she said it. &ldquo;Listen! The nightingale is beginning
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sent forth in the dark a fountain&mdash;a rising, aspiring fountain&mdash;of
+      golden notes which seemed to reach heaven itself. The night was made
+      radiant by them. He flung them upward like a shower of stars into the sky.
+      We sat and listened, almost holding our breath. Oh! the nightingale! the
+      nightingale!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows,&rdquo; Hector MacNairn&rsquo;s low voice said, &ldquo;that it was not a dream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When there was silence again I heard him leave his chair very quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night! good night!&rdquo; he said, and went away. I felt somehow that he
+      had left us together for a purpose, but, oh, I did not even remotely dream
+      what the purpose was! But soon she told me, almost in a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We love you very much, Ysobel,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love you both, with all my heart,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;Indeed I love you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We two have been more to each other than mere mother and son. We have
+      been sufficient for each other. But he began to love you that first day
+      when he watched you in the railway carriage. He says it was the far look
+      in your eyes which drew him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I began to love him, too,&rdquo; I said. And I was not at all ashamed or shy in
+      saying it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We three might have spent our lives together,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;It would
+      have been a perfect thing. But&mdash;but&mdash;&rdquo; She stood up as if she
+      could not remain seated. Involuntarily I stood up with her. She was
+      trembling, and she caught and held me in her arms. &ldquo;He cannot stay,
+      Ysobel,&rdquo; she ended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could scarcely hear my own voice when I echoed the words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He cannot&mdash;stay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! the time will come,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;when people who love each other will
+      not be separated, when on this very earth there will be no pain, no grief,
+      no age, no death&mdash;when all the world has learned the Law at last. But
+      we have not learned it yet. And here we stand! The greatest specialists
+      have told us. There is some fatal flaw in his heart. At any moment, when
+      he is talking to us, when he is at his work, when he is asleep, he may&mdash;cease.
+      It will just be ceasing. At any moment. He cannot stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My own heart stood still for a second. Then there rose before me slowly,
+      but clearly, a vision&mdash;the vision which was not a dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out on the hillside,&rdquo; I murmured. &ldquo;Out on the hillside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I clung to her with both arms and held her tight. I understood now why
+      they had talked about The Fear. These two who were almost one soul were
+      trying to believe that they were not really to be torn apart&mdash;not
+      really. They were trying to heap up for themselves proof that they might
+      still be near each other. And, above all, his effort was to save her from
+      the worst, worst woe. And I understood, too, why something wiser and
+      stronger than myself had led me to tell the dream which was not a dream at
+      all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was as she said; the world had not learned the Secret yet. And
+      there we stood. We did not cry or talk, but we clung to each other&mdash;we
+      CLUNG. That is all human creatures can do until the Secret is known. And
+      as we clung the nightingale broke out again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O nightingale! O nightingale!&rdquo; she said in her low wonder of a voice.
+      &ldquo;WHAT are you trying to tell us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      What I feel sure I know by this time is that all the things we think
+      happen by chance and accident are only part of the weaving of the scheme
+      of life. When you begin to suspect this and to watch closely you also
+      begin to see how trifles connect themselves with one another, and seem in
+      the end to have led to a reason and a meaning, though we may not be clever
+      enough to see it clearly. Nothing is an accident. We make everything
+      happen ourselves: the wrong things because we do not know or care whether
+      we are wrong or right, the right ones because we unconsciously or
+      consciously choose the right even in the midst of our ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I dare say it sounds audacious for an ordinary girl to say such things in
+      an ordinary way; but perhaps I have said them in spite of myself, because
+      it is not a bad thing that they should be said by an every-day sort of
+      person in simple words which other every-day people can understand. I am
+      only expressing what has gradually grown into belief in my mind through
+      reading with Angus ancient books and modern ones&mdash;books about faiths
+      and religions, books about philosophies and magics, books about what the
+      world calls marvels, but which are not marvels at all, but only workings
+      of the Law most people have not yet reasoned about or even accepted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Angus had read and studied them all his life before he began to read them
+      with me, and we talked them over together sitting by the fire in the
+      library, fascinated and staring at each other, I in one high-backed chair
+      and he in another on the opposite side of the hearth. Angus is wonderful&mdash;wonderful!
+      He KNOWS there is no such thing as chance. He KNOWS that we ourselves are
+      the working of the Law&mdash;and that we ourselves could work what now are
+      stupidly called &ldquo;miracles&rdquo; if we could only remember always what the Law
+      is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What I intended to say at first was merely that it was not by chance that
+      I climbed to the shelf in the library that afternoon and pushed aside the
+      books hiding the old manuscript which told the real story of Dark Malcolm
+      of the Glen and Wee Brown Elspeth. It seemed like chance when it happened,
+      but it was really the first step toward my finding out the strange,
+      beautiful thing I knew soon afterward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the beginning of my friendship with the MacNairns I had hoped they
+      would come and stay with me at Muircarrie. When they both seemed to feel
+      such interest in all I told them of it, and not to mind its wild
+      remoteness, I took courage and asked them if they would come to me. Most
+      people are bored by the prospect of life in a feudal castle, howsoever
+      picturesquely it is set in a place where there are no neighbors to count
+      on. Its ancient stateliness is too dull. But the MacNairns were more
+      allured by what Muircarrie offered than they were by other and more
+      brilliant invitations. So when I went back to the castle I was only to be
+      alone a week before they followed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jean and Angus were quite happy in their quiet way when I told them who I
+      was expecting. They knew how glad I was myself. Jean was full of silent
+      pleasure as she arranged the rooms I had chosen for my guests, rooms which
+      had the most sweeping view of the moor. Angus knew that Mr. MacNairn would
+      love the library, and he hovered about consulting his catalogues and
+      looking over his shelves, taking down volumes here and there, holding them
+      tenderly in his long, bony old hand as he dipped into them. He made notes
+      of the manuscripts and books he thought Mr. MacNairn would feel the
+      deepest interest in. He loved his library with all his being, and I knew
+      he looked forward to talking to a man who would care for it in the same
+      way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been going over one of the highest shelves one day and had left his
+      step-ladder leaning against it when he went elsewhere. It was when I
+      mounted the steps, as I often did when he left them, that I came upon the
+      manuscript which related the old story of Dark Malcolm and his child. It
+      had been pushed behind some volumes, and I took it out because it looked
+      so old and yellow. And I opened at once at the page where the tale began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first I stood reading, and then I sat down on the broad top of the
+      ladder and forgot everything. It was a savage history of ferocious hate
+      and barbarous reprisals. It had been a feud waged between two clans for
+      three generations. The story of Dark Malcolm and Ian Red Hand was only
+      part of it, but it was a gruesome thing. Pages told of the bloody deeds
+      they wrought on each other&rsquo;s houses. The one human passion of Dark
+      Malcolm&rsquo;s life was his love for his little daughter. She had brown eyes
+      and brown hair, and those who most loved her called her Wee Brown Elspeth.
+      Ian Red Hand was richer and more powerful than Malcolm of the Glen, and
+      therefore could more easily work his cruel will. He knew well of Malcolm&rsquo;s
+      worship of his child, and laid his plans to torture him through her. Dark
+      Malcolm, coming back to his rude, small castle one night after a raid in
+      which he had lost followers and weapons and strength, found that Wee Brown
+      Elspeth had been carried away, and unspeakable taunts and threats left
+      behind by Ian and his men. With unbound wounds, broken dirks and hacked
+      swords, Dark Malcolm and the remnant of his troop of fighting clansmen
+      rushed forth into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither men nor weapons have we to win her back,&rdquo; screamed Dark Malcolm,
+      raving mad, &ldquo;but we may die fighting to get near enough to her to drive
+      dirk into her little breast and save her from worse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were a band of madmen in their black despair. How they tore through
+      the black night; what unguarded weak spot they found in Ian&rsquo;s castle
+      walls; how they fought their way through it, leaving their dead bodies in
+      the path, none really ever knew. By what strange chance Dark Malcolm came
+      upon Wee Brown Elspeth, craftily set to playing hide-and-seek with a child
+      of Ian&rsquo;s so that she might not cry out and betray her presence; how,
+      already wounded to his death, he caught at and drove his dirk into her
+      child heart, the story only offers guesses at. But kill and save her he
+      did, falling dead with her body held against his breast, her brown hair
+      streaming over it. Not one living man went back to the small, rude castle
+      on the Glen&mdash;not one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sat and read and read until the room grew dark. When I stopped I found
+      that Angus Macayre was standing in the dimness at the foot of the ladder.
+      He looked up at me and I down at him. For a few moments we were both quite
+      still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the tale of Ian Red Hand and Dark Malcolm you are reading?&rdquo; he
+      said, at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Wee Brown Elspeth, who was fought for and killed,&rdquo; I added, slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Angus nodded his head with a sad face. &ldquo;It was the only way for a father,&rdquo;
+       he said. &ldquo;A hound of hell was Ian. Such men were savage beasts in those
+      days, not human.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I touched the manuscript with my hand questioningly. &ldquo;Did this fall at the
+      back there by accident,&rdquo; I asked, &ldquo;or did you hide it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;It was no tale for a young thing to read. I have
+      hidden many from you. You were always poking about in corners, Ysobel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I sat and thought over past memories for a while and the shadows in
+      the room deepened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; I said, laggingly, after the silence&mdash;&ldquo;why did I call the
+      child who used to play with me &lsquo;Wee Brown Elspeth&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was your own fancy,&rdquo; was his reply. &ldquo;I used to wonder myself; but I
+      made up my mind that you had heard some of the maids talking and the name
+      had caught your ear. That would be a child&rsquo;s way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I put my forehead in my hands and thought again. So many years had passed!
+      I had been little more than a baby; the whole thing seemed like a
+      half-forgotten dream when I tried to recall it&mdash;but I seemed to dimly
+      remember strange things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who were the wild men who brought her to me first&mdash;that day on the
+      moor?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I do remember they had pale, savage, exultant faces. And
+      torn, stained clothes. And broken dirks and swords. But they were glad of
+      something. Who were they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not see them. The mist was too thick,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;They were some
+      wild hunters, perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It gives me such a strange feeling to try to remember, Angus,&rdquo; I said,
+      lifting my forehead from my hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t try,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Give me the manuscript and get down from the
+      step-ladder. Come and look at the list of books I have made for Mr.
+      MacNairn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I did as he told me, but I felt as if I were walking in a dream. My mind
+      seemed to have left my body and gone back to the day when I sat a little
+      child on the moor and heard the dull sound of horses&rsquo; feet and the
+      jingling metal and the creak of leather coming nearer in the thick mist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt as if Angus were in a queer, half-awake mood, too&mdash;as if two
+      sets of thoughts were working at the same time in his mind: one his
+      thoughts about Hector MacNairn and the books, the other some queer
+      thoughts which went on in spite of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I was going to leave the library and go up-stairs to dress for dinner
+      he said a strange thing to me, and he said it slowly and in a heavy voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a thing Jean and I have often talked of telling you,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;We have not known what it was best to do. Times we have been troubled
+      because we could not make up our minds. This Mr. Hector MacNairn is no
+      common man. He is one who is great and wise enough to decide things plain
+      people could not be sure of. Jean and I are glad indeed that he and his
+      mother are coming. Jean can talk to her and I can talk to him, being a man
+      body. They will tell us whether we have been right or wrong and what we
+      must do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are wise enough to tell you anything,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;It sounds as if
+      you and Jean had known some big secret all my life. But I am not
+      frightened. You two would go to your graves hiding it if it would hurt
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, bairn!&rdquo; he said, suddenly, in a queer, moved way. &ldquo;Eh, bairn!&rdquo; And he
+      took hold of both my hands and kissed them, pressing them quite long and
+      emotionally to his lips. But he said nothing else, and when he dropped
+      them I went out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was wonderful when Mr. MacNairn and his mother came. It was even more
+      beautiful than I had thought it would be. They arrived late in the
+      afternoon, and when I took them out upon the terrace the sun was reddening
+      the moor, and even the rough, gray towers of the castle were stained
+      rose-color. There was that lovely evening sound of birds twittering before
+      they went to sleep in the ivy. The glimpses of gardens below seemed like
+      glimpses of rich tapestries set with jewels. And there was such stillness!
+      When we drew our three chairs in a little group together and looked out on
+      it all, I felt as if we were almost in heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! yes!&rdquo; Hector said, looking slowly&mdash;round; &ldquo;it is all here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; his mother added, in her lovely, lovely voice. &ldquo;It is what made you
+      Ysobel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was so angelic of them to feel it all in that deep, quiet way, and to
+      think that it was part of me and I a part of it. The climbing moon was
+      trembling with beauty. Tender evening airs quivered in the heather and
+      fern, and the late birds called like spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since the night when Mrs. MacNairn had held me in her arms under the
+      apple-tree while the nightingale sang I had felt toward her son as if he
+      were an archangel walking on the earth. Perhaps my thoughts were
+      exaggerated, but it seemed so marvelous that he should be moving among us,
+      doing his work, seeing and talking to his friends, and yet that he should
+      know that at any moment the great change might come and he might awaken
+      somewhere else, in quite another place. If he had been like other men and
+      I had been like other girls, I suppose that after that night when I heard
+      the truth I should have been plunged into the darkest woe and have almost
+      sobbed myself to death. Why did I not? I do not know except&mdash;except
+      that I felt that no darkness could come between us because no darkness
+      could touch him. He could never be anything but alive alive. If I could
+      not see him it would only be because my eyes were not clear and strong
+      enough. I seemed to be waiting for something. I wanted to keep near him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was full of this feeling as we sat together on the terrace and watched
+      the moon. I could scarcely look away from him. He was rather pale that
+      evening, but there seemed to be a light behind his pallor, and his eyes
+      seemed to see so much more than the purple and yellow of the heather and
+      gorse as they rested on them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After I had watched him silently for a little while I leaned forward and
+      pointed to a part of the moor where there was an unbroken blaze of gorse
+      in full bloom like a big patch of gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is where I was sitting when Wee Brown Elspeth was first brought to
+      me,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat upright and looked. &ldquo;Is it?&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Will you take me there
+      to-morrow? I have always wanted to see the place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like to go early in the morning? The mist is more likely to be
+      there then, as it was that day. It is so mysterious and beautiful. Would
+      you like to do that?&rdquo; I asked him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better than anything else!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Yes, let us go in the morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wee Brown Elspeth seems very near me this evening,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I feel as if&mdash;&rdquo;
+       I broke off and began again. &ldquo;I have a puzzled feeling about her. This
+      afternoon I found some manuscript pushed behind a book on a high shelf in
+      the library. Angus said he had hidden it there because it was a savage
+      story he did not wish me to read. It was the history of the feud between
+      Ian Red Hand and Dark Malcolm of the Glen. Dark Malcolm&rsquo;s child was called
+      Wee Brown Elspeth hundreds of years ago&mdash;five hundred, I think. It
+      makes me feel so bewildered when I remember the one I played with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a bloody story,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I heard it only a few days before we
+      met at Sir Ian&rsquo;s house in London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That made me recall something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that why you started when I told you about Elspeth?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Perhaps the one you played with was a little descendant who had
+      inherited her name,&rdquo; he answered, a trifle hurriedly. &ldquo;I confess I was
+      startled for a moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I put my hand up to my forehead and rubbed it unconsciously. I could not
+      help seeing a woesome picture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little soul, with the blood pouring from her heart and her brown
+      hair spread over her dead father&rsquo;s breast!&rdquo; I stopped, because a faint
+      memory came back to me. &ldquo;Mine,&rdquo; I stammered&mdash;&ldquo;mine&mdash;how strange!&mdash;had
+      a great stain on the embroideries of her dress. She looked at it&mdash;and
+      looked. She looked as if she didn&rsquo;t like it&mdash;as if she didn&rsquo;t
+      understand how it came there. She covered it with ferns and bluebells.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt as if I were being drawn away into a dream. I made a sudden effort
+      to come back. I ceased rubbing my forehead and dropped my hand, sitting
+      upright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must ask Angus and Jean to tell me about her,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Of course, they
+      must have known. I wonder why I never thought of asking questions before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a strange look I met when I involuntarily turned toward him&mdash;such
+      an absorbed, strange, tender look!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew he sat quite late in the library that night, talking to Angus after
+      his mother and I went to our rooms. Just as I was falling asleep I
+      remember there floated through my mind a vague recollection of what Angus
+      had said to me of asking his advice about something; and I wondered if he
+      would reach the subject in their talk, or if they would spend all their
+      time in poring over manuscripts and books together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moor wore its most mysterious look when I got up in the early morning.
+      It had hidden itself in its softest snows of white, swathing mist. Only
+      here and there dark fir-trees showed themselves above it, and now and then
+      the whiteness thinned or broke and drifted. It was as I had wanted him to
+      see it&mdash;just as I had wanted to walk through it with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had met in the hall as we had planned, and, wrapped in our plaids
+      because the early morning air was cold, we tramped away together. No one
+      but myself could ever realize what it was like. I had never known that
+      there could be such a feeling of companionship in the world. It would not
+      have been necessary for us to talk at all if we had felt silent. We should
+      have been saying things to each other without words. But we did talk as we
+      walked&mdash;in quiet voices which seemed made quieter by the mist, and of
+      quiet things which such voices seemed to belong to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We crossed the park to a stile in a hedge where a path led at once on to
+      the moor. Part of the park itself had once been moorland, and was dark
+      with slender firs and thick grown with heather and broom. On the moor the
+      mist grew thicker, and if I had not so well known the path we might have
+      lost ourselves in it. Also I knew by heart certain little streams that
+      rushed and made guiding sounds which were sometimes loud whispers and
+      sometimes singing babbles. The damp, sweet scent of fern and heather was
+      in our nostrils; as we climbed we breathed its freshness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a sort of unearthly loveliness in it all,&rdquo; Hector MacNairn said
+      to me. His voice was rather like his mother&rsquo;s. It always seemed to say so
+      much more than his words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We might be ghosts,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;We might be some of those the mist
+      hides because they like to be hidden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would not be afraid if you met one of them?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I think I am sure of that. I should feel that it was only like
+      myself, and, if I could hear, might tell me things I want to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want to know?&rdquo; he asked me, very low. &ldquo;You!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only what everybody wants to know&mdash;that it is really AWAKENING free,
+      ready for wonderful new things, finding oneself in the midst of wonders. I
+      don&rsquo;t mean angels with harps and crowns, but beauty such as we see now;
+      only seeing it without burdens of fears before and behind us. And knowing
+      there is no reason to be afraid. We have all been so afraid. We don&rsquo;t know
+      how afraid we have been&mdash;of everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I stopped among the heather and threw my arms out wide. I drew in a great,
+      joyous morning breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Free like that! It is the freeness, the light, splendid freeness, I think
+      of most.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The freeness!&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;Yes, the freeness!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As for beauty,&rdquo; I almost whispered, in a sort of reverence for visions I
+      remembered, &ldquo;I have stood on this moor a thousand times and seen
+      loveliness which made me tremble. One&rsquo;s soul could want no more in any
+      life. But &lsquo;Out on the Hillside&rsquo; I KNEW I was part of it, and it was
+      ecstasy. That was the freeness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;it was the freeness,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We brushed through the heather and the bracken, and flower-bells shook
+      showers of radiant drops upon us. The mist wavered and sometimes lifted
+      before us, and opened up mystic vistas to veil them again a few minutes
+      later. The sun tried to break through, and sometimes we walked in a golden
+      haze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We fell into silence. Now and then I glanced sidewise at my companion as
+      we made our soundless way over the thick moss. He looked so strong and
+      beautiful. His tall body was so fine, his shoulders so broad and splendid!
+      How could it be! How could it be! As he tramped beside me he was thinking
+      deeply, and he knew he need not talk to me. That made me glad&mdash;that
+      he should know me so well and feel me so near. That was what he felt when
+      he was with his mother, that she understood and that at times neither of
+      them needed words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until we had reached the patch of gorse where we intended to end our walk
+      we did not speak at all. He was thinking of things which led him far. I
+      knew that, though I did not know what they were. When we reached the
+      golden blaze we had seen the evening before it was a flame of gold again,
+      because&mdash;it was only for a few moments&mdash;the mist had blown apart
+      and the sun was shining on it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we stood in the midst of it together&mdash;Oh! how strange and
+      beautiful it was!&mdash;Mr. MacNairn came back. That was what it seemed to
+      me&mdash;that he came back. He stood quite still a moment and looked about
+      him, and then he stretched out his arms as I had stretched out mine. But
+      he did it slowly, and a light came into his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If, after it was over, a man awakened as you said and found himself&mdash;the
+      self he knew, but light, free, splendid&mdash;remembering all the ages of
+      dark, unknowing dread, of horror of some black, aimless plunge, and
+      suddenly seeing all the childish uselessness of it&mdash;how he would
+      stand and smile! How he would stand and SMILE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had I understood anything more clearly than I understood then. Yes,
+      yes! That would be it. Remembering all the waste of fear, how he would
+      stand and SMILE!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was smiling himself, the golden gorse about him already losing its
+      flame in the light returning mist-wraiths closing again over it, when I
+      heard a sound far away and high up the moor. It sounded like the playing
+      of a piper. He did not seem to notice it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall be shut in again,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;How mysterious it is, this opening
+      and closing! I like it more than anything else. Let us sit down, Ysobel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spread the plaid we had brought to sit on, and laid on it the little
+      strapped basket Jean had made ready for us. He shook the mist drops from
+      our own plaids, and as I was about to sit down I stopped a moment to
+      listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a tune I never heard on the pipes before,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;What is a
+      piper doing out on the moor so early?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He listened also. &ldquo;It must be far away. I don&rsquo;t hear it,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;Perhaps it is a bird whistling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is far away,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;but it is not a bird. It&rsquo;s the pipes, and
+      playing such a strange tune. There! It has stopped!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not silent long; I heard the tune begin again much nearer, and
+      the piper was plainly coming toward us. I turned my head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mist was clearing, and floated about like a thin veil through which
+      one could see objects. At a short distance above us on the moor I saw
+      something moving. It was a man who was playing the pipes. It was the
+      piper, and almost at once I knew him, because it was actually my own
+      Feargus, stepping proudly through the heather with his step like a stag on
+      the hills. His head was held high, and his face had a sort of elated
+      delight in it as if he were enjoying himself and the morning and the music
+      in a new way. I was so surprised that I rose to my feet and called to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Feargus!&rdquo; I cried. &ldquo;What&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew he heard me, because he turned and looked at me with the most
+      extraordinary smile. He was usually a rather grave-faced man, but this
+      smile had a kind of startling triumph in it. He certainly heard me, for he
+      whipped off his bonnet in a salute which was as triumphant as the smile.
+      But he did not answer, and actually passed in and out of sight in the
+      mist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I rose Mr. MacNairn had risen, too. When I turned to speak in my
+      surprise, he had fixed on me his watchful look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Imagine its being Feargus at this hour!&rdquo; I exclaimed. &ldquo;And why did he
+      pass by in such a hurry without answering? He must have been to a wedding
+      and have been up all night. He looked&mdash;&rdquo; I stopped a second and
+      laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did he look?&rdquo; Mr. MacNairn asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pale! That won&rsquo;t do&mdash;though he certainly didn&rsquo;t look ill.&rdquo; I laughed
+      again. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m laughing because he looked almost like one of the White
+      People.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure it was Feargus?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite sure. No one else is the least like Feargus. Didn&rsquo;t you see him
+      yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know him as well as you do; and there was the mist,&rdquo; was his
+      answer. &ldquo;But he certainly was not one of the White People when I saw him
+      last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I wondered why he looked as he did when he took my hand and drew me down
+      to my place on the plaid again. He did not let it go when he sat down by
+      my side. He held it in his own large, handsome one, looking down on it a
+      moment or so; and then he bent his head and kissed it long and slowly two
+      or three times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear little Ysobel!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Beloved, strange little Ysobel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I strange!&rdquo; I said, softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, thank God!&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had known that some day when we were at Muircarrie together he would
+      tell me what his mother had told me&mdash;about what we three might have
+      been to one another. I trembled with happiness at the thought of hearing
+      him say it himself. I knew he was going to say it now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He held my hand and stroked it. &ldquo;My mother told you, Ysobel&mdash;what I
+      am waiting for?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know I love you?&rdquo; he said, very low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I love you, too. My whole life would have been heaven if we could
+      always have been together,&rdquo; was my answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew me up into his arms so that my cheek lay against his breast as I
+      went on, holding fast to the rough tweed of his jacket and whispering: &ldquo;I
+      should have belonged to you two, heart and body and soul. I should never
+      have been lonely again. I should have known nothing, whatsoever happened,
+      but tender joy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatsoever happened?&rdquo; he murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatsoever happens now, Ysobel, know nothing but tender joy. I think you
+      CAN. &lsquo;Out on the Hillside!&rsquo; Let us remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;&lsquo;Out on the Hillside.&rsquo;&rdquo; And our two faces, damp with
+      the sweet mist, were pressed together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The mist had floated away, and the moor was drenched with golden sunshine
+      when we went back to the castle. As we entered the hall I heard the sound
+      of a dog howling, and spoke of it to one of the men-servants who had
+      opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That sounds like Gelert. Is he shut up somewhere?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gelert was a beautiful sheep-dog who belonged to Feargus and was his
+      heart&rsquo;s friend. I allowed him to be kept in the courtyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man hesitated before he answered me, with a curiously grave face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is Gelert, miss. He is howling for his master. We were obliged to shut
+      him in the stables.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Feargus ought to have reached here by this time,&rdquo; I was beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was stopped because I found Angus Macayre almost at my elbow. He had
+      that moment come out of the library. He put his hand on my arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will ye come with me?&rdquo; he said, and led me back to the room he had just
+      left. He kept his hand on my arm when we all stood together inside, Hector
+      and I looking at him in wondering question. He was going to tell me
+      something&mdash;we both saw that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a sad thing you have to hear,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He was a fine man,
+      Feargus, and a most faithful servant. He went to see his mother last night
+      and came back late across the moor. There was a heavy mist, and he must
+      have lost his way. A shepherd found his body in a tarn at daybreak. They
+      took him back to his father&rsquo;s home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked at Hector MacNairn and again at Angus. &ldquo;But it couldn&rsquo;t be
+      Feargus,&rdquo; I cried. &ldquo;I saw him an hour ago. He passed us playing on his
+      pipes. He was playing a new tune I had never heard before a wonderful,
+      joyous thing. I both heard and SAW him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Angus stood still and watched me. They both stood still and watched me,
+      and even in my excitement I saw that each of them looked a little pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said you did not hear him at first, but you surely saw him when he
+      passed so near,&rdquo; I protested. &ldquo;I called to him, and he took off his
+      bonnet, though he did not stop. He was going so quickly that perhaps he
+      did not hear me call his name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What strange thing in Hector&rsquo;s look checked me? Who knows?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You DID see him, didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; I asked of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he and Angus exchanged glances, as if asking each other to decide
+      some grave thing. It was Hector MacNairn who decided it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered, very quietly, &ldquo;I neither saw nor heard him, even when
+      he passed. But you did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did, quite plainly,&rdquo; I went on, more and more bewildered by the way in
+      which they kept a sort of tender, awed gaze fixed on me. &ldquo;You remember I
+      even noticed that he looked pale. I laughed, you know, when I said he
+      looked almost like one of the White People&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then my breath caught itself and I stopped. I began to remember
+      things&mdash;hundreds of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Angus spoke to me again as quietly as Hector had spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither Jean nor I ever saw Wee Brown Elspeth,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;neither
+      Jean nor I. But you did. You have always seen what the rest of us did not
+      see, my bairn&mdash;always.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I stammered out a few words, half in a whisper. &ldquo;I have always seen what
+      you others could not see? WHAT&mdash;HAVE&mdash;I&mdash;SEEN?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was not frightened. I suppose I could never tell any one what
+      strange, wide, bright places seemed suddenly to open and shine before me.
+      Not places to shrink back from&mdash;oh no! no! One could be sure, then&mdash;SURE!
+      Feargus had lifted his bonnet with that extraordinary triumph in his look&mdash;even
+      Feargus, who had been rather dour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You called them the White People,&rdquo; Hector MacNairn said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Angus and Jean had known all my life. A very old shepherd who had looked
+      in my face when I was a baby had said I had the eyes which &ldquo;SAW.&rdquo; It was
+      only the saying of an old Highlander, and might not have been remembered.
+      Later the two began to believe I had a sight they had not. The night
+      before Wee Brown Elspeth had been brought to me Angus had read for the
+      first time the story of Dark Malcolm, and as they sat near me on the moor
+      they had been talking about it. That was why he forgot himself when I came
+      to ask them where the child had gone, and told him of the big, dark man
+      with the scar on his forehead. After that they were sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had always hidden their knowledge from me because they were afraid it
+      might frighten me to be told. I had not been a strong child. They kept the
+      secret from my relatives because they knew they would dislike to hear it
+      and would not believe, and also would dislike me as a queer, abnormal
+      creature. Angus had fears of what they might do with doctors and severe
+      efforts to obliterate from my mind my &ldquo;nonsense,&rdquo; as they would have been
+      sure to call it. The two wise souls had shielded me on every side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was better that you should go on thinking it only a simple, natural
+      thing,&rdquo; Angus said. &ldquo;And as to natural, what IS natural and what is not?
+      Man has not learned all the laws of nature yet. Nature&rsquo;s a grand, rich,
+      endless thing, always unrolling her scroll with writings that seem new on
+      it. They&rsquo;re not new. They were always written there. But they were not
+      unrolled. Never a law broken, never a new law, only laws read with
+      stronger eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Angus and I had always been very fond of the Bible&mdash;the strange old
+      temple of wonders, full of all the poems and tragedies and histories of
+      man, his hates and battles and loves and follies, and of the Wisdom of the
+      universe and the promises of the splendors of it, and which even those of
+      us who think ourselves the most believing neither wholly believe nor will
+      understand. We had pored over and talked of it. We had never thought of it
+      as only a pious thing to do. The book was to us one of the mystic,
+      awe-inspiring, prophetic marvels of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was what made me say, half whispering: &ldquo;I have wondered and wondered
+      what it meant&mdash;that verse in Isaiah: &lsquo;Behold the former things are
+      come to pass and new things do I declare; before they spring forth I tell
+      you of them.&rsquo; Perhaps it means only the unrolling of the scroll.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, aye!&rdquo; said Angus; &ldquo;it is full of such deep sayings, and none of us
+      will listen to them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has taken man eons of time,&rdquo; Hector MacNairn said, thinking it out as
+      he spoke&mdash;&ldquo;eons of time to reach the point where he is beginning to
+      know that in every stock and stone in his path may lie hidden some power
+      he has not yet dreamed of. He has learned that lightning may be commanded,
+      distance conquered, motion chained and utilized; but he, the one CONSCIOUS
+      force, has never yet begun to suspect that of all others he may be the one
+      as yet the least explored. How do we know that there does not lie in each
+      of us a wholly natural but, so far, dormant power of sight&mdash;a power
+      to see what has been called The Unseen through all the Ages whose
+      sightlessness has made them Dark? Who knows when the Shadow around us may
+      begin to clear? Oh, we are a dull lot&mdash;we human things&mdash;with a
+      queer, obstinate conceit of ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Complete we think we are,&rdquo; Angus murmured half to himself. &ldquo;Finished
+      creatures! And look at us! How many of us in a million have beauty and
+      health and full power? And believing that the law is that we must crumple
+      and go to pieces hour by hour! Who&rsquo;d waste the time making a clock that
+      went wrong as often? Nay, nay! We shall learn better than this as time
+      goes on. And we&rsquo;d better be beginning and setting our minds to work on it.
+      &lsquo;Tis for us to do&mdash;the minds of us. And what&rsquo;s the mind of us but the
+      Mind that made us? Simple and straight enough it is when once you begin to
+      think it out. The spirit of you sees clearer than we do, that&rsquo;s all,&rdquo; he
+      said to me. &ldquo;When your mother brought you into the world she was listening
+      to one outside calling to her, and it opened the way for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At night Hector MacNairn and his mother and I sat on the terrace under
+      stars which seemed listening things, and we three drew nearer to one
+      another, and nearer and nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When the poor mother stumbled into the train that day,&rdquo; was one of the
+      things Hector told me, &ldquo;I was thinking of The Fear and of my own mother.
+      You looked so slight and small as you sat in your corner that I thought at
+      first you were almost a child. Then a far look in your eyes made me begin
+      to watch you. You were so sorry for the poor woman that you could not look
+      away from her, and something in your face touched and puzzled me. You
+      leaned forward suddenly and put out your hand protectingly as she stepped
+      down on to the platform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That night when you spoke quite naturally of the child, never doubting
+      that I had seen it, I suddenly began to suspect. Because of The Fear&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      hesitated&mdash;&ldquo;I had been reading and thinking many things new to me. I
+      did not know what I believed. But you spoke so simply, and I knew you were
+      speaking the truth. Then you spoke just as naturally of Wee Brown Elspeth.
+      That startled me because not long before I had been told the tale in the
+      Highlands by a fine old story-teller who is the head of his clan. I saw
+      you had never heard the story before. And yet you were telling me that you
+      had played with the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He came home and told me about you,&rdquo; Mrs. MacNairn said. &ldquo;His fear of The
+      Fear was more for me than for himself. He knew that if he brought you to
+      me, you who are more complete than we are, clearer-eyed and nearer,
+      nearer, I should begin to feel that he was not going&mdash;out. I should
+      begin to feel a reality and nearness myself. Ah, Ysobel! How we have clung
+      to you and loved you! And then that wonderful afternoon! I saw no girl
+      with her hand through Mr. Le Breton&rsquo;s arm; Hector saw none. But you saw
+      her. She was THERE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she was there,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;She was there, smiling up at him. I
+      wish he could have known.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What does it matter if this seems a strange story? To some it will mean
+      something; to some it will mean nothing. To those it has a meaning for it
+      will open wide windows into the light and lift heavy loads. That would be
+      quite enough, even if the rest thought it only the weird fancy of a queer
+      girl who had lived alone and given rein to her silliest imaginings. I
+      wanted to tell it, howsoever poorly and ineffectively it was done. Since I
+      KNEW I have dropped the load of ages&mdash;the black burden. Out on the
+      hillside my feet did not even feel the grass, and yet I was standing, not
+      floating. I had no wings or crown. I was only Ysobel out on the hillside,
+      free!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the way it all ended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three weeks that were like heaven we three lived together at
+      Muircarrie. We saw every beauty and shared every joy of sun and dew and
+      love and tender understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After one lovely day we had spent on the moor in a quiet dream of joy
+      almost strange in its perfectness, we came back to the castle; and,
+      because the sunset was of such unearthly radiance and changing wonder we
+      sat on the terrace until the last soft touch of gold had died out and left
+      the pure, still, clear, long summer twilight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mrs. MacNairn and I went in to dress for dinner, Hector lingered a
+      little behind us because the silent beauty held him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I came down before his mother did, and I went out upon the terrace again
+      because I saw he was still sitting there. I went to the stone balustrade
+      very quietly and leaned against it as I turned to look at him and speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I stood quite still and looked long&mdash;for some reason not
+      startled, not anguished, not even feeling that he had gone. He was more
+      beautiful than any human creature I had ever seen before. But It had
+      happened as they said it would. He had not ceased&mdash;but something else
+      had. Something had ceased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the next evening before I came out on the terrace again. The day
+      had been more exquisite and the sunset more wonderful than before. Mrs.
+      MacNairn was sitting by her son&rsquo;s side in the bedroom whose windows looked
+      over the moor. I am not going to say one word of what had come between the
+      two sunsets. Mrs. MacNairn and I had clung&mdash;and clung. We had
+      promised never to part from each other. I did not quite know why I went
+      out on the terrace; perhaps it was because I had always loved to sit or
+      stand there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This evening I stood and leaned upon the balustrade, looking out far, far,
+      far over the moor. I stood and gazed and gazed. I was thinking about the
+      Secret and the Hillside. I was very quiet&mdash;as quiet as the twilight&rsquo;s
+      self. And there came back to me the memory of what Hector had said as we
+      stood on the golden patch of gorse when the mist had for a moment or so
+      blown aside, what he had said of man&rsquo;s awakening, and, remembering all the
+      ages of&mdash;childish, useless dread, how he would stand&mdash; I did not
+      turn suddenly, but slowly. I was not startled in the faintest degree. He
+      stood there close to me as he had so often stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he stood&mdash;and smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have seen him many times since. I shall see him many times again. And
+      when I see him he always stands&mdash;and smiles.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
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+  </body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The White People, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The White People
+
+Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+Release Date: March 14, 2006 [EBook #459]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE PEOPLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Keller and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE PEOPLE
+
+By Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+
+
+
+
+TO LIONEL
+
+     "The stars come nightly to the sky;
+     The tidal wave unto the sea;
+     Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high
+     Can keep my own away from me."
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE PEOPLE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Perhaps the things which happened could only have happened to me. I do
+not know. I never heard of things like them happening to any one else.
+But I am not sorry they did happen. I am in secret deeply and strangely
+glad. I have heard other people say things--and they were not always
+sad people, either--which made me feel that if they knew what I know it
+would seem to them as though some awesome, heavy load they had always
+dragged about with them had fallen from their shoulders. To most people
+everything is so uncertain that if they could only see or hear and know
+something clear they would drop upon their knees and give thanks. That
+was what I felt myself before I found out so strangely, and I was only a
+girl. That is why I intend to write this down as well as I can. It will
+not be very well done, because I never was clever at all, and always
+found it difficult to talk.
+
+I say that perhaps these things could only have happened to me, because,
+as I look back over my life, I realize that it has always been a rather
+curious one. Even when those who took care of me did not know I was
+thinking at all, I had begun to wonder if I were not different from
+other children. That was, of course, largely because Muircarrie
+Castle was in such a wild and remote part of Scotland that when my few
+relations felt they must pay me a visit as a mere matter of duty, their
+journey from London, or their pleasant places in the south of England,
+seemed to them like a pilgrimage to a sort of savage land; and when a
+conscientious one brought a child to play with me, the little civilized
+creature was as frightened of me as I was of it. My shyness and fear of
+its strangeness made us both dumb. No doubt I seemed like a new breed of
+inoffensive little barbarian, knowing no tongue but its own.
+
+A certain clannish etiquette made it seem necessary that a relation
+should pay me a visit sometimes, because I was in a way important. The
+huge, frowning feudal castle standing upon its battlemented rock was
+mine; I was a great heiress, and I was, so to speak, the chieftainess
+of the clan. But I was a plain, undersized little child, and had no
+attraction for any one but Jean Braidfute, a distant cousin, who took
+care of me, and Angus Macayre, who took care of the library, and who was
+a distant relative also. They were both like me in the fact that they
+were not given to speech; but sometimes we talked to one another, and I
+knew they were fond of me, as I was fond of them. They were really all I
+had.
+
+When I was a little girl I did not, of course, understand that I was
+an important person, and I could not have realized the significance of
+being an heiress. I had always lived in the castle, and was used to its
+hugeness, of which I only knew corners. Until I was seven years old,
+I think, I imagined all but very poor people lived in castles and were
+saluted by every one they passed. It seemed probable that all little
+girls had a piper who strode up and down the terrace and played on the
+bagpipes when guests were served in the dining-hall.
+
+My piper's name was Feargus, and in time I found out that the guests
+from London could not endure the noise he made when he marched to and
+fro, proudly swinging his kilts and treading like a stag on a hillside.
+It was an insult to tell him to stop playing, because it was his
+religion to believe that The Muircarrie must be piped proudly to;
+and his ancestors had been pipers to the head of the clan for five
+generations. It was his duty to march round the dining-hall and play
+while the guests feasted, but I was obliged in the end to make him
+believe that he could be heard better from the terrace--because when he
+was outside his music was not spoiled by the sound of talking. It was
+very difficult, at first. But because I was his chieftainess, and had
+learned how to give orders in a rather proud, stern little voice, he
+knew he must obey.
+
+Even this kind of thing may show that my life was a peculiar one; but
+the strangest part of it was that, while I was at the head of so many
+people, I did not really belong to any one, and I did not know that this
+was unusual. One of my early memories is that I heard an under-nursemaid
+say to another this curious thing: "Both her father and mother were dead
+when she was born." I did not even know that was a remarkable thing to
+say until I was several years older and Jean Braidfute told me what had
+been meant.
+
+My father and mother had both been very young and beautiful and
+wonderful. It was said that my father was the handsomest chieftain in
+Scotland, and that his wife was as beautiful as he was. They came to
+Muircarrie as soon as they were married and lived a splendid year there
+together. Sometimes they were quite alone, and spent their days fishing
+or riding or wandering on the moor together, or reading by the fire in
+the library the ancient books Angus Macayre found for them. The library
+was a marvelous place, and Macayre knew every volume in it. They used
+to sit and read like children among fairy stories, and then they would
+persuade Macayre to tell them the ancient tales he knew--of the days
+when Agricola forced his way in among the Men of the Woods, who would
+die any savage death rather than be conquered. Macayre was a sort of
+heirloom himself, and he knew and believed them all.
+
+I don't know how it was that I myself seemed to see my young father and
+mother so clearly and to know how radiant and wildly in love they
+were. Surely Jean Braidfute had not words to tell me. But I knew. So I
+understood, in a way of my own, what happened to my mother one brilliant
+late October afternoon when my father was brought home dead--followed by
+the guests who had gone out shooting with him. His foot had caught in a
+tuft of heather, and his gun in going off had killed him. One moment
+he had been the handsomest young chieftain in Scotland, and when he was
+brought home they could not have let my mother see his face.
+
+But she never asked to see it. She was on the terrace which juts over
+the rock the castle is built on, and which looks out over the purple
+world of climbing moor. She saw from there the returning party of
+shooters and gillies winding its way slowly through the heather,
+following a burden carried on a stretcher of fir boughs. Some of her
+women guests were with her, and one of them said afterward that when she
+first caught sight of the moving figures she got up slowly and crept
+to the stone balustrade with a crouching movement almost like a young
+leopardess preparing to spring. But she only watched, making neither
+sound nor movement until the cortege was near enough for her to see that
+every man's head was bowed upon his breast, and not one was covered.
+
+Then she said, quite slowly, "They--have--taken off--their bonnets," and
+fell upon the terrace like a dropped stone.
+
+It was because of this that the girl said that she was dead when I was
+born. It must have seemed almost as if she were not a living thing.
+She did not open her eyes or make a sound; she lay white and cold.
+The celebrated physicians who came from London talked of catalepsy
+and afterward wrote scientific articles which tried to explain her
+condition. She did not know when I was born. She died a few minutes
+after I uttered my first cry.
+
+I know only one thing more, and that Jean Braidfute told me after I grew
+up. Jean had been my father's nursery governess when he wore his first
+kilts, and she loved my mother fondly.
+
+"I knelt by her bed and held her hand and watched her face for three
+hours after they first laid her down," she said. "And my eyes were so
+near her every moment that I saw a thing the others did not know her
+well enough, or love her well enough, to see.
+
+"The first hour she was like a dead thing--aye, like a dead thing that
+had never lived. But when the hand of the clock passed the last second,
+and the new hour began, I bent closer to her because I saw a change
+stealing over her. It was not color--it was not even a shadow of a
+motion. It was something else. If I had spoken what I felt, they would
+have said I was light-headed with grief and have sent me away. I have
+never told man or woman. It was my secret and hers. I can tell you,
+Ysobel. The change I saw was as if she was beginning to listen to
+something--to listen.
+
+"It was as if to a sound--far, far away at first. But cold and white as
+stone she lay content, and listened. In the next hour the far-off
+sound had drawn nearer, and it had become something else--something she
+saw--something which saw her. First her young marble face had peace in
+it; then it had joy. She waited in her young stone body until you were
+born and she could break forth. She waited no longer then.
+
+"Ysobel, my bairn, what I knew was that he had not gone far from the
+body that had held him when he fell. Perhaps he had felt lost for a bit
+when he found himself out of it. But soon he had begun to call to her
+that was like his own heart to him. And she had heard. And then, being
+half away from earth herself, she had seen him and known he was waiting,
+and that he would not leave for any far place without her. She was so
+still that the big doctors thought more than once she had passed. But I
+knew better."
+
+It was long before I was old enough to be told anything like this that I
+began to feel that the moor was in secret my companion and friend, that
+it was not only the moor to me, but something else. It was like a thing
+alive--a huge giant lying spread out in the sun warming itself, or
+covering itself with thick, white mist which sometimes writhed and
+twisted itself into wraiths. First I noticed and liked it some day,
+perhaps, when it was purple and yellow with gorse and heather and broom,
+and the honey scents drew bees and butterflies and birds. But soon I saw
+and was drawn by another thing.
+
+How young was I that afternoon when I sat in the deep window and watched
+the low, soft whiteness creeping out and hovering over the heather as
+if the moor had breathed it? I do not remember. It was such a low little
+mist at first; and it crept and crept until its creeping grew into
+something heavier and whiter, and it began to hide the heather and
+the gorse and broom, and then the low young fir-trees. It mounted and
+mounted, and sometimes a breath of wind twisted it into weird shapes,
+almost like human creatures. It opened and closed again, and then it
+dragged and crept and grew thicker. And as I pressed my face against the
+window-pane, it mounted still higher and got hold of the moor and hid
+it, hanging heavy and white and waiting. That was what came into my
+child mind: that it had done what the moor had told it to do; had hidden
+things which wanted to be hidden, and then it waited.
+
+Strangers say that Muircarrie moor is the most beautiful and the most
+desolate place in the world, but it never seemed desolate to me. From my
+first memory of it I had a vague, half-comforted feeling that there
+was some strange life on it one could not exactly see, but was always
+conscious of. I know now why I felt this, but I did not know then.
+
+If I had been older when I first began to see what I did see there, I
+should no doubt have read things in books which would have given rise
+in my mind to doubts and wonders; but I was only a little child who had
+lived a life quite apart from the rest of the world. I was too silent by
+nature to talk and ask questions, even if I had had others to talk to. I
+had only Jean and Angus, and, as I found out years later, they knew what
+I did not, and would have put me off with adroit explanations if I had
+been curious. But I was not curious. I accepted everything as it came
+and went.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+I only six when Wee Brown Elspeth was brought to me. Jean and Angus were
+as fond of each other in their silent way as they were of me, and they
+often went together with me when I was taken out for my walks. I was
+kept in the open air a great deal, and Angus would walk by the side of
+my small, shaggy Shetland pony and lead him over rough or steep places.
+Sheltie, the pony, was meant for use when we wished to fare farther than
+a child could walk; but I was trained to sturdy marching and climbing
+even from my babyhood. Because I so loved the moor, we nearly always
+rambled there. Often we set out early in the morning, and some simple
+food was carried, so that we need not return to the castle until we
+chose. I would ride Sheltie and walk by turns until we found a place
+I liked; then Jean and Angus would sit down among the heather, Sheltie
+would be secured, and I would wander about and play in my own way. I do
+not think it was in a strange way. I think I must have played as almost
+any lonely little girl might have played. I used to find a corner among
+the bushes and pretend it was my house and that I had little friends who
+came to play with me. I only remember one thing which was not like the
+ordinary playing of children. It was a habit I had of sitting quite
+still a long time and listening. That was what I called it--"listening."
+I was listening to hear if the life on the moor made any sound I could
+understand. I felt as if it might, if I were very still and listened
+long enough.
+
+Angus and Jean and I were not afraid of rain and mist and change of
+weather. If we had been we could have had little outdoor life. We always
+carried plaids enough to keep us warm and dry. So on this day I speak
+of we did not turn back when we found ourselves in the midst of a sudden
+mist. We sat down in a sheltered place and waited, knowing it would lift
+in time. The sun had been shining when we set out.
+
+Angus and Jean were content to sit and guard me while I amused myself.
+They knew I would keep near them and run into no danger. I was not an
+adventurous child. I was, in fact, in a more than usually quiet mood
+that morning. The quiet had come upon me when the mist had begun to
+creep about and inclose us. I liked it. I liked the sense of being shut
+in by the soft whiteness I had so often watched from my nursery window
+in the castle.
+
+"People might be walking about," I said to Angus when he lifted me from
+Sheltie's back.
+
+"We couldn't see them. They might be walking."
+
+"Nothing that would hurt ye, bairnie," he answered.
+
+"No, they wouldn't hurt me," I said. I had never been afraid that
+anything on the moor would hurt me.
+
+I played very little that day. The quiet and the mist held me still.
+Soon I sat down and began to "listen." After a while I knew that Jean
+and Angus were watching me, but it did not disturb me. They often
+watched me when they thought I did not know they were doing it.
+
+I had sat listening for nearly half an hour when I heard the first
+muffled, slow trampling of horses' hoofs. I knew what it was even before
+it drew near enough for me to be conscious of the other sounds--the
+jingling of arms and chains and the creaking of leather one notices as
+troopers pass by. Armed and mounted men were coming toward me. That was
+what the sounds meant; but they seemed faint and distant, though I knew
+they were really quite near. Jean and Angus did not appear to hear them.
+I knew that I only heard them because I had been listening.
+
+Out of the mist they rode a company of wild-looking men wearing garments
+such as I had never seen before. Most of them were savage and uncouth,
+and their clothes were disordered and stained as if with hard travel and
+fight. I did not know--or even ask myself--why they did not frighten me,
+but they did not. Suddenly I seemed to know that they were brave men
+and had been doing some brave, hard thing. Here and there among them I
+caught sight of a broken and stained sword, or a dirk with only a
+hilt left. They were all pale, but their wild faces were joyous and
+triumphant. I saw it as they drew near.
+
+The man who seemed their chieftain was a lean giant who was darker but,
+under his darkness, paler than the rest. On his forehead was a queer,
+star-shaped scar. He rode a black horse, and before him he held close
+with his left arm a pretty little girl dressed in strange, rich clothes.
+The big man's hand was pressed against her breast as he held her; but
+though it was a large hand, it did not quite cover a dark-red stain on
+the embroideries of her dress. Her dress was brown, and she had brown
+hair and soft brown eyes like a little doe's. The moment I saw her I
+loved her.
+
+The black horse stopped before me. The wild troop drew up and waited
+behind. The great, lean rider looked at me a moment, and then, lifting
+the little girl in his long arms, bent down and set her gently on her
+feet on the mossy earth in the mist beside me. I got up to greet her,
+and we stood smiling at each other. And in that moment as we stood the
+black horse moved forward, the muffled trampling began again, the wild
+company swept on its way, and the white mist closed behind it as if it
+had never passed.
+
+Of course I know how strange this will seem to people who read it, but
+that cannot be helped and does not really matter. It was in that way the
+thing happened, and it did not even seem strange to me. Anything might
+happen on the moor--anything. And there was the fair little girl with
+the eyes like a doe's.
+
+I knew she had come to play with me, and we went together to my house
+among the bushes of broom and gorse and played happily. But before we
+began I saw her stand and look wonderingly at the dark-red stain on
+the embroideries on her childish breast. It was as if she were asking
+herself how it came there and could not understand. Then she picked
+a fern and a bunch of the thick-growing bluebells and put them in her
+girdle in such a way that they hid its ugliness.
+
+I did not really know how long she stayed. I only knew that we were
+happy, and that, though her way of playing was in some ways different
+from mine, I loved it and her. Presently the mist lifted and the sun
+shone, and we were deep in a wonderful game of being hidden in a room in
+a castle because something strange was going to happen which we were not
+told about. She ran behind a big gorse bush and did not come back. When
+I ran to look for her she was nowhere. I could not find her, and I went
+back to Jean and Angus, feeling puzzled.
+
+"Where did she go?" I asked them, turning my head from side to side.
+
+They were looking at me strangely, and both of them were pale. Jean was
+trembling a little.
+
+"Who was she, Ysobel?" she said.
+
+"The little girl the men brought to play with me," I answered, still
+looking about me.
+
+"The big one on the black horse put her down--the big one with the star
+here." I touched my forehead where the queer scar had been.
+
+For a minute Angus forgot himself. Years later he told me.
+
+"Dark Malcolm of the Glen," he broke out. "Wee Brown Elspeth."
+
+"But she is white--quite white!" I said.
+
+"Where did she go?"
+
+Jean swept me in her warm, shaking arms and hugged me close to her
+breast.
+
+"She's one of the fair ones," she said, kissing and patting me. "She
+will come again. She'll come often, I dare say. But she's gone now and
+we must go, too. Get up, Angus, man. We're for the castle."
+
+If we three had been different--if we had ever had the habit of talking
+and asking questions--we might surely have asked one another questions
+as I rode on Sheltie's back, with Angus leading us. But they asked
+me nothing, and I said very little except that I once spoke of the
+wild-looking horsemen and their pale, joyous faces.
+
+"They were glad," was all I said.
+
+There was also one brief query from Angus.
+
+"Did she talk to you, bairnie?" he said.
+
+I hesitated and stared at him quite a long time. Then I shook my head
+and answered, slowly, "N-no."
+
+Because I realized then, for the first time, that we had said no words
+at all. But I had known what she wanted me to understand, and she had
+known what I might have said to her if I had spoken--and no words were
+needed. And it was better.
+
+They took me home to the castle, and I was given my supper and put to
+bed. Jean sat by me until I fell asleep; she was obliged to sit rather a
+long time, because I was so happy with my memories of Wee Brown Elspeth
+and the certainty that she would come again. It was not Jean's words
+which had made me sure. I knew.
+
+She came many times. Through all my childish years I knew that she
+would come and play with me every few days--though I never saw the wild
+troopers again or the big, lean man with the scar. Children who play
+together are not very curious about one another, and I simply accepted
+her with delight. Somehow I knew that she lived happily in a place not
+far away. She could come and go, it seemed, without trouble. Sometimes
+I found her--or she found me upon the moor; and often she appeared in
+my nursery in the castle. When we were together Jean Braidfute seemed to
+prefer that we should be alone, and was inclined to keep the under-nurse
+occupied in other parts of the wing I lived in. I never asked her to do
+this, but I was glad that it was done. Wee Elspeth was glad, too. After
+our first meeting she was dressed in soft blue or white, and the red
+stain was gone; but she was always Wee Brown Elspeth with the doelike
+eyes and the fair, transparent face, the very fair little face. As I had
+noticed the strange, clear pallor of the rough troopers, so I noticed
+that she was curiously fair. And as I occasionally saw other persons
+with the same sort of fairness, I thought it was a purity of complexion
+special to some, but not to all. I was not fair like that, and neither
+was any one else I knew.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+It was when I was ten years old that Wee Elspeth ceased coming to me,
+and though I missed her at first, it was not with a sense of grief or
+final loss. She had only gone somewhere.
+
+It was then that Angus Macayre began to be my tutor. He had been a
+profound student and had lived among books all his life. He had helped
+Jean in her training of me, and I had learned more than is usually
+taught to children in their early years. When a grand governess was
+sent to Muircarrie by my guardian, she was amazed at the things I
+was familiar with, but she abhorred the dark, frowning castle and the
+loneliness of the place and would not stay. In fact, no governess would
+stay, and so Angus became my tutor and taught me old Gaelic and Latin
+and Greek, and we read together and studied the ancient books in the
+library. It was a strange education for a girl, and no doubt made me
+more than ever unlike others. But my life was the life I loved.
+
+When my guardian decided that I must live with him in London and be
+educated as modern girls were, I tried to be obedient and went to him;
+but before two months had passed my wretchedness had made me so ill that
+the doctor said I should go into a decline and die if I were not sent
+back to Muircarrie.
+
+"It's not only the London air that seems to poison her," he said when
+Jean talked to him about me; "it is something else. She will not live,
+that's all. Sir Ian must send her home."
+
+As I have said before, I had been an unattractive child and I was a
+plain, uninteresting sort of girl. I was shy and could not talk to
+people, so of course I bored them. I knew I did not look well when I
+wore beautiful clothes. I was little and unimportant and like a reed for
+thinness. Because I was rich and a sort of chieftainess I ought to have
+been tall and rather stately, or at least I ought to have had a bearing
+which would have made it impossible for people to quite overlook me.
+But; any one could overlook me--an insignificant, thin girl who slipped
+in and out of places and sat and stared and listened to other people
+instead of saying things herself; I liked to look on and be forgotten.
+It interested me to watch people if they did not notice me.
+
+Of course, my relatives did not really like me. How could they? They
+were busy in their big world and did not know what to do with a girl who
+ought to have been important and was not. I am sure that in secret they
+were relieved when I was sent back to Muircarrie.
+
+After that the life I loved went on quietly. I studied with Angus, and
+made the book-walled library my own room. I walked and rode on the moor,
+and I knew the people who lived in the cottages and farms on the estate.
+I think they liked me, but I am not sure, because I was too shy to seem
+very friendly. I was more at home with Feargus, the piper, and with
+some of the gardeners than I was with any one else. I think I was lonely
+without knowing; but I was never unhappy. Jean and Angus were my nearest
+and dearest. Jean was of good blood and a stanch gentlewoman, quite
+sufficiently educated to be my companion as she had been my early
+governess.
+
+It was Jean who told Angus that I was giving myself too entirely to the
+study of ancient books and the history of centuries gone by.
+
+"She is living to-day, and she must not pass through this life without
+gathering anything from it."
+
+"This life," she put it, as if I had passed through others before, and
+might pass through others again. That was always her way of speaking,
+and she seemed quite unconscious of any unusualness in it.
+
+"You are a wise woman, Jean," Angus said, looking long at her grave
+face. "A wise woman."
+
+He wrote to the London book-shops for the best modern books, and I began
+to read them. I felt at first as if they plunged me into a world I did
+not understand, and many of them I could not endure. But I persevered,
+and studied them as I had studied the old ones, and in time I began to
+feel as if perhaps they were true. My chief weariness with them came
+from the way they had of referring to the things I was so intimate with
+as though they were only the unauthenticated history of a life so
+long passed by that it could no longer matter to any one. So often the
+greatest hours of great lives were treated as possible legends. I
+knew why men had died or were killed or had borne black horror. I knew
+because I had read old books and manuscripts and had heard the stories
+which had come down through centuries by word of mouth, passed from
+father to son.
+
+But there was one man who did not write as if he believed the world had
+begun and would end with him. He knew he was only one, and part of
+all the rest. The name I shall give him is Hector MacNairn. He was a
+Scotchman, but he had lived in many a land. The first time I read a book
+he had written I caught my breath with joy, again and again. I knew I
+had found a friend, even though there was no likelihood that I should
+ever see his face. He was a great and famous writer, and all the world
+honored him; while I, hidden away in my castle on a rock on the edge of
+Muircarrie, was so far from being interesting or clever that even in my
+grandest evening dress and tiara of jewels I was as insignificant as a
+mouse. In fact, I always felt rather silly when I was obliged to wear my
+diamonds on state occasions as custom sometimes demanded.
+
+Mr. MacNairn wrote essays and poems, and marvelous stories which were
+always real though they were called fiction. Wheresoever his story was
+placed--howsoever remote and unknown the scene--it was a real place, and
+the people who lived in it were real, as if he had some magic power to
+call up human things to breathe and live and set one's heart beating.
+I read everything he wrote. I read every word of his again and again. I
+always kept some book of his near enough to be able to touch it with my
+hand; and often I sat by the fire in the library holding one open on
+my lap for an hour or more, only because it meant a warm, close
+companionship. It seemed at those times as if he sat near me in the dim
+glow and we understood each other's thoughts without using words, as Wee
+Brown Elspeth and I had understood--only this was a deeper thing.
+
+I had felt near him in this way for several years, and every year he had
+grown more famous, when it happened that one June my guardian, Sir Ian,
+required me to go to London to see my lawyers and sign some important
+documents connected with the management of the estate. I was to go
+to his house to spend a week or more, attend a Drawing-Room, and show
+myself at a few great parties in a proper manner, this being considered
+my duty toward my relatives. These, I believe, were secretly afraid that
+if I were never seen their world would condemn my guardian for
+neglect of his charge, or would decide that I was of unsound mind and
+intentionally kept hidden away at Muircarrie. He was an honorable man,
+and his wife was a well-meaning woman. I did not wish to do them an
+injustice, so I paid them yearly visits and tried to behave as they
+wished, much as I disliked to be dressed in fine frocks and to wear
+diamonds on my little head and round my thin neck.
+
+It was an odd thing that this time I found I did not dread the visit
+to London as much as I usually did. For some unknown reason I became
+conscious that I was not really reluctant to go. Usually the thought
+of the days before me made me restless and low-spirited. London always
+seemed so confused and crowded, and made me feel as if I were being
+pushed and jostled by a mob always making a tiresome noise. But this
+time I felt as if I should somehow find a clear place to stand in, where
+I could look on and listen without being bewildered. It was a curious
+feeling; I could not help noticing and wondering about it.
+
+I knew afterward that it came to me because a change was drawing near. I
+wish so much that I could tell about it in a better way. But I have only
+my own way, which I am afraid seems very like a school-girl's.
+
+Jean Braidfute made the journey with me, as she always did, and it was
+like every other journey. Only one incident made it different, and when
+it occurred there seemed nothing unusual in it. It was only a bit of
+sad, everyday life which touched me. There is nothing new in seeing a
+poor woman in deep mourning.
+
+Jean and I had been alone in our railway carriage for a great part of
+the journey; but an hour or two before we reached London a man got in
+and took a seat in a corner. The train had stopped at a place where
+there is a beautiful and well-known cemetery. People bring their friends
+from long distances to lay them there. When one passes the station, one
+nearly always sees sad faces and people in mourning on the platform.
+
+There was more than one group there that day, and the man who sat in the
+corner looked out at them with gentle eyes. He had fine, deep eyes and a
+handsome mouth. When the poor woman in mourning almost stumbled into
+the carriage, followed by her child, he put out his hand to help her
+and gave her his seat. She had stumbled because her eyes were dim with
+dreadful crying, and she could scarcely see. It made one's heart stand
+still to see the wild grief of her, and her unconsciousness of the world
+about her. The world did not matter. There was no world. I think there
+was nothing left anywhere but the grave she had just staggered blindly
+away from. I felt as if she had been lying sobbing and writhing and
+beating the new turf on it with her poor hands, and I somehow knew that
+it had been a child's grave she had been to visit and had felt she left
+to utter loneliness when she turned away.
+
+It was because I thought this that I wished she had not seemed so
+unconscious of and indifferent to the child who was with her and clung
+to her black dress as if it could not bear to let her go. This one was
+alive at least, even if she had lost the other one, and its little face
+was so wistful! It did not seem fair to forget and ignore it, as if
+it were not there. I felt as if she might have left it behind on the
+platform if it had not so clung to her skirt that it was almost dragged
+into the railway carriage with her. When she sank into her seat she did
+not even lift the poor little thing into the place beside her, but left
+it to scramble up as best it could. She buried her swollen face in her
+handkerchief and sobbed in a smothered way as if she neither saw, heard,
+nor felt any living thing near her.
+
+How I wished she would remember the poor child and let it comfort her!
+It really was trying to do it in its innocent way. It pressed close to
+her side, it looked up imploringly, it kissed her arm and her crape
+veil over and over again, and tried to attract her attention. It was
+a little, lily-fair creature not more than five or six years old and
+perhaps too young to express what it wanted to say. It could only cling
+to her and kiss her black dress, and seem to beg her to remember that
+it, at least, was a living thing. But she was too absorbed in her
+anguish to know that it was in the world. She neither looked at nor
+touched it, and at last it sat with its cheek against her sleeve, softly
+stroking her arm, and now and then kissing it longingly. I was obliged
+to turn my face away and look out of the window, because I knew the man
+with the kind face saw the tears well up into my eyes.
+
+The poor woman did not travel far with us. She left the train after a
+few stations were passed. Our fellow-traveler got out before her to help
+her on to the platform. He stood with bared head while he assisted her,
+but she scarcely saw him. And even then she seemed to forget the child.
+The poor thing was dragged out by her dress as it had been dragged in. I
+put out my hand involuntarily as it went through the door, because I was
+afraid it might fall. But it did not. It turned its fair little face
+and smiled at me. When the kind traveler returned to his place in the
+carriage again, and the train left the station, the black-draped woman
+was walking slowly down the platform and the child was still clinging to
+her skirt.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+My guardian was a man whose custom it was to give large and dignified
+parties. Among his grand and fashionable guests there was nearly always
+a sprinkling of the more important members of the literary world. The
+night after I arrived there was to be a particularly notable dinner. I
+had come prepared to appear at it. Jean had brought fine array for
+me and a case of jewels. I knew I must be "dressed up" and look as
+important as I could. When I went up-stairs after tea, Jean was in my
+room laying things out on the bed.
+
+"The man you like so much is to dine here to-night, Ysobel," she said.
+"Mr. Hector MacNairn."
+
+I believe I even put my hand suddenly to my heart as I stood and looked
+at her, I was so startled and so glad.
+
+"You must tell him how much you love his books," she said. She had a
+quiet, motherly way.
+
+"There will be so many other people who will want to talk to him," I
+answered, and I felt a little breathless with excitement as I said it.
+
+"And I should be too shy to know how to say such things properly."
+
+"Don't be afraid of him," was her advice. "The man will be like his
+books, and they're the joy of your life."
+
+She made me look as nice as she could in the new dress she had brought;
+she made me wear the Muircarrie diamonds and sent me downstairs. It does
+not matter who the guests were; I scarcely remember. I was taken in to
+dinner by a stately elderly man who tried to make me talk, and at last
+was absorbed by the clever woman on his other side.
+
+I found myself looking between the flowers for a man's face I could
+imagine was Hector MacNairn's. I looked up and down and saw none I could
+believe belonged to him. There were handsome faces and individual ones,
+but at first I saw no Hector MacNairn. Then, on bending forward a little
+to glance behind an epergne, I found a face which it surprised and
+pleased me to see. It was the face of the traveler who had helped the
+woman in mourning out of the railway carriage, baring his head before
+her grief. I could not help turning and speaking to my stately elderly
+partner.
+
+"Do you know who that is--the man at the other side of the table?" I
+asked.
+
+Old Lord Armour looked across and answered with an amiable smile. "It is
+the author the world is talking of most in these days, and the talking
+is no new thing. It's Mr. Hector MacNairn."
+
+No one but myself could tell how glad I was. It seemed so right that
+he should be the man who had understood the deeps of a poor, passing
+stranger woman's woe. I had so loved that quiet baring of his head! All
+at once I knew I should not be afraid of him. He would understand that I
+could not help being shy, that it was only my nature, and that if I said
+things awkwardly my meanings were better than my words. Perhaps I
+should be able to tell him something of what his books had been to me.
+I glanced through the flowers again--and he was looking at me! I could
+scarcely believe it for a second. But he was. His eyes--his wonderful
+eyes--met mine. I could not explain why they were wonderful. I think
+it was the clearness and understanding in them, and a sort of great
+interestedness. People sometimes look at me from curiosity, but they do
+not look because they are really interested.
+
+I could scarcely look away, though I knew I must not be guilty of
+staring. A footman was presenting a dish at my side. I took something
+from it without knowing what it was. Lord Armour began to talk kindly.
+He was saying beautiful, admiring things of Mr. MacNairn and his work.
+I listened gratefully, and said a few words myself now and then. I was
+only too glad to be told of the great people and the small ones who were
+moved and uplifted by his thoughts.
+
+"You admire him very much, I can see," the amiable elderly voice said.
+
+I could not help turning and looking up. "It is as if a great, great
+genius were one's friend--as if he talked and one listened," I said. "He
+is like a splendid dream which has come true."
+
+Old Lord Armour looked at me quite thoughtfully, as if he saw something
+new in me.
+
+"That is a good way of putting it, Miss Muircarrie," he answered.
+"MacNairn would like that. You must tell him about it yourself."
+
+I did not mean to glance through the flowers again, but I did it
+involuntarily. And I met the other eyes--the wonderful, interested
+ones just as I had met them before. It almost seemed as if he had been
+watching me. It might be, I thought, because he only vaguely remembered
+seeing me before and was trying to recall where we had met.
+
+When my guardian brought his men guests to the drawing-room after
+dinner, I was looking over some old prints at a quiet, small table.
+There were a few minutes of smiling talk, and then Sir Ian crossed the
+room toward me, bringing some one with him. It was Hector MacNairn he
+brought.
+
+"Mr. MacNairn tells me you traveled together this afternoon without
+knowing each other," he said. "He has heard something of Muircarrie and
+would like to hear more, Ysobel. She lives like a little ghost all
+alone in her feudal castle, Mr. MacNairn. We can't persuade her to like
+London."
+
+I think he left us alone together because he realized that we should get
+on better without a companion.
+
+Mr. MacNairn sat down near me and began to talk about Muircarrie. There
+were very few places like it, and he knew about each one of them. He
+knew the kind of things Angus Macayre knew--the things most people had
+either never heard of or had only thought of as legends. He talked as he
+wrote, and I scarcely knew when he led me into talking also. Afterward
+I realized that he had asked me questions I could not help answering
+because his eyes were drawing me on with that quiet, deep interest. It
+seemed as if he saw something in my face which made him curious.
+
+I think I saw this expression first when we began to speak of our
+meeting in the railway carriage, and I mentioned the poor little fair
+child my heart had ached so for.
+
+"It was such a little thing and it did so want to comfort her! Its white
+little clinging hands were so pathetic when they stroked and patted
+her," I said. "And she did not even look at it."
+
+He did not start, but he hesitated in a way which almost produced the
+effect of a start. Long afterward I remembered it.
+
+"The child!" he said. "Yes. But I was sitting on the other side. And I
+was so absorbed in the poor mother that I am afraid I scarcely saw it.
+Tell me about it."
+
+"It was not six years old, poor mite," I answered. "It was one of those
+very fair children one sees now and then. It was not like its mother.
+She was not one of the White People."
+
+"The White People?" he repeated quite slowly after me. "You don't mean
+that she was not a Caucasian? Perhaps I don't understand."
+
+That made me feel a trifle shy again. Of course he could not know what I
+meant. How silly of me to take it for granted that he would!
+
+"I beg pardon. I forgot," I even stammered a little. "It is only my way
+of thinking of those fair people one sees, those very fair ones, you
+know--the ones whose fairness looks almost transparent. There are not
+many of them, of course; but one can't help noticing them when they pass
+in the street or come into a room. You must have noticed them, too.
+I always call them, to myself, the White People, because they are
+different from the rest of us. The poor mother wasn't one, but the child
+was. Perhaps that was why I looked at it, at first. It was such a lovely
+little thing; and the whiteness made it look delicate, and I could not
+help thinking--" I hesitated, because it seemed almost unkind to finish.
+
+"You thought that if she had just lost one child she ought to take more
+care of the other," he ended for me. There was a deep thoughtfulness in
+his look, as if he were watching me. I wondered why.
+
+"I wish I had paid more attention to the little creature," he said, very
+gently. "Did it cry?"
+
+"No," I answered. "It only clung to her and patted her black sleeve and
+kissed it, as if it wanted to comfort her. I kept expecting it to cry,
+but it didn't. It made me cry because it seemed so sure that it could
+comfort her if she would only remember that it was alive and loved her.
+I wish, I wish death did not make people feel as if it filled all the
+world--as if, when it happens, there is no life left anywhere. The child
+who was alive by her side did not seem a living thing to her. It didn't
+matter."
+
+I had never said as much to any one before, but his watching eyes made
+me forget my shy worldlessness.
+
+"What do you feel about it--death?" he asked.
+
+The low gentleness of his voice seemed something I had known always.
+
+"I never saw it," I answered. "I have never even seen any one
+dangerously ill. I--It is as if I can't believe it."
+
+"You can't believe it? That is a wonderful thing," he said, even more
+quietly than before.
+
+"If none of us believed, how wonderful that would be! Beautiful, too."
+
+"How that poor mother believed it!" I said, remembering her swollen,
+distorted, sobbing face. "She believed nothing else; everything else was
+gone."
+
+"I wonder what would have happened if you had spoken to her about the
+child?" he said, slowly, as if he were trying to imagine it.
+
+"I'm a very shy person. I should never have courage to speak to a
+stranger," I answered.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm a coward, too. She might have thought me interfering."
+
+"She might not have understood," he murmured.
+
+"It was clinging to her dress when she walked away down the platform," I
+went on. "I dare say you noticed it then?"
+
+"Not as you did. I wish I had noticed it more," was his answer. "Poor
+little White One!"
+
+That led us into our talk about the White People. He said he did not
+think he was exactly an observant person in some respects. Remembering
+his books, which seemed to me the work of a man who saw and understood
+everything in the world, I could not comprehend his thinking that, and
+I told him so. But he replied that what I had said about my White People
+made him feel that he must be abstracted sometimes and miss things. He
+did not remember having noticed the rare fairness I had seen. He smiled
+as he said it, because, of course, it was only a little thing--that he
+had not seen that some people were so much fairer than others.
+
+"But it has not been a little thing to you, evidently. That is why I
+am even rather curious about it," he explained. "It is a difference
+definite enough to make you speak almost as if they were of a different
+race from ours."
+
+I sat silent a few seconds, thinking it over. Suddenly I realized what I
+had never realized before.
+
+"Do you know," I said, as slowly as he himself had spoken, "I did not
+know that was true until you put it into words. I am so used to thinking
+of them as different, somehow, that I suppose I do feel as if they were
+almost like another race, in a way. Perhaps one would feel like that
+with a native Indian, or a Japanese."
+
+"I dare say that is a good simile," he reflected. "Are they different
+when you know them well?"
+
+"I have never known one but Wee Brown Elspeth," I answered, thinking it
+over.
+
+He did start then, in the strangest way.
+
+"What!" he exclaimed. "What did you say?"
+
+I was quite startled myself. Suddenly he looked pale, and his breath
+caught itself.
+
+"I said Wee Elspeth, Wee Brown Elspeth. She was only a child who played
+with me," I stammered, "when I was little."
+
+He pulled himself together almost instantly, though the color did not
+come back to his face at once and his voice was not steady for a few
+seconds. But he laughed outright at himself.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he apologized. "I have been ill and am rather
+nervous. I thought you said something you could not possibly have
+said. I almost frightened you. And you were only speaking of a little
+playmate. Please go on."
+
+"I was only going to say that she was fair like that, fairer than any
+one I had ever seen; but when we played together she seemed like any
+other child. She was the first I ever knew."
+
+I told him about the misty day on the moor, and about the pale troopers
+and the big, lean leader who carried Elspeth before him on his saddle. I
+had never talked to any one about it before, not even to Jean Braidfute.
+But he seemed to be so interested, as if the little story quite
+fascinated him. It was only an episode, but it brought in the weirdness
+of the moor and my childish fancies about the things hiding in the white
+mist, and the castle frowning on its rock, and my baby face pressed
+against the nursery window in the tower, and Angus and the library, and
+Jean and her goodness and wise ways. It was dreadful to talk so much
+about oneself. But he listened so. His eyes never left my face--they
+watched and held me as if he were enthralled. Sometimes he asked a
+question.
+
+"I wonder who they were--the horsemen?" he pondered. "Did you ever ask
+Wee Elspeth?"
+
+"We were both too little to care. We only played," I answered him. "And
+they came and went so quickly that they were only a sort of dream."
+
+"They seem to have been a strange lot. Wasn't Angus curious about them?"
+he suggested.
+
+"Angus never was curious about anything," I said. "Perhaps he knew
+something about them and would not tell me. When I was a little thing
+I always knew he and Jean had secrets I was too young to hear. They hid
+sad and ugly things from me, or things that might frighten a child. They
+were very good."
+
+"Yes, they were good," he said, thoughtfully.
+
+I think any one would have been pleased to find herself talking quietly
+to a great genius--as quietly as if he were quite an ordinary person;
+but to me the experience was wonderful. I had thought about him so much
+and with such adoring reverence. And he looked at me as if he truly
+liked me, even as if I were something new--a sort of discovery which
+interested him. I dare say that he had never before seen a girl who had
+lived so much alone and in such a remote and wild place.
+
+I believe Sir Ian and his wife were pleased, too, to see that I
+was talking. They were glad that their guests should see that I was
+intelligent enough to hold the attention even of a clever man. If Hector
+MacNairn was interested in me I could not be as silly and dull as I
+looked. But on my part I was only full of wonder and happiness. I was a
+girl, and he had been my only hero; and it seemed even as if he liked me
+and cared about my queer life.
+
+He was not a man who had the air of making confidences or talking about
+himself, but before we parted I seemed to know him and his surroundings
+as if he had described them. A mere phrase of his would make a picture.
+Such a few words made his mother quite clear to me. They loved each
+other in an exquisite, intimate way. She was a beautiful person. Artists
+had always painted her. He and she were completely happy when they were
+together. They lived in a house in the country, and I could not at all
+tell how I discovered that it was an old house with beautiful chimneys
+and a very big garden with curious high walls with corner towers round
+it. He only spoke of it briefly, but I saw it as a picture; and always
+afterward, when I thought of his mother, I thought of her as sitting
+under a great and ancient apple-tree with the long, late-afternoon
+shadows stretching on the thick, green grass. I suppose I saw that just
+because he said:
+
+"Will you come to tea under the big apple-tree some afternoon when the
+late shadows are like velvet on the grass? That is perhaps the loveliest
+time."
+
+When we rose to go and join the rest of the party, he stood a moment and
+glanced round the room at our fellow-guests.
+
+"Are there any of your White People here to-night?" he said, smiling. "I
+shall begin to look for them everywhere."
+
+I glanced over the faces carelessly. "There are none here to-night,"
+I answered, and then I flushed because he had smiled. "It was only
+a childish name I gave them," I hesitated. "I forgot you wouldn't
+understand. I dare say it sounds silly."
+
+He looked at me so quickly.
+
+"No! no! no!" he exclaimed. "You mustn't think that! Certainly not
+silly."
+
+I do not think he knew that he put out his hand and gently touched my
+arm, as one might touch a child to make it feel one wanted it to listen.
+
+"You don't know," he said in his low, slow voice, "how glad I am that
+you have talked to me. Sir Ian said you were not fond of talking to
+people, and I wanted to know you."
+
+"You care about places like Muircarrie. That is why," I answered,
+feeling at once how much he understood. "I care for Muircarrie more than
+for all the rest of the world. And I suppose you saw it in my face. I
+dare say that the people who love that kind of life cannot help seeing
+it there."
+
+"Yes," he said, "it is in your eyes. It was what I saw and found myself
+wondering about when I watched you in the train. It was really the moor
+and the mist and the things you think are hidden in it."
+
+"Did you watch me?" I asked. "I could not help watching you a little,
+when you were so kind to the poor woman. I was afraid you would see me
+and think me rude."
+
+"It was the far look in your face I watched," he said. "If you will come
+to tea under the big apple-tree I will tell you more about it."
+
+"Indeed I will come," I answered. "Now we must go and sit among the
+other people--those who don't care about Muircarrie at all."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+I went to tea under the big apple-tree. It was very big and old and
+wonderful. No wonder Mr. MacNairn and his mother loved it. Its great
+branches spread out farther than I had ever seen the branches of an
+apple-tree spread before. They were gnarled and knotted and beautiful
+with age. Their shadows upon the grass were velvet, deep and soft. Such
+a tree could only have lived its life in such a garden. At least it
+seemed so to me. The high, dim-colored walls, with their curious, low
+corner towers and the leafage of the wall fruits spread against their
+brick, inclosed it embracingly, as if they were there to take care of
+it and its beauty. But the tree itself seemed to have grown there in all
+its dignified loveliness of shadow to take care of Mrs. MacNairn, who
+sat under it. I felt as if it loved and was proud of her.
+
+I have heard clever literary people speak of Mrs. MacNairn as a
+"survival of type." Sometimes clever people bewilder me by the terms
+they use, but I thought I understood what they meant in her case. She
+was quite unlike the modern elderly woman, and yet she was not in the
+least old-fashioned or demodee. She was only exquisitely distinct.
+
+When she rose from her chair under the apple-tree boughs and came
+forward to meet me that afternoon, the first things which struck me were
+her height and slenderness and her light step. Then I saw that her clear
+profile seemed cut out of ivory and that her head was a beautiful shape
+and was beautifully set. Its every turn and movement was exquisite. The
+mere fact that both her long, ivory hands enfolded mine thrilled me.
+I wondered if it were possible that she could be unaware of her
+loveliness. Beautiful people are thrilling to me, and Mrs. MacNairn has
+always seemed more so than any one else. This is what her son once said
+of her:
+
+"She is not merely beautiful; she is Beauty--Beauty's very spirit moving
+about among us mortals; pure Beauty."
+
+She drew me to a chair under her tree, and we sat down together. I felt
+as if she were glad that I had come. The watching look I had seen in her
+son's eyes was in hers also. They watched me as we talked, and I found
+myself telling her about my home as I had found myself telling him. He
+had evidently talked to her about it himself. I had never met any one
+who thought of Muircarrie as I did, but it seemed as if they who were
+strangers were drawn by its wild, beautiful loneliness as I was.
+
+I was happy. In my secret heart I began to ask myself if it could be
+true that they made me feel a little as if I somehow belonged to some
+one. I had always seemed so detached from every one. I had not been
+miserable about it, and I had not complained to myself; I only accepted
+the detachment as part of my kind of life.
+
+Mr. MacNairn came into the garden later and several other people came
+in to tea. It was apparently a sort of daily custom--that people who
+evidently adored Mrs. MacNairn dropped in to see and talk to her every
+afternoon. She talked wonderfully, and her friends' joy in her was
+wonderful, too. It evidently made people happy to be near her. All she
+said and did was like her light step and the movements of her delicate,
+fine head--gracious and soft and arrestingly lovely. She did not let
+me drift away and sit in a corner looking on, as I usually did among
+strangers. She kept me near her, and in some subtle, gentle way made me
+a part of all that was happening--the talk, the charming circle under
+the spreading boughs of the apple-tree, the charm of everything.
+Sometimes she would put out her exquisite, long-fingered hand and touch
+me very lightly, and each time she did it I felt as if she had given me
+new life.
+
+There was an interesting elderly man who came among the rest of the
+guests. I was interested in him even before she spoke to me of him. He
+had a handsome, aquiline face which looked very clever. His talk was
+brilliantly witty. When he spoke people paused as if they could not
+bear to lose a phrase or even a word. But in the midst of the trills
+of laughter surrounding him his eyes were unchangingly sad. His face
+laughed or smiled, but his eyes never.
+
+"He is the greatest artist in England and the most brilliant man," Mrs.
+MacNairn said to me, quietly. "But he is the saddest, too. He had a
+lovely daughter who was killed instantly, in his presence, by a fall.
+They had been inseparable companions and she was the delight of his
+life. That strange, fixed look has been in his eyes ever since. I know
+you have noticed it."
+
+We were walking about among the flower-beds after tea, and Mr. MacNairn
+was showing me a cloud of blue larkspurs in a corner when I saw
+something which made me turn toward him rather quickly.
+
+"There is one!" I said. "Do look at her! Now you see what I mean! The
+girl standing with her hand on Mr. Le Breton's arm."
+
+Mr. Le Breton was the brilliant man with the sad eyes. He was standing
+looking at a mass of white-and-purple iris at the other side of the
+garden. There were two or three people with him, but it seemed as if for
+a moment he had forgotten them--had forgotten where he was. I wondered
+suddenly if his daughter had been fond of irises. He was looking at them
+with such a tender, lost expression. The girl, who was a lovely, fair
+thing, was standing quite close to him with her hand in his arm, and she
+was smiling, too--such a smile!
+
+"Mr. Le Breton!" Mr. MacNairn said in a rather startled tone. "The girl
+with her hand in his arm?"
+
+"Yes. You see how fair she is," I answered.
+
+"And she has that transparent look. It is so lovely. Don't you think so?
+SHE is one of the White People."
+
+He stood very still, looking across the flowers at the group. There was
+a singular interest and intensity in his expression. He watched the pair
+silently for a whole minute, I think.
+
+"Ye-es," he said, slowly, at last, "I do see what you mean--and it IS
+lovely. I don't seem to know her well. She must be a new friend of my
+mother's. So she is one of the White People?"
+
+"She looks like a white iris herself, doesn't she?" I said. "Now you
+know."
+
+"Yes; now I know," he answered.
+
+I asked Mrs. MacNairn later who the girl was, but she didn't seem to
+recognize my description of her. Mr. Le Breton had gone away by that
+time, and so had the girl herself.
+
+"The tall, very fair one in the misty, pale-gray dress," I said. "She
+was near Mr. Le Breton when he was looking at the iris-bed. You were
+cutting some roses only a few yards away from her. That VERY fair girl?"
+
+Mrs. MacNairn paused a moment and looked puzzled.
+
+"Mildred Keith is fair," she reflected, "but she was not there then. I
+don't recall seeing a girl. I was cutting some buds for Mrs. Anstruther.
+I--" She paused again and turned toward her son, who was standing
+watching us. I saw their eyes meet in a rather arrested way.
+
+"It was not Mildred Keith," he said. "Miss Muircarrie is inquiring
+because this girl was one of those she calls the White People. She was
+not any one I had seen here before."
+
+There was a second's silence before Mrs. MacNairn smilingly gave me one
+of her light, thrilling touches on my arm.
+
+"Ah! I remember," she said. "Hector told me about the White People. He
+rather fancied I might be one."
+
+I am afraid I rather stared at her as I slowly shook my head. You see
+she was almost one, but not quite.
+
+"I was so busy with my roses that I did not notice who was standing near
+Mr. Le Breton," she said. "Perhaps it was Anabel Mere. She is a more
+transparent sort of girl than Mildred, and she is more blond. And you
+don't know her, Hector? I dare say it was she."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+I remained in London several weeks. I stayed because the MacNairns were
+so good to me. I could not have told any one how I loved Mrs. MacNairn,
+and how different everything seemed when I was with her. I was never shy
+when we were together. There seemed to be no such thing as shyness in
+the world. I was not shy with Mr. MacNairn, either. After I had sat
+under the big apple-tree boughs in the walled garden a few times I
+realized that I had begun to belong to somebody. Those two marvelous
+people cared for me in that way--in a way that made me feel as if I
+were a real girl, not merely a queer little awkward ghost in a far-away
+castle which nobody wanted to visit because it was so dull and desolate
+and far from London. They were so clever, and knew all the interesting
+things in the world, but their cleverness and experience never
+bewildered or overwhelmed me.
+
+"You were born a wonderful little creature, and Angus Macayre has filled
+your mind with strange, rich furnishings and marvelous color and form,"
+Mrs. MacNairn actually said to me one day when we were sitting together
+and she was holding my hand and softly, slowly patting it. She had a
+way of doing that, and she had also a way of keeping me very near her
+whenever she could. She said once that she liked to touch me now and
+then to make sure that I was quite real and would not melt away. I did
+not know then why she said it, but I understood afterward.
+
+Sometimes we sat under the apple-tree until the long twilight deepened
+into shadow, which closed round us, and a nightingale that lived in the
+garden began to sing. We all three loved the nightingale, and felt as
+though it knew that we were listening to it. It is a wonderful thing to
+sit quite still listening to a bird singing in the dark, and to dare to
+feel that while it sings it knows how your soul adores it. It is like a
+kind of worship.
+
+We had been sitting listening for quite a long time, and the nightingale
+had just ceased and left the darkness an exquisite silence which fell
+suddenly but softly as the last note dropped, when Mrs. MacNairn began
+to talk for the first time of what she called The Fear.
+
+I don't remember just how she began, and for a few minutes I did not
+quite understand what she meant. But as she went on, and Mr. MacNairn
+joined in the talk, their meaning became a clear thing to me, and I knew
+that they were only talking quite simply of something they had often
+talked of before. They were not as afraid of The Fear as most people
+are, because they had thought of and reasoned about it so much, and
+always calmly and with clear and open minds.
+
+By The Fear they meant that mysterious horror most people feel at the
+thought of passing out of the world they know into the one they don't
+know at all.
+
+How quiet, how still it was inside the walls of the old garden, as we
+three sat under the boughs and talked about it! And what sweet night
+scents of leaves and sleeping flowers were in every breath we drew! And
+how one's heart moved and lifted when the nightingale broke out again!
+
+"If one had seen or heard one little thing, if one's mortal being could
+catch one glimpse of light in the dark," Mrs. MacNairn's low voice said
+out of the shadow near me, "The Fear would be gone forever."
+
+"Perhaps the whole mystery is as simple as this," said her son's voice
+"as simple as this: that as there are tones of music too fine to be
+registered by the human ear, so there may be vibrations of light not to
+be seen by the human eye; form and color as well as sounds; just
+beyond earthly perception, and yet as real as ourselves, as formed as
+ourselves, only existing in that other dimension."
+
+There was an intenseness which was almost a note of anguish in Mrs.
+MacNairn's answer, even though her voice was very low. I involuntarily
+turned my head to look at her, though of course it was too dark to see
+her face. I felt somehow as if her hands were wrung together in her lap.
+
+"Oh!" she said, "if one only had some shadow of a proof that the mystery
+is only that WE cannot see, that WE cannot hear, though they are really
+quite near us, with us--the ones who seem to have gone away and whom we
+feel we cannot live without. If once we could be sure! There would be no
+Fear--there would be none!"
+
+"Dearest"--he often called her "Dearest," and his voice had a wonderful
+sound in the darkness; it was caress and strength, and it seemed to
+speak to her of things they knew which I did not--"we have vowed to each
+other that we WILL believe there is no reason for The Fear. It was a vow
+between us."
+
+"Yes! Yes!" she cried, breathlessly, "but sometimes,
+Hector--sometimes--"
+
+"Miss Muircarrie does not feel it--"
+
+"Please say 'Ysobel'!" I broke in. "Please do."
+
+He went on as quietly as if he had not even paused:
+
+"Ysobel told me the first night we met that it seemed as if she could
+not believe in it."
+
+"It never seems real to me at all," I said. "Perhaps that is because I
+can never forget what Jean told me about my mother lying still upon her
+bed, and listening to some one calling her." (I had told them Jean's
+story a few days before.) "I knew it was my father; Jean knew, too."
+
+"How did you know?" Mrs. MacNairn's voice was almost a whisper.
+
+"I could not tell you that. I never asked myself HOW it was. But I KNEW.
+We both KNEW. Perhaps"--I hesitated--"it was because in the Highlands
+people often believe things like that. One hears so many stories all
+one's life that in the end they don't seem strange. I have always heard
+them. Those things you know about people who have the second sight. And
+about the seals who change themselves into men and come on shore and
+fall in love with girls and marry them. They say they go away now and
+then, and no one really knows where but it is believed that they go
+back to their own people and change into seals again, because they
+must plunge and riot about in the sea. Sometimes they come home, but
+sometimes they do not.
+
+"A beautiful young stranger, with soft, dark eyes, appeared once not
+far from Muircarrie, and he married a boatman's daughter. He was very
+restless one night, and got up and left her, and she never saw him
+again; but a few days later a splendid dead seal covered with wounds was
+washed up near his cottage. The fishers say that his people had wanted
+to keep him from his land wife, and they had fought with him and killed
+him. His wife had a son with strange, velvet eyes like his father's,
+and she couldn't keep him away from the water. When he was old enough
+to swim he swam out one day, because he thought he saw some seals and
+wanted to get near them. He swam out too far, perhaps. He never came
+back, and the fishermen said his father's people had taken him. When one
+has heard stories like that all one's life nothing seems very strange."
+
+"Nothing really IS strange," said Hector MacNairn. "Again and again
+through all the ages we have been told the secrets of the gods and the
+wonders of the Law, and we have revered and echoed but never believed.
+When we believe and know all is simple we shall not be afraid. You are
+not afraid, Ysobel. Tell my mother you are not."
+
+I turned my face toward her again in the darkness. I felt as if
+something was going on between them which he somehow knew I could help
+them in. It was as though he were calling on something in my nature
+which I did not myself comprehend, but which his profound mind saw and
+knew was stronger than I was.
+
+Suddenly I felt as if I might trust to him and to It, and that, without
+being troubled or anxious, I would just say the first thing which came
+into my mind, because it would be put there for me by some power which
+could dictate to me. I never felt younger or less clever than I did at
+that moment; I was only Ysobel Muircarrie, who knew almost nothing. But
+that did not seem to matter. It was such a simple, almost childish thing
+I told her. It was only about The Dream.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+"The feeling you call The Fear has never come to me," I said to her.
+"And if it had I think it would have melted away because of a dream I
+once had. I don't really believe it was a dream, but I call it one. I
+think I really went somewhere and came back. I often wonder why I
+came back. It was only a short dream, so simple that there is scarcely
+anything to tell, and perhaps it will not convey anything to you. But it
+has been part of my life--that time when I was Out on the Hillside. That
+is what I call The Dream to myself, 'Out on the Hillside,' as if it were
+a kind of unearthly poem. But it wasn't. It was more real than anything
+I have ever felt. It was real--real! I wish that I could tell it so that
+you would know how real it was."
+
+I felt almost piteous in my longing to make her know. I knew she was
+afraid of something, and if I could make her know how REAL that one
+brief dream had been she would not be afraid any more. And I loved her,
+I loved her so much!
+
+"I was asleep one night at Muircarrie," I went on, "and suddenly,
+without any preparatory dreaming, I was standing out on a hillside
+in moonlight softer and more exquisite than I had ever seen or known
+before. Perhaps I was still in my nightgown--I don't know. My feet were
+bare on the grass, and I wore something light and white which did not
+seem to touch me. If it touched me I did not feel it. My bare feet did
+not feel the grass; they only knew it was beneath them.
+
+"It was a low hill I stood on, and I was only on the side of it. And in
+spite of the thrilling beauty of the moon, all but the part I stood on
+melted into soft, beautiful shadow, all below me and above me. But I did
+not turn to look at or ask myself about anything. You see the difficulty
+is that there are no earthly words to tell it! All my being was
+ecstasy--pure, light ecstasy! Oh, what poor words-- But I know no
+others. If I said that I was happy--HAPPY!--it would be nothing. I WAS
+happiness itself, I WAS pure rapture! I did not look at the beauty of
+the night, the sky, the marvelous melting shadow. I was PART of it
+all, one with it. Nothing held me nothing! The beauty of the night, the
+light, the air WERE what I was, and I was only thrilling ecstasy and
+wonder at the rapture of it."
+
+I stopped and covered my face with my hands, and tears wet my fingers.
+
+"Oh, I cannot make it real! I was only there such a short, short time.
+Even if you had been with me I could not have found words for it, even
+then. It was such a short time. I only stood and lifted my face and felt
+the joy of it, the pure marvel of joy. I only heard myself murmuring
+over and over again: 'Oh, how beautiful! how beautiful! Oh, how
+BEAUTIFUL!'
+
+"And then a marvel of new joy swept through me. I said, very softly and
+very slowly, as if my voice were trailing away into silence:
+'Oh--h! I--can--lie--down--here--on--the grass--and--sleep . . .
+all--through--the night--under--this--moonlight. . . . I can
+sleep--sleep--'
+
+"I began to sink softly down, with the heavenliest feeling of relaxation
+and repose, as if there existed only the soul of beautiful rest. I sank
+so softly--and just as my cheek almost touched the grass the dream was
+over!"
+
+"Oh!" cried Mrs. MacNairn. "Did you awaken?"
+
+"No. I came back. In my sleep I suddenly found myself creeping into my
+bed again as if I had been away somewhere. I was wondering why I was
+there, how I had left the hillside, when I had left it. That part
+WAS a dream--but the other was not. I was allowed to go
+somewhere--outside--and come back."
+
+I caught at her hand in the dark.
+
+"The words are all wrong," I said. "It is because we have no words to
+describe that. But have I made you feel it at all? Oh! Mrs. MacNairn,
+have I been able to make you know that it was not a dream?"
+
+She lifted my hand and pressed it passionately against her cheek, and
+her cheek, too, was wet--wet.
+
+"No, it was not a dream," she said. "You came back. Thank God you came
+back, just to tell us that those who do not come back stand awakened in
+that ecstasy--in that ecstasy. And The Fear is nothing. It is only
+The Dream. The awakening is out on the hillside, out on the hillside!
+Listen!" She started as she said it. "Listen! The nightingale is
+beginning again."
+
+He sent forth in the dark a fountain--a rising, aspiring fountain--of
+golden notes which seemed to reach heaven itself. The night was made
+radiant by them. He flung them upward like a shower of stars into
+the sky. We sat and listened, almost holding our breath. Oh! the
+nightingale! the nightingale!
+
+"He knows," Hector MacNairn's low voice said, "that it was not a dream."
+
+When there was silence again I heard him leave his chair very quietly.
+
+"Good night! good night!" he said, and went away. I felt somehow that
+he had left us together for a purpose, but, oh, I did not even remotely
+dream what the purpose was! But soon she told me, almost in a whisper.
+
+"We love you very much, Ysobel," she said. "You know that?"
+
+"I love you both, with all my heart," I answered. "Indeed I love you."
+
+"We two have been more to each other than mere mother and son. We have
+been sufficient for each other. But he began to love you that first day
+when he watched you in the railway carriage. He says it was the far look
+in your eyes which drew him."
+
+"I began to love him, too," I said. And I was not at all ashamed or shy
+in saying it.
+
+"We three might have spent our lives together," she went on. "It would
+have been a perfect thing. But--but--" She stood up as if she could not
+remain seated. Involuntarily I stood up with her. She was trembling, and
+she caught and held me in her arms. "He cannot stay, Ysobel," she ended.
+
+I could scarcely hear my own voice when I echoed the words.
+
+"He cannot--stay?"
+
+"Oh! the time will come," she said, "when people who love each other
+will not be separated, when on this very earth there will be no pain, no
+grief, no age, no death--when all the world has learned the Law at
+last. But we have not learned it yet. And here we stand! The greatest
+specialists have told us. There is some fatal flaw in his heart. At any
+moment, when he is talking to us, when he is at his work, when he is
+asleep, he may--cease. It will just be ceasing. At any moment. He cannot
+stay."
+
+My own heart stood still for a second. Then there rose before me slowly,
+but clearly, a vision--the vision which was not a dream.
+
+"Out on the hillside," I murmured. "Out on the hillside."
+
+I clung to her with both arms and held her tight. I understood now why
+they had talked about The Fear. These two who were almost one soul
+were trying to believe that they were not really to be torn apart--not
+really. They were trying to heap up for themselves proof that they might
+still be near each other. And, above all, his effort was to save her
+from the worst, worst woe. And I understood, too, why something wiser
+and stronger than myself had led me to tell the dream which was not a
+dream at all.
+
+But it was as she said; the world had not learned the Secret yet. And
+there we stood. We did not cry or talk, but we clung to each other--we
+CLUNG. That is all human creatures can do until the Secret is known. And
+as we clung the nightingale broke out again.
+
+"O nightingale! O nightingale!" she said in her low wonder of a voice.
+"WHAT are you trying to tell us!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+What I feel sure I know by this time is that all the things we think
+happen by chance and accident are only part of the weaving of the scheme
+of life. When you begin to suspect this and to watch closely you also
+begin to see how trifles connect themselves with one another, and seem
+in the end to have led to a reason and a meaning, though we may not
+be clever enough to see it clearly. Nothing is an accident. We make
+everything happen ourselves: the wrong things because we do not know
+or care whether we are wrong or right, the right ones because we
+unconsciously or consciously choose the right even in the midst of our
+ignorance.
+
+I dare say it sounds audacious for an ordinary girl to say such things
+in an ordinary way; but perhaps I have said them in spite of myself,
+because it is not a bad thing that they should be said by an every-day
+sort of person in simple words which other every-day people can
+understand. I am only expressing what has gradually grown into belief in
+my mind through reading with Angus ancient books and modern ones--books
+about faiths and religions, books about philosophies and magics, books
+about what the world calls marvels, but which are not marvels at all,
+but only workings of the Law most people have not yet reasoned about or
+even accepted.
+
+Angus had read and studied them all his life before he began to read
+them with me, and we talked them over together sitting by the fire in
+the library, fascinated and staring at each other, I in one high-backed
+chair and he in another on the opposite side of the hearth. Angus is
+wonderful--wonderful! He KNOWS there is no such thing as chance.
+He KNOWS that we ourselves are the working of the Law--and that we
+ourselves could work what now are stupidly called "miracles" if we could
+only remember always what the Law is.
+
+What I intended to say at first was merely that it was not by chance
+that I climbed to the shelf in the library that afternoon and pushed
+aside the books hiding the old manuscript which told the real story of
+Dark Malcolm of the Glen and Wee Brown Elspeth. It seemed like chance
+when it happened, but it was really the first step toward my finding out
+the strange, beautiful thing I knew soon afterward.
+
+From the beginning of my friendship with the MacNairns I had hoped they
+would come and stay with me at Muircarrie. When they both seemed to
+feel such interest in all I told them of it, and not to mind its wild
+remoteness, I took courage and asked them if they would come to me. Most
+people are bored by the prospect of life in a feudal castle, howsoever
+picturesquely it is set in a place where there are no neighbors to count
+on. Its ancient stateliness is too dull. But the MacNairns were more
+allured by what Muircarrie offered than they were by other and more
+brilliant invitations. So when I went back to the castle I was only to
+be alone a week before they followed me.
+
+Jean and Angus were quite happy in their quiet way when I told them
+who I was expecting. They knew how glad I was myself. Jean was full of
+silent pleasure as she arranged the rooms I had chosen for my guests,
+rooms which had the most sweeping view of the moor. Angus knew that Mr.
+MacNairn would love the library, and he hovered about consulting his
+catalogues and looking over his shelves, taking down volumes here and
+there, holding them tenderly in his long, bony old hand as he dipped
+into them. He made notes of the manuscripts and books he thought Mr.
+MacNairn would feel the deepest interest in. He loved his library with
+all his being, and I knew he looked forward to talking to a man who
+would care for it in the same way.
+
+He had been going over one of the highest shelves one day and had left
+his step-ladder leaning against it when he went elsewhere. It was when
+I mounted the steps, as I often did when he left them, that I came
+upon the manuscript which related the old story of Dark Malcolm and his
+child. It had been pushed behind some volumes, and I took it out because
+it looked so old and yellow. And I opened at once at the page where the
+tale began.
+
+At first I stood reading, and then I sat down on the broad top of the
+ladder and forgot everything. It was a savage history of ferocious hate
+and barbarous reprisals. It had been a feud waged between two clans for
+three generations. The story of Dark Malcolm and Ian Red Hand was only
+part of it, but it was a gruesome thing. Pages told of the bloody deeds
+they wrought on each other's houses. The one human passion of Dark
+Malcolm's life was his love for his little daughter. She had brown
+eyes and brown hair, and those who most loved her called her Wee Brown
+Elspeth. Ian Red Hand was richer and more powerful than Malcolm of the
+Glen, and therefore could more easily work his cruel will. He knew well
+of Malcolm's worship of his child, and laid his plans to torture him
+through her. Dark Malcolm, coming back to his rude, small castle one
+night after a raid in which he had lost followers and weapons and
+strength, found that Wee Brown Elspeth had been carried away, and
+unspeakable taunts and threats left behind by Ian and his men. With
+unbound wounds, broken dirks and hacked swords, Dark Malcolm and the
+remnant of his troop of fighting clansmen rushed forth into the night.
+
+"Neither men nor weapons have we to win her back," screamed Dark
+Malcolm, raving mad, "but we may die fighting to get near enough to her
+to drive dirk into her little breast and save her from worse."
+
+They were a band of madmen in their black despair. How they tore through
+the black night; what unguarded weak spot they found in Ian's castle
+walls; how they fought their way through it, leaving their dead bodies
+in the path, none really ever knew. By what strange chance Dark Malcolm
+came upon Wee Brown Elspeth, craftily set to playing hide-and-seek with
+a child of Ian's so that she might not cry out and betray her presence;
+how, already wounded to his death, he caught at and drove his dirk into
+her child heart, the story only offers guesses at. But kill and save her
+he did, falling dead with her body held against his breast, her brown
+hair streaming over it. Not one living man went back to the small, rude
+castle on the Glen--not one.
+
+I sat and read and read until the room grew dark. When I stopped I
+found that Angus Macayre was standing in the dimness at the foot of the
+ladder. He looked up at me and I down at him. For a few moments we were
+both quite still.
+
+"It is the tale of Ian Red Hand and Dark Malcolm you are reading?" he
+said, at last.
+
+"And Wee Brown Elspeth, who was fought for and killed," I added, slowly.
+
+Angus nodded his head with a sad face. "It was the only way for a
+father," he said. "A hound of hell was Ian. Such men were savage beasts
+in those days, not human."
+
+I touched the manuscript with my hand questioningly. "Did this fall at
+the back there by accident," I asked, "or did you hide it?"
+
+"I did," he answered. "It was no tale for a young thing to read. I have
+hidden many from you. You were always poking about in corners, Ysobel."
+
+Then I sat and thought over past memories for a while and the shadows in
+the room deepened.
+
+"Why," I said, laggingly, after the silence--"why did I call the child
+who used to play with me 'Wee Brown Elspeth'?"
+
+"It was your own fancy," was his reply. "I used to wonder myself; but
+I made up my mind that you had heard some of the maids talking and the
+name had caught your ear. That would be a child's way."
+
+I put my forehead in my hands and thought again. So many years had
+passed! I had been little more than a baby; the whole thing seemed like
+a half-forgotten dream when I tried to recall it--but I seemed to dimly
+remember strange things.
+
+"Who were the wild men who brought her to me first--that day on the
+moor?" I said. "I do remember they had pale, savage, exultant faces. And
+torn, stained clothes. And broken dirks and swords. But they were glad
+of something. Who were they?"
+
+"I did not see them. The mist was too thick," he answered. "They were
+some wild hunters, perhaps."
+
+"It gives me such a strange feeling to try to remember, Angus," I said,
+lifting my forehead from my hands.
+
+"Don't try," he said. "Give me the manuscript and get down from the
+step-ladder. Come and look at the list of books I have made for Mr.
+MacNairn."
+
+I did as he told me, but I felt as if I were walking in a dream. My mind
+seemed to have left my body and gone back to the day when I sat a little
+child on the moor and heard the dull sound of horses' feet and the
+jingling metal and the creak of leather coming nearer in the thick mist.
+
+I felt as if Angus were in a queer, half-awake mood, too--as if two sets
+of thoughts were working at the same time in his mind: one his thoughts
+about Hector MacNairn and the books, the other some queer thoughts which
+went on in spite of him.
+
+When I was going to leave the library and go up-stairs to dress for
+dinner he said a strange thing to me, and he said it slowly and in a
+heavy voice.
+
+"There is a thing Jean and I have often talked of telling you," he said.
+"We have not known what it was best to do. Times we have been troubled
+because we could not make up our minds. This Mr. Hector MacNairn is
+no common man. He is one who is great and wise enough to decide things
+plain people could not be sure of. Jean and I are glad indeed that he
+and his mother are coming. Jean can talk to her and I can talk to him,
+being a man body. They will tell us whether we have been right or wrong
+and what we must do."
+
+"They are wise enough to tell you anything," I answered. "It sounds
+as if you and Jean had known some big secret all my life. But I am not
+frightened. You two would go to your graves hiding it if it would hurt
+me."
+
+"Eh, bairn!" he said, suddenly, in a queer, moved way. "Eh, bairn!" And
+he took hold of both my hands and kissed them, pressing them quite
+long and emotionally to his lips. But he said nothing else, and when he
+dropped them I went out of the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+It was wonderful when Mr. MacNairn and his mother came. It was even
+more beautiful than I had thought it would be. They arrived late in
+the afternoon, and when I took them out upon the terrace the sun was
+reddening the moor, and even the rough, gray towers of the castle
+were stained rose-color. There was that lovely evening sound of birds
+twittering before they went to sleep in the ivy. The glimpses of gardens
+below seemed like glimpses of rich tapestries set with jewels. And there
+was such stillness! When we drew our three chairs in a little group
+together and looked out on it all, I felt as if we were almost in
+heaven.
+
+"Yes! yes!" Hector said, looking slowly--round; "it is all here."
+
+"Yes," his mother added, in her lovely, lovely voice. "It is what made
+you Ysobel."
+
+It was so angelic of them to feel it all in that deep, quiet way, and to
+think that it was part of me and I a part of it. The climbing moon was
+trembling with beauty. Tender evening airs quivered in the heather and
+fern, and the late birds called like spirits.
+
+Ever since the night when Mrs. MacNairn had held me in her arms under
+the apple-tree while the nightingale sang I had felt toward her son as
+if he were an archangel walking on the earth. Perhaps my thoughts were
+exaggerated, but it seemed so marvelous that he should be moving among
+us, doing his work, seeing and talking to his friends, and yet that he
+should know that at any moment the great change might come and he might
+awaken somewhere else, in quite another place. If he had been like other
+men and I had been like other girls, I suppose that after that night
+when I heard the truth I should have been plunged into the darkest woe
+and have almost sobbed myself to death. Why did I not? I do not know
+except--except that I felt that no darkness could come between us
+because no darkness could touch him. He could never be anything but
+alive alive. If I could not see him it would only be because my eyes
+were not clear and strong enough. I seemed to be waiting for something.
+I wanted to keep near him.
+
+I was full of this feeling as we sat together on the terrace and watched
+the moon. I could scarcely look away from him. He was rather pale that
+evening, but there seemed to be a light behind his pallor, and his eyes
+seemed to see so much more than the purple and yellow of the heather and
+gorse as they rested on them.
+
+After I had watched him silently for a little while I leaned forward and
+pointed to a part of the moor where there was an unbroken blaze of gorse
+in full bloom like a big patch of gold.
+
+"That is where I was sitting when Wee Brown Elspeth was first brought to
+me," I said.
+
+He sat upright and looked. "Is it?" he answered. "Will you take me there
+to-morrow? I have always wanted to see the place."
+
+"Would you like to go early in the morning? The mist is more likely to
+be there then, as it was that day. It is so mysterious and beautiful.
+Would you like to do that?" I asked him.
+
+"Better than anything else!" he said. "Yes, let us go in the morning."
+
+"Wee Brown Elspeth seems very near me this evening," I said. "I feel as
+if--" I broke off and began again. "I have a puzzled feeling about her.
+This afternoon I found some manuscript pushed behind a book on a high
+shelf in the library. Angus said he had hidden it there because it was a
+savage story he did not wish me to read. It was the history of the feud
+between Ian Red Hand and Dark Malcolm of the Glen. Dark Malcolm's child
+was called Wee Brown Elspeth hundreds of years ago--five hundred, I
+think. It makes me feel so bewildered when I remember the one I played
+with."
+
+"It was a bloody story," he said. "I heard it only a few days before we
+met at Sir Ian's house in London."
+
+That made me recall something.
+
+"Was that why you started when I told you about Elspeth?" I asked.
+
+"Yes. Perhaps the one you played with was a little descendant who had
+inherited her name," he answered, a trifle hurriedly. "I confess I was
+startled for a moment."
+
+I put my hand up to my forehead and rubbed it unconsciously. I could not
+help seeing a woesome picture.
+
+"Poor little soul, with the blood pouring from her heart and her brown
+hair spread over her dead father's breast!" I stopped, because a faint
+memory came back to me. "Mine," I stammered--"mine--how strange!--had
+a great stain on the embroideries of her dress. She looked at it--and
+looked. She looked as if she didn't like it--as if she didn't understand
+how it came there. She covered it with ferns and bluebells."
+
+I felt as if I were being drawn away into a dream. I made a sudden
+effort to come back. I ceased rubbing my forehead and dropped my hand,
+sitting upright.
+
+"I must ask Angus and Jean to tell me about her," I said. "Of course,
+they must have known. I wonder why I never thought of asking questions
+before."
+
+It was a strange look I met when I involuntarily turned toward him--such
+an absorbed, strange, tender look!
+
+I knew he sat quite late in the library that night, talking to Angus
+after his mother and I went to our rooms. Just as I was falling asleep
+I remember there floated through my mind a vague recollection of
+what Angus had said to me of asking his advice about something; and I
+wondered if he would reach the subject in their talk, or if they would
+spend all their time in poring over manuscripts and books together.
+
+The moor wore its most mysterious look when I got up in the early
+morning. It had hidden itself in its softest snows of white, swathing
+mist. Only here and there dark fir-trees showed themselves above it, and
+now and then the whiteness thinned or broke and drifted. It was as I had
+wanted him to see it--just as I had wanted to walk through it with him.
+
+We had met in the hall as we had planned, and, wrapped in our plaids
+because the early morning air was cold, we tramped away together. No one
+but myself could ever realize what it was like. I had never known that
+there could be such a feeling of companionship in the world. It would
+not have been necessary for us to talk at all if we had felt silent. We
+should have been saying things to each other without words. But we did
+talk as we walked--in quiet voices which seemed made quieter by the
+mist, and of quiet things which such voices seemed to belong to.
+
+We crossed the park to a stile in a hedge where a path led at once on to
+the moor. Part of the park itself had once been moorland, and was dark
+with slender firs and thick grown with heather and broom. On the moor
+the mist grew thicker, and if I had not so well known the path we might
+have lost ourselves in it. Also I knew by heart certain little streams
+that rushed and made guiding sounds which were sometimes loud whispers
+and sometimes singing babbles. The damp, sweet scent of fern and heather
+was in our nostrils; as we climbed we breathed its freshness.
+
+"There is a sort of unearthly loveliness in it all," Hector MacNairn
+said to me. His voice was rather like his mother's. It always seemed to
+say so much more than his words.
+
+"We might be ghosts," I answered. "We might be some of those the mist
+hides because they like to be hidden."
+
+"You would not be afraid if you met one of them?" he said.
+
+"No. I think I am sure of that. I should feel that it was only like
+myself, and, if I could hear, might tell me things I want to know."
+
+"What do you want to know?" he asked me, very low. "You!"
+
+"Only what everybody wants to know--that it is really AWAKENING free,
+ready for wonderful new things, finding oneself in the midst of wonders.
+I don't mean angels with harps and crowns, but beauty such as we see
+now; only seeing it without burdens of fears before and behind us. And
+knowing there is no reason to be afraid. We have all been so afraid. We
+don't know how afraid we have been--of everything."
+
+I stopped among the heather and threw my arms out wide. I drew in a
+great, joyous morning breath.
+
+"Free like that! It is the freeness, the light, splendid freeness, I
+think of most."
+
+"The freeness!" he repeated. "Yes, the freeness!"
+
+"As for beauty," I almost whispered, in a sort of reverence for visions
+I remembered, "I have stood on this moor a thousand times and seen
+loveliness which made me tremble. One's soul could want no more in any
+life. But 'Out on the Hillside' I KNEW I was part of it, and it was
+ecstasy. That was the freeness."
+
+"Yes--it was the freeness," he answered.
+
+We brushed through the heather and the bracken, and flower-bells shook
+showers of radiant drops upon us. The mist wavered and sometimes lifted
+before us, and opened up mystic vistas to veil them again a few minutes
+later. The sun tried to break through, and sometimes we walked in a
+golden haze.
+
+We fell into silence. Now and then I glanced sidewise at my companion as
+we made our soundless way over the thick moss. He looked so strong
+and beautiful. His tall body was so fine, his shoulders so broad and
+splendid! How could it be! How could it be! As he tramped beside me he
+was thinking deeply, and he knew he need not talk to me. That made me
+glad--that he should know me so well and feel me so near. That was what
+he felt when he was with his mother, that she understood and that at
+times neither of them needed words.
+
+Until we had reached the patch of gorse where we intended to end our
+walk we did not speak at all. He was thinking of things which led him
+far. I knew that, though I did not know what they were. When we reached
+the golden blaze we had seen the evening before it was a flame of gold
+again, because--it was only for a few moments--the mist had blown apart
+and the sun was shining on it.
+
+As we stood in the midst of it together--Oh! how strange and beautiful
+it was!--Mr. MacNairn came back. That was what it seemed to me--that he
+came back. He stood quite still a moment and looked about him, and then
+he stretched out his arms as I had stretched out mine. But he did it
+slowly, and a light came into his face.
+
+"If, after it was over, a man awakened as you said and found
+himself--the self he knew, but light, free, splendid--remembering all
+the ages of dark, unknowing dread, of horror of some black, aimless
+plunge, and suddenly seeing all the childish uselessness of it--how he
+would stand and smile! How he would stand and SMILE!"
+
+Never had I understood anything more clearly than I understood then.
+Yes, yes! That would be it. Remembering all the waste of fear, how he
+would stand and SMILE!
+
+He was smiling himself, the golden gorse about him already losing its
+flame in the light returning mist-wraiths closing again over it, when I
+heard a sound far away and high up the moor. It sounded like the playing
+of a piper. He did not seem to notice it.
+
+"We shall be shut in again," he said. "How mysterious it is, this
+opening and closing! I like it more than anything else. Let us sit down,
+Ysobel."
+
+He spread the plaid we had brought to sit on, and laid on it the little
+strapped basket Jean had made ready for us. He shook the mist drops from
+our own plaids, and as I was about to sit down I stopped a moment to
+listen.
+
+"That is a tune I never heard on the pipes before," I said. "What is a
+piper doing out on the moor so early?"
+
+He listened also. "It must be far away. I don't hear it," he said.
+"Perhaps it is a bird whistling."
+
+"It is far away," I answered, "but it is not a bird. It's the pipes, and
+playing such a strange tune. There! It has stopped!"
+
+But it was not silent long; I heard the tune begin again much nearer,
+and the piper was plainly coming toward us. I turned my head.
+
+The mist was clearing, and floated about like a thin veil through which
+one could see objects. At a short distance above us on the moor I saw
+something moving. It was a man who was playing the pipes. It was the
+piper, and almost at once I knew him, because it was actually my own
+Feargus, stepping proudly through the heather with his step like a stag
+on the hills. His head was held high, and his face had a sort of elated
+delight in it as if he were enjoying himself and the morning and the
+music in a new way. I was so surprised that I rose to my feet and called
+to him.
+
+"Feargus!" I cried. "What--"
+
+I knew he heard me, because he turned and looked at me with the most
+extraordinary smile. He was usually a rather grave-faced man, but this
+smile had a kind of startling triumph in it. He certainly heard me, for
+he whipped off his bonnet in a salute which was as triumphant as the
+smile. But he did not answer, and actually passed in and out of sight in
+the mist.
+
+When I rose Mr. MacNairn had risen, too. When I turned to speak in my
+surprise, he had fixed on me his watchful look.
+
+"Imagine its being Feargus at this hour!" I exclaimed. "And why did
+he pass by in such a hurry without answering? He must have been to a
+wedding and have been up all night. He looked--" I stopped a second and
+laughed.
+
+"How did he look?" Mr. MacNairn asked.
+
+"Pale! That won't do--though he certainly didn't look ill." I laughed
+again. "I'm laughing because he looked almost like one of the White
+People."
+
+"Are you sure it was Feargus?" he said.
+
+"Quite sure. No one else is the least like Feargus. Didn't you see him
+yourself?"
+
+"I don't know him as well as you do; and there was the mist," was his
+answer. "But he certainly was not one of the White People when I saw him
+last night."
+
+I wondered why he looked as he did when he took my hand and drew me down
+to my place on the plaid again. He did not let it go when he sat down by
+my side. He held it in his own large, handsome one, looking down on it
+a moment or so; and then he bent his head and kissed it long and slowly
+two or three times.
+
+"Dear little Ysobel!" he said. "Beloved, strange little Ysobel."
+
+"Am I strange!" I said, softly.
+
+"Yes, thank God!" he answered.
+
+I had known that some day when we were at Muircarrie together he would
+tell me what his mother had told me--about what we three might have been
+to one another. I trembled with happiness at the thought of hearing him
+say it himself. I knew he was going to say it now.
+
+He held my hand and stroked it. "My mother told you, Ysobel--what I am
+waiting for?" he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you know I love you?" he said, very low.
+
+"Yes. I love you, too. My whole life would have been heaven if we could
+always have been together," was my answer.
+
+He drew me up into his arms so that my cheek lay against his breast as
+I went on, holding fast to the rough tweed of his jacket and whispering:
+"I should have belonged to you two, heart and body and soul. I should
+never have been lonely again. I should have known nothing, whatsoever
+happened, but tender joy."
+
+"Whatsoever happened?" he murmured.
+
+"Whatsoever happens now, Ysobel, know nothing but tender joy. I think
+you CAN. 'Out on the Hillside!' Let us remember."
+
+"Yes, yes," I said; "'Out on the Hillside.'" And our two faces, damp
+with the sweet mist, were pressed together.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The mist had floated away, and the moor was drenched with golden
+sunshine when we went back to the castle. As we entered the hall I heard
+the sound of a dog howling, and spoke of it to one of the men-servants
+who had opened the door.
+
+"That sounds like Gelert. Is he shut up somewhere?"
+
+Gelert was a beautiful sheep-dog who belonged to Feargus and was his
+heart's friend. I allowed him to be kept in the courtyard.
+
+The man hesitated before he answered me, with a curiously grave face.
+
+"It is Gelert, miss. He is howling for his master. We were obliged to
+shut him in the stables."
+
+"But Feargus ought to have reached here by this time," I was beginning.
+
+I was stopped because I found Angus Macayre almost at my elbow. He had
+that moment come out of the library. He put his hand on my arm.
+
+"Will ye come with me?" he said, and led me back to the room he had
+just left. He kept his hand on my arm when we all stood together inside,
+Hector and I looking at him in wondering question. He was going to tell
+me something--we both saw that.
+
+"It is a sad thing you have to hear," he said. "He was a fine man,
+Feargus, and a most faithful servant. He went to see his mother last
+night and came back late across the moor. There was a heavy mist, and he
+must have lost his way. A shepherd found his body in a tarn at daybreak.
+They took him back to his father's home."
+
+I looked at Hector MacNairn and again at Angus. "But it couldn't be
+Feargus," I cried. "I saw him an hour ago. He passed us playing on his
+pipes. He was playing a new tune I had never heard before a wonderful,
+joyous thing. I both heard and SAW him!"
+
+Angus stood still and watched me. They both stood still and watched me,
+and even in my excitement I saw that each of them looked a little pale.
+
+"You said you did not hear him at first, but you surely saw him when
+he passed so near," I protested. "I called to him, and he took off his
+bonnet, though he did not stop. He was going so quickly that perhaps he
+did not hear me call his name."
+
+What strange thing in Hector's look checked me? Who knows?
+
+"You DID see him, didn't you?" I asked of him.
+
+Then he and Angus exchanged glances, as if asking each other to decide
+some grave thing. It was Hector MacNairn who decided it.
+
+"No," he answered, very quietly, "I neither saw nor heard him, even when
+he passed. But you did."
+
+"I did, quite plainly," I went on, more and more bewildered by the
+way in which they kept a sort of tender, awed gaze fixed on me. "You
+remember I even noticed that he looked pale. I laughed, you know, when I
+said he looked almost like one of the White People--"
+
+Just then my breath caught itself and I stopped. I began to remember
+things--hundreds of things.
+
+Angus spoke to me again as quietly as Hector had spoken.
+
+"Neither Jean nor I ever saw Wee Brown Elspeth," he said--"neither Jean
+nor I. But you did. You have always seen what the rest of us did not
+see, my bairn--always."
+
+I stammered out a few words, half in a whisper. "I have always seen what
+you others could not see? WHAT--HAVE--I--SEEN?"
+
+But I was not frightened. I suppose I could never tell any one what
+strange, wide, bright places seemed suddenly to open and shine before
+me. Not places to shrink back from--oh no! no! One could be sure,
+then--SURE! Feargus had lifted his bonnet with that extraordinary
+triumph in his look--even Feargus, who had been rather dour.
+
+"You called them the White People," Hector MacNairn said.
+
+
+Angus and Jean had known all my life. A very old shepherd who had looked
+in my face when I was a baby had said I had the eyes which "SAW." It
+was only the saying of an old Highlander, and might not have been
+remembered. Later the two began to believe I had a sight they had not.
+The night before Wee Brown Elspeth had been brought to me Angus had read
+for the first time the story of Dark Malcolm, and as they sat near me on
+the moor they had been talking about it. That was why he forgot himself
+when I came to ask them where the child had gone, and told him of the
+big, dark man with the scar on his forehead. After that they were sure.
+
+They had always hidden their knowledge from me because they were afraid
+it might frighten me to be told. I had not been a strong child. They
+kept the secret from my relatives because they knew they would dislike
+to hear it and would not believe, and also would dislike me as a queer,
+abnormal creature. Angus had fears of what they might do with doctors
+and severe efforts to obliterate from my mind my "nonsense," as they
+would have been sure to call it. The two wise souls had shielded me on
+every side.
+
+"It was better that you should go on thinking it only a simple, natural
+thing," Angus said. "And as to natural, what IS natural and what is not?
+Man has not learned all the laws of nature yet. Nature's a grand, rich,
+endless thing, always unrolling her scroll with writings that seem new
+on it. They're not new. They were always written there. But they were
+not unrolled. Never a law broken, never a new law, only laws read with
+stronger eyes."
+
+Angus and I had always been very fond of the Bible--the strange old
+temple of wonders, full of all the poems and tragedies and histories of
+man, his hates and battles and loves and follies, and of the Wisdom of
+the universe and the promises of the splendors of it, and which even
+those of us who think ourselves the most believing neither wholly
+believe nor will understand. We had pored over and talked of it. We had
+never thought of it as only a pious thing to do. The book was to us one
+of the mystic, awe-inspiring, prophetic marvels of the world.
+
+That was what made me say, half whispering: "I have wondered and
+wondered what it meant--that verse in Isaiah: 'Behold the former things
+are come to pass and new things do I declare; before they spring forth I
+tell you of them.' Perhaps it means only the unrolling of the scroll."
+
+"Aye, aye!" said Angus; "it is full of such deep sayings, and none of us
+will listen to them."
+
+"It has taken man eons of time," Hector MacNairn said, thinking it out
+as he spoke--"eons of time to reach the point where he is beginning to
+know that in every stock and stone in his path may lie hidden some
+power he has not yet dreamed of. He has learned that lightning may be
+commanded, distance conquered, motion chained and utilized; but he, the
+one CONSCIOUS force, has never yet begun to suspect that of all others
+he may be the one as yet the least explored. How do we know that there
+does not lie in each of us a wholly natural but, so far, dormant power
+of sight--a power to see what has been called The Unseen through all the
+Ages whose sightlessness has made them Dark? Who knows when the
+Shadow around us may begin to clear? Oh, we are a dull lot--we human
+things--with a queer, obstinate conceit of ourselves."
+
+"Complete we think we are," Angus murmured half to himself. "Finished
+creatures! And look at us! How many of us in a million have beauty
+and health and full power? And believing that the law is that we must
+crumple and go to pieces hour by hour! Who'd waste the time making a
+clock that went wrong as often? Nay, nay! We shall learn better than
+this as time goes on. And we'd better be beginning and setting our minds
+to work on it. 'Tis for us to do--the minds of us. And what's the mind
+of us but the Mind that made us? Simple and straight enough it is when
+once you begin to think it out. The spirit of you sees clearer than we
+do, that's all," he said to me. "When your mother brought you into the
+world she was listening to one outside calling to her, and it opened the
+way for you."
+
+At night Hector MacNairn and his mother and I sat on the terrace under
+stars which seemed listening things, and we three drew nearer to one
+another, and nearer and nearer.
+
+"When the poor mother stumbled into the train that day," was one of the
+things Hector told me, "I was thinking of The Fear and of my own mother.
+You looked so slight and small as you sat in your corner that I thought
+at first you were almost a child. Then a far look in your eyes made me
+begin to watch you. You were so sorry for the poor woman that you could
+not look away from her, and something in your face touched and puzzled
+me. You leaned forward suddenly and put out your hand protectingly as
+she stepped down on to the platform.
+
+"That night when you spoke quite naturally of the child, never doubting
+that I had seen it, I suddenly began to suspect. Because of The
+Fear"--he hesitated--"I had been reading and thinking many things new to
+me. I did not know what I believed. But you spoke so simply, and I knew
+you were speaking the truth. Then you spoke just as naturally of Wee
+Brown Elspeth. That startled me because not long before I had been told
+the tale in the Highlands by a fine old story-teller who is the head of
+his clan. I saw you had never heard the story before. And yet you were
+telling me that you had played with the child."
+
+"He came home and told me about you," Mrs. MacNairn said. "His fear of
+The Fear was more for me than for himself. He knew that if he brought
+you to me, you who are more complete than we are, clearer-eyed and
+nearer, nearer, I should begin to feel that he was not going--out. I
+should begin to feel a reality and nearness myself. Ah, Ysobel! How we
+have clung to you and loved you! And then that wonderful afternoon! I
+saw no girl with her hand through Mr. Le Breton's arm; Hector saw none.
+But you saw her. She was THERE!"
+
+"Yes, she was there," I answered. "She was there, smiling up at him. I
+wish he could have known."
+
+
+What does it matter if this seems a strange story? To some it will mean
+something; to some it will mean nothing. To those it has a meaning for
+it will open wide windows into the light and lift heavy loads. That
+would be quite enough, even if the rest thought it only the weird fancy
+of a queer girl who had lived alone and given rein to her silliest
+imaginings. I wanted to tell it, howsoever poorly and ineffectively
+it was done. Since I KNEW I have dropped the load of ages--the black
+burden. Out on the hillside my feet did not even feel the grass, and yet
+I was standing, not floating. I had no wings or crown. I was only Ysobel
+out on the hillside, free!
+
+
+This is the way it all ended.
+
+For three weeks that were like heaven we three lived together at
+Muircarrie. We saw every beauty and shared every joy of sun and dew and
+love and tender understanding.
+
+After one lovely day we had spent on the moor in a quiet dream of joy
+almost strange in its perfectness, we came back to the castle; and,
+because the sunset was of such unearthly radiance and changing wonder
+we sat on the terrace until the last soft touch of gold had died out and
+left the pure, still, clear, long summer twilight.
+
+When Mrs. MacNairn and I went in to dress for dinner, Hector lingered a
+little behind us because the silent beauty held him.
+
+I came down before his mother did, and I went out upon the terrace again
+because I saw he was still sitting there. I went to the stone balustrade
+very quietly and leaned against it as I turned to look at him and speak.
+
+Then I stood quite still and looked long--for some reason not startled,
+not anguished, not even feeling that he had gone. He was more beautiful
+than any human creature I had ever seen before. But It had happened as
+they said it would. He had not ceased--but something else had. Something
+had ceased.
+
+
+It was the next evening before I came out on the terrace again. The day
+had been more exquisite and the sunset more wonderful than before. Mrs.
+MacNairn was sitting by her son's side in the bedroom whose windows
+looked over the moor. I am not going to say one word of what had come
+between the two sunsets. Mrs. MacNairn and I had clung--and clung. We
+had promised never to part from each other. I did not quite know why I
+went out on the terrace; perhaps it was because I had always loved to
+sit or stand there.
+
+This evening I stood and leaned upon the balustrade, looking out far,
+far, far over the moor. I stood and gazed and gazed. I was thinking
+about the Secret and the Hillside. I was very quiet--as quiet as the
+twilight's self. And there came back to me the memory of what Hector had
+said as we stood on the golden patch of gorse when the mist had for
+a moment or so blown aside, what he had said of man's awakening, and,
+remembering all the ages of--childish, useless dread, how he would
+stand-- I did not turn suddenly, but slowly. I was not startled in the
+faintest degree. He stood there close to me as he had so often stood.
+
+And he stood--and smiled.
+
+I have seen him many times since. I shall see him many times again. And
+when I see him he always stands--and smiles.
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+
+
+THE WHITE PEOPLE
+
+BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT 
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+LIONEL
+"The stars come nightly to the sky;
+The tidal wave unto the sea;
+Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high
+Can keep my own away from me."
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE PEOPLE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Perhaps the things which happened could
+only have happened to me.  I do not
+know.  I never heard of things like them
+happening to any one else.  But I am not sorry
+they did happen.  I am in secret deeply and
+strangely glad.  I have heard other people say
+things--and they were not always sad people,
+either--which made me feel that if they knew
+what I know it would seem to them as though
+some awesome, heavy load they had always
+dragged about with them had fallen from their
+shoulders.  To most people everything is so
+uncertain that if they could only see or hear and
+know something clear they would drop upon
+their knees and give thanks.  That was what I
+felt myself before I found out so strangely, and
+I was only a girl.  That is why I intend to
+write this down as well as I can.  It will not be
+very well done, because I never was clever at all,
+and always found it difficult to talk.
+
+I say that perhaps these things could only
+have happened to me, because, as I look back
+over my life, I realize that it has always been a
+rather curious one.  Even when those who took
+care of me did not know I was thinking at all, I
+had begun to wonder if I were not different from
+other children.  That was, of course, largely
+because Muircarrie Castle was in such a wild
+and remote part of Scotland that when my few
+relations felt they must pay me a visit as a
+mere matter of duty, their journey from London,
+or their pleasant places in the south of
+England, seemed to them like a pilgrimage to a
+sort of savage land; and when a conscientious
+one brought a child to play with me, the little
+civilized creature was as frightened of me as I
+was of it.  My shyness and fear of its strangeness
+made us both dumb.  No doubt I seemed
+like a new breed of inoffensive little barbarian,
+knowing no tongue but its own.
+
+A certain clannish etiquette made it seem
+necessary that a relation should pay me a visit
+sometimes, because I was in a way important. 
+The huge, frowning feudal castle standing upon
+its battlemented rock was mine; I was a great
+heiress, and I was, so to speak, the chieftainess
+of the clan.  But I was a plain, undersized little
+child, and had no attraction for any one but
+Jean Braidfute, a distant cousin, who took care
+of me, and Angus Macayre, who took care of
+the library, and who was a distant relative
+also.  They were both like me in the fact that
+they were not given to speech; but sometimes
+we talked to one another, and I knew they were
+fond of me, as I was fond of them.  They were
+really all I had.
+
+When I was a little girl I did not, of course,
+understand that I was an important person,
+and I could not have realized the significance
+of being an heiress.  I had always lived in the
+castle, and was used to its hugeness, of which I
+only knew corners.  Until I was seven years
+old, I think, I imagined all but very poor people
+lived in castles and were saluted by every one
+they passed.  It seemed probable that all little
+girls had a piper who strode up and down the
+terrace and played on the bagpipes when guests
+were served in the dining-hall.
+
+My piper's name was Feargus, and in time I
+found out that the guests from London could
+not endure the noise he made when he marched
+to and fro, proudly swinging his kilts and treading
+like a stag on a hillside.  It was an insult
+to tell him to stop playing, because it was his
+religion to believe that The Muircarrie must
+be piped proudly to; and his ancestors had
+been pipers to the head of the clan for five
+generations.  It was his duty to march round
+the dining-hall and play while the guests feasted,
+but I was obliged in the end to make him believe
+that he could be heard better from the terrace--
+because when he was outside his music was not
+spoiled by the sound of talking.  It was very
+difficult, at first.  But because I was his
+chieftainess, and had learned how to give orders in a
+rather proud, stern little voice, he knew he
+must obey.
+
+Even this kind of thing may show that my
+life was a peculiar one; but the strangest part
+of it was that, while I was at the head of so
+many people, I did not really belong to any one,
+and I did not know that this was unusual.  One
+of my early memories is that I heard an under-
+nursemaid say to another this curious thing: 
+"Both her father and mother were dead when
+she was born."  I did not even know that was
+a remarkable thing to say until I was several
+years older and Jean Braidfute told me what
+had been meant.
+
+My father and mother had both been very
+young and beautiful and wonderful.  It was
+said that my father was the handsomest chieftain
+in Scotland, and that his wife was as
+beautiful as he was.  They came to Muircarrie
+as soon as they were married and lived a splendid
+year there together.  Sometimes they were
+quite alone, and spent their days fishing or riding
+or wandering on the moor together, or reading
+by the fire in the library the ancient books
+Angus Macayre found for them.  The library
+was a marvelous place, and Macayre knew every
+volume in it.  They used to sit and read like
+children among fairy stories, and then they
+would persuade Macayre to tell them the ancient
+tales he knew--of the days when Agricola
+forced his way in among the Men of the Woods,
+who would die any savage death rather than be
+conquered.  Macayre was a sort of heirloom
+himself, and he knew and believed them all.
+
+I don't know how it was that I myself seemed
+to see my young father and mother so clearly
+and to know how radiant and wildly in love they
+were.  Surely Jean Braidfute had not words to
+tell me.  But I knew.  So I understood, in a
+way of my own, what happened to my mother
+one brilliant late October afternoon when my
+father was brought home dead--followed by the
+guests who had gone out shooting with him. 
+His foot had caught in a tuft of heather, and his
+gun in going off had killed him.  One moment
+he had been the handsomest young chieftain in
+Scotland, and when he was brought home they
+could not have let my mother see his face.
+
+But she never asked to see it.  She was on the
+terrace which juts over the rock the castle is
+built on, and which looks out over the purple
+world of climbing moor.  She saw from there
+the returning party of shooters and gillies winding
+its way slowly through the heather, following
+a burden carried on a stretcher of fir boughs. 
+Some of her women guests were with her, and
+one of them said afterward that when she first
+caught sight of the moving figures she got up
+slowly and crept to the stone balustrade with a
+crouching movement almost like a young
+leopardess preparing to spring.  But she only
+watched, making neither sound nor movement
+until the cortege was near enough for her to
+see that every man's head was bowed upon his
+breast, and not one was covered.
+
+Then she said, quite slowly, "They--have--
+taken off--their bonnets," and fell upon the
+terrace like a dropped stone.
+
+It was because of this that the girl said that
+she was dead when I was born.  It must have
+seemed almost as if she were not a living thing. 
+She did not open her eyes or make a sound;
+she lay white and cold.  The celebrated physicians
+who came from London talked of catalepsy
+and afterward wrote scientific articles which
+tried to explain her condition.  She did not
+know when I was born.  She died a few minutes
+after I uttered my first cry.
+
+I know only one thing more, and that Jean
+Braidfute told me after I grew up.  Jean had
+been my father's nursery governess when he
+wore his first kilts, and she loved my mother
+fondly.
+
+"I knelt by her bed and held her hand and
+watched her face for three hours after they first
+laid her down," she said.  "And my eyes were
+so near her every moment that I saw a thing
+the others did not know her well enough, or love
+her well enough, to see.
+
+"The first hour she was like a dead thing--
+aye, like a dead thing that had never lived. 
+But when the hand of the clock passed the
+last second, and the new hour began, I bent
+closer to her because I saw a change stealing
+over her.  It was not color--it was not even a
+shadow of a motion.  It was something else. 
+If I had spoken what I felt, they would have
+said I was light-headed with grief and have sent
+me away.  I have never told man or woman. 
+It was my secret and hers.  I can tell you,
+Ysobel.  The change I saw was as if she was
+beginning to listen to something--to listen.
+
+"It was as if to a sound--far, far away at
+first.  But cold and white as stone she lay
+content, and listened.  In the next hour the far-
+off sound had drawn nearer, and it had become
+something else--something she saw--something
+which saw her.  First her young marble face
+had peace in it; then it had joy.  She waited in
+her young stone body until you were born and
+she could break forth.  She waited no longer
+then.
+
+"Ysobel, my bairn, what I knew was that he
+had not gone far from the body that had held
+him when he fell.  Perhaps he had felt lost for
+a bit when he found himself out of it.  But soon
+he had begun to call to her that was like his own
+heart to him.  And she had heard.  And then,
+being half away from earth herself, she had seen
+him and known he was waiting, and that he
+would not leave for any far place without her. 
+She was so still that the big doctors thought
+more than once she had passed.  But I knew
+better."
+
+It was long before I was old enough to be told
+anything like this that I began to feel that the
+moor was in secret my companion and friend,
+that it was not only the moot to me, but something
+else.  It was like a thing alive--a huge 
+giant lying spread out in the sun warming itself,
+or covering itself with thick, white mist which
+sometimes writhed and twisted itself into
+wraiths.  First I noticed and liked it some day,
+perhaps, when it was purple and yellow with
+gorse and heather and broom, and the honey
+scents drew bees and butterflies and birds. 
+But soon I saw and was drawn by another thing.
+
+How young was I that afternoon when I sat
+in the deep window and watched the low, soft
+whiteness creeping out and hovering over the
+heather as if the moor had breathed it?  I do
+not remember.  It was such a low little mist at
+first; and it crept and crept until its creeping
+grew into something heavier and whiter, and it
+began to hide the heather and the gorse and
+broom, and then the low young fir-trees.  It
+mounted and mounted, and sometimes a breath
+of wind twisted it into weird shapes, almost
+like human creatures.  It opened and closed
+again, and then it dragged and crept and grew
+thicker.  And as I pressed my face against the
+window-pane, it mounted still higher and got
+hold of the moor and hid it, hanging heavy and
+white and waiting.  That was what came into
+my child mind: that it had done what the moor
+had told it to do; had hidden things which
+wanted to be hidden, and then it waited.
+
+Strangers say that Muircarrie moor is the
+most beautiful and the most desolate place in
+the world, but it never seemed desolate to me. 
+From my first memory of it I had a vague, half-
+comforted feeling that there was some strange
+life on it one could not exactly see, but was
+always conscious of.  I know now why I felt
+this, but I did not know then.
+
+If I had been older when I first began to see
+what I did see there, I should no doubt have
+read things in books which would have given
+rise in my mind to doubts and wonders; but
+I was only a little child who had lived a life quite
+apart from the rest of the world.  I was too
+silent by nature to talk and ask questions, even
+if I had had others to talk to.  I had only
+Jean and Angus, and, as I found out years
+later, they knew what I did not, and would
+have put me off with adroit explanations if I
+had been curious.  But I was not curious.  I
+accepted everything as it came and went.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+I only six when Wee Brown Elspeth
+was brought to me.  Jean and Angus were
+as fond of each other in their silent way as they
+were of me, and they often went together with
+me when I was taken out for my walks.  I was
+kept in the open air a great deal, and Angus
+would walk by the side of my small, shaggy
+Shetland pony and lead him over rough or
+steep places.  Sheltie, the pony, was meant for
+use when we wished to fare farther than a child
+could walk; but I was trained to sturdy marching
+and climbing even from my babyhood. 
+Because I so loved the moor, we nearly always
+rambled there.  Often we set out early in the
+morning, and some simple food was carried, so
+that we need not return to the castle until we
+chose.  I would ride Sheltie and walk by turns
+until we found a place I liked; then Jean and
+Angus would sit down among the heather,
+Sheltie would be secured, and I would wander
+about and play in my own way.  I do not
+think it was in a strange way.  I think I must
+have played as almost any lonely little girl
+might have played.  I used to find a corner
+among the bushes and pretend it was my house
+and that I had little friends who came to play
+with me.  I only remember one thing which
+was not like the ordinary playing of children. 
+It was a habit I had of sitting quite still a long
+time and listening.  That was what I called
+it--"listening."  I was listening to hear if the
+life on the moor made any sound I could understand. 
+I felt as if it might, if I were very still
+and listened long enough.
+
+Angus and Jean and I were not afraid of rain
+and mist and change of weather.  If we had
+been we could have had little outdoor life. 
+We always carried plaids enough to keep us
+warm and dry.  So on this day I speak of we
+did not turn back when we found ourselves in
+the midst of a sudden mist.  We sat down in a
+sheltered place and waited, knowing it would
+lift in time.  The sun had been shining when
+we set out.
+
+Angus and Jean were content to sit and guard
+me while I amused myself.  They knew I would
+keep near them and run into no danger.  I was
+not an adventurous child.  I was, in fact, in a
+more than usually quiet mood that morning. 
+The quiet had come upon me when the mist
+had begun to creep about and inclose us.  I
+liked it.  I liked the sense of being shut in by
+the soft whiteness I had so often watched from
+my nursery window in the castle.
+
+"People might be walking about," I said to
+Angus when he lifted me from Sheltie's back.
+
+"We couldn't see them.  They might be
+walking."
+
+"Nothing that would hurt ye, bairnie," he
+answered.
+
+"No, they wouldn't hurt me," I said.  I had
+never been afraid that anything on the moor
+would hurt me.
+
+I played very little that day.  The quiet and
+the mist held me still.  Soon I sat down and
+began to "listen."  After a while I knew that
+Jean and Angus were watching me, but it did
+not disturb me.  They often watched me when
+they thought I did not know they were doing it.
+
+I had sat listening for nearly half an hour
+when I heard the first muffled, slow trampling
+of horses' hoofs.  I knew what it was even
+before it drew near enough for me to be conscious
+of the other sounds--the jingling of arms
+and chains and the creaking of leather one
+notices as troopers pass by.  Armed and mounted
+men were coming toward me.  That was what
+the sounds meant; but they seemed faint and
+distant, though I knew they were really quite
+near.  Jean and Angus did not appear to hear
+them.  I knew that I only heard them because
+I had been listening.
+
+Out of the mist they rode a company of
+wild-looking men wearing garments such as I
+had never seen before.  Most of them were
+savage and uncouth, and their clothes were
+disordered and stained as if with hard travel and
+fight.  I did not know--or even ask myself--
+why they did not frighten me, but they did not. 
+Suddenly I seemed to know that they were
+brave men and had been doing some brave,
+hard thing.  Here and there among them I
+caught sight of a broken and stained sword,
+or a dirk with only a hilt left.  They were all
+pale, but their wild faces were joyous and
+triumphant.  I saw it as they drew near.
+
+The man who seemed their chieftain was a
+lean giant who was darker but, under his
+darkness, paler than the rest.  On his forehead was
+a queer, star-shaped scar.  He rode a black
+horse, and before him he held close with his
+left arm a pretty little girl dressed in strange,
+rich clothes.  The big man's hand was pressed
+against her breast as he held her; but though
+it was a large hand, it did not quite cover a
+dark-red stain on the embroideries of her dress. 
+Her dress was brown, and she had brown hair
+and soft brown eyes like a little doe's.  The
+moment I saw her I loved her.
+
+The black horse stopped before me.  The
+wild troop drew up and waited behind.  The
+great, lean rider looked at me a moment, and
+then, lifting the little girl in his long arms, bent
+down and set her gently on her feet on the
+mossy earth in the mist beside me.  I got up
+to greet her, and we stood smiling at each
+other.  And in that moment as we stood the
+black horse moved forward, the muffled trampling
+began again, the wild company swept on
+its way, and the white mist closed behind it as
+if it had never passed.
+
+Of course I know how strange this will seem
+to people who read it, but that cannot be
+helped and does not really matter.  It was in
+that way the thing happened, and it did not
+even seem strange to me.  Anything might happen
+on the moor--anything.  And there was
+the fair little girl with the eyes like a doe's.
+
+I knew she had come to play with me, and
+we went together to my house among the
+bushes of broom and gorse and played happily. 
+But before we began I saw her stand and look
+wonderingly at the dark-red stain on the
+embroideries on her childish breast.  It was as if
+she were asking herself how it came there and
+could not understand.  Then she picked a fern
+and a bunch of the thick-growing bluebells
+and put them in her girdle in such a way that
+they hid its ugliness.
+
+I did not really know how long she stayed. 
+I only knew that we were happy, and that,
+though her way of playing was in some ways
+different from mine, I loved it and her.  Presently
+the mist lifted and the sun shone, and we
+were deep in a wonderful game of being hidden
+in a room in a castle because something strange
+was going to happen which we were not told
+about.  She ran behind a big gorse bush and
+did not come back.  When I ran to look for her
+she was nowhere.  I could not find her, and I
+went back to Jean and Angus, feeling puzzled.
+
+"Where did she go?" I asked them, turning
+my head from side to side.
+
+They were looking at me strangely, and both
+of them were pale.  Jean was trembling a little.
+
+"Who was she, Ysobel?" she said.
+
+"The little girl the men brought to play
+with me," I answered, still looking about me.
+
+"The big one on the black horse put her down--
+the big one with the star here."  I touched my
+forehead where the queer scar had been.
+
+For a minute Angus forgot himself.  Years
+later he told me.
+
+"Dark Malcolm of the Glen," he broke out. 
+"Wee Brown Elspeth."
+
+"But she is white--quite white!" I said.
+
+"Where did she go?"
+
+Jean swept me in her warm, shaking arms and
+hugged me close to her breast.
+
+"She's one of the fair ones," she said, kissing
+and patting me.  "She will come again.  She'll
+come often, I dare say.  But she's gone now
+and we must go, too.  Get up, Angus, man. 
+We're for the castle."
+
+If we three had been different--if we had
+ever had the habit of talking and asking questions--
+we might surely have asked one another
+questions as I rode on Sheltie's back, with
+Angus leading us.  But they asked me nothing,
+and I said very little except that I once spoke
+of the wild-looking horsemen and their pale,
+joyous faces.
+
+"They were glad," was all I said.
+
+There was also one brief query from Angus.
+
+"Did she talk to you, bairnie?" he said.
+
+I hesitated and stared at him quite a long
+time.  Then I shook my head and answered,
+slowly, "N-no."
+
+Because I realized then, for the first time,
+that we had said no words at all.  But I had
+known what she wanted me to understand, and
+she had known what I might have said to her if
+I had spoken--and no words were needed. 
+And it was better.
+
+They took me home to the castle, and I was
+given my supper and put to bed.  Jean sat
+by me until I fell asleep; she was obliged to sit
+rather a long time, because I was so happy with
+my memories of Wee Brown Elspeth and the
+certainty that she would come again.  It was
+not Jean's words which had made me sure.  I
+knew.
+
+She came many times.  Through all my
+childish years I knew that she would come and
+play with me every few days--though I never
+saw the wild troopers again or the big, lean
+man with the scar.  Children who play together
+are not very curious about one another, and I
+simply accepted her with delight.  Somehow I
+knew that she lived happily in a place not far
+away.  She could come and go, it seemed, without
+trouble.  Sometimes I found her--or she
+found me upon the moor; and often she appeared
+in my nursery in the castle.  When we
+were together Jean Braidfute seemed to prefer
+that we should be alone, and was inclined to
+keep the under-nurse occupied in other parts
+of the wing I lived in.  I never asked her to do
+this, but I was glad that it was done.  Wee
+Elspeth was glad, too.  After our first meeting
+she was dressed in soft blue or white, and the
+red stain was gone; but she was always Wee
+Brown Elspeth with the doelike eyes and the
+fair, transparent face, the very fair little face. 
+As I had noticed the strange, clear pallor of the
+rough troopers, so I noticed that she was
+curiously fair.  And as I occasionally saw other
+persons with the same sort of fairness, I thought
+it was a purity of complexion special to some,
+but not to all.  I was not fair like that, and
+neither was any one else I knew.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+It was when I was ten years old that Wee
+Elspeth ceased coming to me, and though
+I missed her at first, it was not with a sense of
+grief or final loss.  She had only gone somewhere.
+
+It was then that Angus Macayre began to be
+my tutor.  He had been a profound student
+and had lived among books all his life.  He had
+helped Jean in her training of me, and I had
+learned more than is usually taught to children
+in their early years.  When a grand governess
+was sent to Muircarrie by my guardian, she was
+amazed at the things I was familiar with, but
+she abhorred the dark, frowning castle and the
+loneliness of the place and would not stay. 
+In fact, no governess would stay, and so Angus
+became my tutor and taught me old Gaelic
+and Latin and Greek, and we read together and
+studied the ancient books in the library.  It
+was a strange education for a girl, and no doubt
+made me more than ever unlike others.  But
+my life was the life I loved.
+
+When my guardian decided that I must live
+with him in London and be educated as modern
+girls were, I tried to be obedient and went to
+him; but before two months had passed my
+wretchedness had made me so ill that the doctor
+said I should go into a decline and die if I were
+not sent back to Muircarrie.
+
+"It's not only the London air that seems to
+poison her," he said when Jean talked to him
+about me; "it is something else.  She will not
+live, that's all.  Sir Ian must send her home."
+
+As I have said before, I had been an
+unattractive child and I was a plain, uninteresting
+sort of girl.  I was shy and could not talk to
+people, so of course I bored them.  I knew I did
+not look well when I wore beautiful clothes.  I
+was little and unimportant and like a reed for
+thinness.  Because I was rich and a sort of
+chieftainess I ought to have been tall and rather
+stately, or at least I ought to have had a bearing
+which would have made it impossible for people
+to quite overlook me.  But; any one could overlook
+me--an insignificant, thin girl who slipped
+in and out of places and sat and stared and
+listened to other people instead of saying things
+herself; I liked to look on and be forgotten. 
+It interested me to watch people if they did not
+notice me.
+
+Of course, my relatives did not really like me. 
+How could they?  They were busy in their
+big world and did not know what to do
+with a girl who ought to have been important
+and was not.  I am sure that in secret they were
+relieved when I was sent back to Muircarrie.
+
+After that the life I loved went on quietly. 
+I studied with Angus, and made the book-
+walled library my own room.  I walked and
+rode on the moor, and I knew the people who
+lived in the cottages and farms on the estate. 
+I think they liked me, but I am not sure, because
+I was too shy to seem very friendly.  I was
+more at home with Feargus, the piper, and with
+some of the gardeners than I was with any one
+else.  I think I was lonely without knowing;
+but I was never unhappy.  Jean and Angus
+were my nearest and dearest.  Jean was of good
+blood and a stanch gentlewoman, quite
+sufficiently educated to be my companion as she
+had been my early governess.
+
+It was Jean who told Angus that I was giving
+myself too entirely to the study of ancient
+books and the history of centuries gone by.
+
+"She is living to-day, and she must not pass
+through this life without gathering anything
+from it."
+
+"This life," she put it, as if I had passed
+through others before, and might pass through
+others again.  That was always her way of
+speaking, and she seemed quite unconscious of
+any unusualness in it.
+
+"You are a wise woman, Jean," Angus said,
+looking long at her grave face.  "A wise
+woman."
+
+He wrote to the London book-shops for the
+best modern books, and I began to read them. 
+I felt at first as if they plunged me into a world
+I did not understand, and many of them I could
+not endure.  But I persevered, and studied
+them as I had studied the old ones, and in time
+I began to feel as if perhaps they were true. 
+My chief weariness with them came from the
+way they had of referring to the things I was so
+intimate with as though they were only the
+unauthenticated history of a life so long passed
+by that it could no longer matter to any one. 
+So often the greatest hours of great lives were
+treated as possible legends.  I knew why men
+had died or were killed or had borne black
+horror.  I knew because I had read old books
+and manuscripts and had heard the stories which
+had come down through centuries by word of
+mouth, passed from father to son.
+
+But there was one man who did not write as
+if he believed the world had begun and would
+end with him.  He knew he was only one, and
+part of all the rest.  The name I shall give him
+is Hector MacNairn.  He was a Scotchman,
+but he had lived in many a land.  The first
+time I read a book he had written I caught my
+breath with joy, again and again.  I knew I
+had found a friend, even though there was no
+likelihood that I should ever see his face.  He
+was a great and famous writer, and all the
+world honored him; while I, hidden away in
+my castle on a rock on the edge of Muircarrie,
+was so far from being interesting or clever that
+even in my grandest evening dress and tiara of
+jewels I was as insignificant as a mouse.  In
+fact, I always felt rather silly when I was
+obliged to wear my diamonds on state occasions
+as custom sometimes demanded.
+
+Mr. MacNairn wrote essays and poems, and
+marvelous stories which were always real
+though they were called fiction.  Wheresoever
+his story was placed--howsoever remote and
+unknown the scene--it was a real place, and the
+people who lived in it were real, as if he had some
+magic power to call up human things to breathe
+and live and set one's heart beating.  I read
+everything he wrote.  I read every word of his
+again and again.  I always kept some book of
+his near enough to be able to touch it with my
+hand; and often I sat by the fire in the library
+holding one open on my lap for an hour or more,
+only because it meant a warm, close companionship. 
+It seemed at those times as if he sat
+near me in the dim glow and we understood
+each other's thoughts without using words, as
+Wee Brown Elspeth and I had understood--
+only this was a deeper thing.
+
+I had felt near him in this way for several
+years, and every year he had grown more
+famous, when it happened that one June my
+guardian, Sir Ian, required me to go to London
+to see my lawyers and sign some important
+documents connected with the management of the
+estate.  I was to go to his house to spend a
+week or more, attend a Drawing-Room, and
+show myself at a few great parties in a proper
+manner, this being considered my duty toward
+my relatives.  These, I believe, were secretly
+afraid that if I were never seen their world
+would condemn my guardian for neglect of his
+charge, or would decide that I was of unsound
+mind and intentionally kept hidden away at
+Muircarrie.  He was an honorable man, and
+his wife was a well-meaning woman.  I did not
+wish to do them an injustice, so I paid them
+yearly visits and tried to behave as they wished,
+much as I disliked to be dressed in fine frocks
+and to wear diamonds on my little head and
+round my thin neck.
+
+It was an odd thing that this time I found I
+did not dread the visit to London as much as I
+usually did.  For some unknown reason I became
+conscious that I was not really reluctant
+to go.  Usually the thought of the days before
+me made me restless and low-spirited.  London
+always seemed so confused and crowded, and
+made me feel as if I were being pushed and
+jostled by a mob always making a tiresome
+noise.  But this time I felt as if I should
+somehow find a clear place to stand in, where I
+could look on and listen without being bewildered. 
+It was a curious feeling; I could not
+help noticing and wondering about it.
+
+I knew afterward that it came to me because
+a change was drawing near.  I wish so much
+that I could tell about it in a better way.  But
+I have only my own way, which I am afraid
+seems very like a school-girl's.
+
+Jean Braidfute made the journey with me,
+as she always did, and it was like every other
+journey.  Only one incident made it different,
+and when it occurred there seemed nothing
+unusual in it.  It was only a bit of sad,
+everyday life which touched me.  There is nothing
+new in seeing a poor woman in deep mourning.
+
+Jean and I had been alone in our railway
+carriage for a great part of the journey; but
+an hour or two before we reached London a
+man got in and took a seat in a corner.  The
+train had stopped at a place where there is a
+beautiful and well-known cemetery.  People
+bring their friends from long distances to lay
+them there.  When one passes the station, one
+nearly always sees sad faces and people in
+mourning on the platform.
+
+There was more than one group there that
+day, and the man who sat in the corner looked
+out at them with gentle eyes.  He had fine,
+deep eyes and a handsome mouth.  When the
+poor woman in mourning almost stumbled into
+the carriage, followed by her child, he put out
+his hand to help her and gave her his seat. 
+She had stumbled because her eyes were dim
+with dreadful crying, and she could scarcely
+see.  It made one's heart stand still to see the
+wild grief of her, and her unconsciousness of
+the world about her.  The world did not matter. 
+There was no world.  I think there was nothing
+left anywhere but the grave she had just staggered
+blindly away from.  I felt as if she had
+been lying sobbing and writhing and beating
+the new turf on it with her poor hands, and I
+somehow knew that it had been a child's grave
+she had been to visit and had felt she left to
+utter loneliness when she turned away.
+
+It was because I thought this that I wished
+she had not seemed so unconscious of and
+indifferent to the child who was with her and
+clung to her black dress as if it could not
+bear to let her go.  This one was alive at least,
+even if she had lost the other one, and its little
+face was so wistful!  It did not seem fair to
+forget and ignore it, as if it were not there.  I
+felt as if she might have left it behind on the
+platform if it had not so clung to her skirt that it
+was almost dragged into the railway carriage
+with her.  When she sank into her seat she
+did not even lift the poor little thing into the
+place beside her, but left it to scramble up as
+best it could.  She buried her swollen face in
+her handkerchief and sobbed in a smothered
+way as if she neither saw, heard, nor felt any
+living thing near her.
+
+How I wished she would remember the poor
+child and let it comfort her!  It really was
+trying to do it in its innocent way.  It pressed
+close to her side, it looked up imploringly, it
+kissed her arm and her crape veil over and over
+again, and tried to attract her attention.  It
+was a little, lily-fair creature not more than five
+or six years old and perhaps too young to express
+what it wanted to say.  It could only cling
+to her and kiss her black dress, and seem to beg
+her to remember that it, at least, was a living
+thing.  But she was too absorbed in her anguish
+to know that it was in the world.  She neither
+looked at nor touched it, and at last it sat with
+its cheek against her sleeve, softly stroking her
+arm, and now and then kissing it longingly.  I
+was obliged to turn my face away and look
+out of the window, because I knew the man with
+the kind face saw the tears well up into my
+eyes.
+
+The poor woman did not travel far with us. 
+She left the train after a few stations were
+passed.  Our fellow-traveler got out before her
+to help her on to the platform.  He stood with
+bared head while he assisted her, but she
+scarcely saw him.  And even then she seemed to
+forget the child.  The poor thing was dragged
+out by her dress as it had been dragged in. 
+I put out my hand involuntarily as it went
+through the door, because I was afraid it
+might fall.  But it did not.  It turned its fair
+little face and smiled at me.  When the kind
+traveler returned to his place in the carriage
+again, and the train left the station, the black-
+draped woman was walking slowly down the
+platform and the child was still clinging to her
+skirt.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+My guardian was a man whose custom
+it was to give large and dignified parties. 
+Among his grand and fashionable guests there
+was nearly always a sprinkling of the more
+important members of the literary world.  The
+night after I arrived there was to be a
+particularly notable dinner.  I had come prepared
+to appear at it.  Jean had brought fine array
+for me and a case of jewels.  I knew I must
+be "dressed up" and look as important as I
+could.  When I went up-stairs after tea, Jean
+was in my room laying things out on the bed.
+
+"The man you like so much is to dine here
+to-night, Ysobel," she said.  "Mr. Hector
+MacNairn."
+
+I believe I even put my hand suddenly to my
+heart as I stood and looked at her, I was so
+startled and so glad.
+
+"You must tell him how much you love his
+books," she said.  She had a quiet, motherly
+way.
+
+"There will be so many other people who will
+want to talk to him," I answered, and I felt
+a little breathless with excitement as I said it.
+
+"And I should be too shy to know how to say
+such things properly."
+
+"Don't be afraid of him," was her advice. 
+"The man will be like his books, and they're
+the joy of your life."
+
+She made me look as nice as she could in the
+new dress she had brought; she made me wear
+the Muircarrie diamonds and sent me downstairs. 
+It does not matter who the guests were;
+I scarcely remember.  I was taken in to dinner
+by a stately elderly man who tried to make me
+talk, and at last was absorbed by the clever
+woman on his other side.
+
+I found myself looking between the flowers for
+a man's face I could imagine was Hector
+MacNairn's.  I looked up and down and saw
+none I could believe belonged to him.  There
+were handsome faces and individual ones, but
+at first I saw no Hector MacNairn.  Then, on
+bending forward a little to glance behind an
+epergne, I found a face which it surprised and
+pleased me to see.  It was the face of the
+traveler who had helped the woman in mourning
+out of the railway carriage, baring his head
+before her grief.  I could not help turning and
+speaking to my stately elderly partner.
+
+"Do you know who that is--the man at
+the other side of the table?" I asked.
+
+Old Lord Armour looked across and answered
+with an amiable smile.  "It is the author the
+world is talking of most in these days, and the
+talking is no new thing.  It's Mr. Hector
+MacNairn."
+
+No one but myself could tell how glad I was. 
+It seemed so right that he should be the man
+who had understood the deeps of a poor, passing
+stranger woman's woe.  I had so loved that
+quiet baring of his head!  All at once I knew
+I should not be afraid of him.  He would
+understand that I could not help being shy, that
+it was only my nature, and that if I said things
+awkwardly my meanings were better than my
+words.  Perhaps I should be able to tell him
+something of what his books had been to me. 
+I glanced through the flowers again--and he
+was looking at me! I could scarcely believe it
+for a second.  But he was.  His eyes--his
+wonderful eyes--met mine.  I could not explain
+why they were wonderful.  I think it was the
+clearness and understanding in them, and a
+sort of great interestedness.  People sometimes
+look at me from curiosity, but they do not look
+because they are really interested.
+
+I could scarcely look away, though I knew
+I must not be guilty of staring.  A footman
+was presenting a dish at my side.  I took
+something from it without knowing what it was. 
+Lord Armour began to talk kindly.  He was
+saying beautiful, admiring things of Mr. MacNairn
+and his work.  I listened gratefully, and
+said a few words myself now and then.  I was
+only too glad to be told of the great people
+and the small ones who were moved and uplifted
+by his thoughts.
+
+"You admire him very much, I can see,"
+the amiable elderly voice said.
+
+I could not help turning and looking up.  "It
+is as if a great, great genius were one's friend--
+as if he talked and one listened," I said.  "He is
+like a splendid dream which has come true."
+
+Old Lord Armour looked at me quite thoughtfully,
+as if he saw something new in me.
+
+"That is a good way of putting it, Miss
+Muircarrie," he answered.  "MacNairn would
+like that.  You must tell him about it yourself."
+
+I did not mean to glance through the flowers
+again, but I did it involuntarily.  And I met
+the other eyes--the wonderful, interested ones
+just as I had met them before.  It almost
+seemed as if he had been watching me.  It
+might be, I thought, because he only vaguely
+remembered seeing me before and was trying to
+recall where we had met.
+
+When my guardian brought his men guests to
+the drawing-room after dinner, I was looking
+over some old prints at a quiet, small table. 
+There were a few minutes of smiling talk, and
+then Sir Ian crossed the room toward me, bringing
+some one with him.  It was Hector MacNairn
+he brought.
+
+"Mr. MacNairn tells me you traveled
+together this afternoon without knowing each
+other," he said.  "He has heard something of
+Muircarrie and would like to hear more, Ysobel. 
+She lives like a little ghost all alone in her
+feudal castle, Mr. MacNairn.  We can't persuade
+her to like London."
+
+I think he left us alone together because he
+realized that we should get on better without a
+companion.
+
+Mr. MacNairn sat down near me and began
+to talk about Muircarrie.  There were very few
+places like it, and he knew about each one of
+them.  He knew the kind of things Angus
+Macayre knew--the things most people had
+either never heard of or had only thought of as
+legends.  He talked as he wrote, and I scarcely
+knew when he led me into talking also.  Afterward
+I realized that he had asked me questions
+I could not help answering because his eyes
+were drawing me on with that quiet, deep
+interest.  It seemed as if he saw something in
+my face which made him curious.
+
+I think I saw this expression first when we
+began to speak of our meeting in the railway
+carriage, and I mentioned the poor little fair
+child my heart had ached so for.
+
+"It was such a little thing and it did so want
+to comfort her!  Its white little clinging hands
+were so pathetic when they stroked and patted
+her," I said.  "And she did not even look at it."
+
+He did not start, but he hesitated in a way
+which almost produced the effect of a start. 
+Long afterward I remembered it.
+
+"The child!" he said.  "Yes.  But I was
+sitting on the other side.  And I was so absorbed
+in the poor mother that I am afraid I scarcely
+saw it.  Tell me about it."
+
+"It was not six years old, poor mite," I
+answered.  "It was one of those very fair
+children one sees now and then.  It was not
+like its mother.  She was not one of the
+White People."
+
+"The White People?" he repeated quite
+slowly after me.  "You don't mean that she
+was not a Caucasian?  Perhaps I don't understand."
+
+That made me feel a trifle shy again.  Of
+course he could not know what I meant.  How
+silly of me to take it for granted that he would!
+
+"I beg pardon.  I forgot," I even stammered
+a little.  "It is only my way of thinking
+of those fair people one sees, those very fair
+ones, you know--the ones whose fairness looks
+almost transparent.  There are not many of
+them, of course; but one can't help noticing
+them when they pass in the street or come
+into a room.  You must have noticed them,
+too.  I always call them, to myself, the White
+People, because they are different from the
+rest of us.  The poor mother wasn't one, but
+the child was.  Perhaps that was why I looked
+at it, at first.  It was such a lovely little thing;
+and the whiteness made it look delicate, and I
+could not help thinking--"  I hesitated, because
+it seemed almost unkind to finish.
+
+"You thought that if she had just lost one
+child she ought to take more care of the other,"
+he ended for me.  There was a deep thoughtfulness
+in his look, as if he were watching me. 
+I wondered why.
+
+"I wish I had paid more attention to the
+little creature," he said, very gently.  "Did
+it cry?"
+
+"No," I answered.  "It only clung to her and
+patted her black sleeve and kissed it, as if it
+wanted to comfort her.  I kept expecting it to
+cry, but it didn't.  It made me cry because it
+seemed so sure that it could comfort her if she
+would only remember that it was alive and loved
+her.  I wish, I wish death did not make people
+feel as if it filled all the world--as if, when it
+happens, there is no life left anywhere.  The
+child who was alive by her side did not seem a
+living thing to her.  It didn't matter."
+
+I had never said as much to any one before,
+but his watching eyes made me forget my shy
+worldlessness.
+
+"What do you feel about it--death?" he
+asked.
+
+The low gentleness of his voice seemed
+something I had known always.
+
+"I never saw it," I answered.  "I have never
+even seen any one dangerously ill.  I-- It is as
+if I can't believe it."
+
+"You can't believe it?  That is a wonderful
+thing," he said, even more quietly than before.
+
+"If none of us believed, how wonderful that
+would be!  Beautiful, too."
+
+"How that poor mother believed it!" I said,
+remembering her swollen, distorted, sobbing
+face.  "She believed nothing else; everything
+else was gone."
+
+"I wonder what would have happened if you
+had spoken to her about the child?" he said,
+slowly, as if he were trying to imagine it.
+
+"I'm a very shy person.  I should never have
+courage to speak to a stranger," I answered.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm a coward, too.  She might have
+thought me interfering."
+
+"She might not have understood," he murmured.
+
+"It was clinging to her dress when she walked
+away down the platform," I went on.  "I dare
+say you noticed it then?"
+
+"Not as you did.  I wish I had noticed it
+more," was his answer.  "Poor little White
+One!"
+
+That led us into our talk about the White
+People.  He said he did not think he was
+exactly an observant person in some respects. 
+Remembering his books, which seemed to me
+the work of a man who saw and understood
+everything in the world, I could not comprehend
+his thinking that, and I told him so. 
+But he replied that what I had said about my
+White People made him feel that he must be
+abstracted sometimes and miss things.  He
+did not remember having noticed the rare
+fairness I had seen.  He smiled as he said it,
+because, of course, it was only a little thing--
+that he had not seen that some people were so
+much fairer than others.
+
+"But it has not been a little thing to you,
+evidently.  That is why I am even rather curious
+about it," he explained.  "It is a difference
+definite enough to make you speak almost as
+if they were of a different race from ours."
+
+I sat silent a few seconds, thinking it over. 
+Suddenly I realized what I had never realized
+before.
+
+"Do you know," I said, as slowly as he
+himself had spoken, "I did not know that was true
+until you put it into words.  I am so used to
+thinking of them as different, somehow, that I
+suppose I do feel as if they were almost like
+another race, in a way.  Perhaps one would feel
+like that with a native Indian, or a Japanese."
+
+"I dare say that is a good simile," he
+reflected.  "Are they different when you know
+them well?"
+
+"I have never known one but Wee Brown
+Elspeth," I answered, thinking it over.
+
+He did start then, in the strangest way.
+
+"What!" he exclaimed.  "What did you
+say?"
+
+I was quite startled myself.  Suddenly he
+looked pale, and his breath caught itself.
+
+"I said Wee Elspeth, Wee Brown Elspeth. 
+She was only a child who played with me," I
+stammered, "when I was little."
+
+He pulled himself together almost instantly,
+though the color did not come back to his face
+at once and his voice was not steady for a few
+seconds.  But he laughed outright at himself.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he apologized.  "I
+have been ill and am rather nervous.  I thought
+you said something you could not possibly have
+said.  I almost frightened you.  And you were
+only speaking of a little playmate.  Please go
+on."
+
+"I was only going to say that she was fair
+like that, fairer than any one I had ever seen;
+but when we played together she seemed like
+any other child.  She was the first I ever knew."
+
+I told him about the misty day on the moor,
+and about the pale troopers and the big, lean
+leader who carried Elspeth before him on his
+saddle.  I had never talked to any one about
+it before, not even to Jean Braidfute.  But he
+seemed to be so interested, as if the little story
+quite fascinated him.  It was only an episode,
+but it brought in the weirdness of the moor and
+my childish fancies about the things hiding in
+the white mist, and the castle frowning on its
+rock, and my baby face pressed against the
+nursery window in the tower, and Angus and the
+library, and Jean and her goodness and wise
+ways.  It was dreadful to talk so much about
+oneself.  But he listened so.  His eyes never
+left my face--they watched and held me as if he
+were enthralled.  Sometimes he asked a question.
+
+"I wonder who they were--the horsemen?"
+he pondered.  "Did you ever ask Wee Elspeth?"
+
+"We were both too little to care.  We only
+played," I answered him.  "And they came
+and went so quickly that they were only a sort
+of dream."
+
+"They seem to have been a strange lot. 
+Wasn't Angus curious about them?" he suggested.
+
+"Angus never was curious about anything,"
+I said.  "Perhaps he knew something about
+them and would not tell me.  When I was a
+little thing I always knew he and Jean had
+secrets I was too young to hear.  They hid sad
+and ugly things from me, or things that might
+frighten a child.  They were very good."
+
+"Yes, they were good," he said, thoughtfully.
+
+I think any one would have been pleased to
+find herself talking quietly to a great genius--
+as quietly as if he were quite an ordinary person;
+but to me the experience was wonderful.  I had
+thought about him so much and with such adoring
+reverence.  And he looked at me as if he
+truly liked me, even as if I were something
+new--a sort of discovery which interested him. 
+I dare say that he had never before seen a girl
+who had lived so much alone and in such a
+remote and wild place.
+
+I believe Sir Ian and his wife were pleased,
+too, to see that I was talking.  They were glad
+that their guests should see that I was intelligent
+enough to hold the attention even of a clever
+man.  If Hector MacNairn was interested in
+me I could not be as silly and dull as I looked. 
+But on my part I was only full of wonder and
+happiness.  I was a girl, and he had been my
+only hero; and it seemed even as if he liked
+me and cared about my queer life.
+
+He was not a man who had the air of making
+confidences or talking about himself, but before
+we parted I seemed to know him and his
+surroundings as if he had described them.  A mere
+phrase of his would make a picture.  Such a
+few words made his mother quite clear to me. 
+They loved each other in an exquisite, intimate
+way.  She was a beautiful person.  Artists had
+always painted her.  He and she were completely
+happy when they were together.  They
+lived in a house in the country, and I could not
+at all tell how I discovered that it was an old
+house with beautiful chimneys and a very big
+garden with curious high walls with corner
+towers round it.  He only spoke of it briefly,
+but I saw it as a picture; and always afterward,
+when I thought of his mother, I thought of her
+as sitting under a great and ancient apple-tree
+with the long, late-afternoon shadows stretching
+on the thick, green grass.  I suppose I saw
+that just because he said:
+
+"Will you come to tea under the big apple-
+tree some afternoon when the late shadows
+are like velvet on the grass?  That is perhaps
+the loveliest time."
+
+When we rose to go and join the rest of the
+party, he stood a moment and glanced round the
+room at our fellow-guests.
+
+"Are there any of your White People here
+to-night?" he said, smiling.  "I shall begin to
+look for them everywhere."
+
+I glanced over the faces carelessly.  "There
+are none here to-night," I answered, and then I
+flushed because he had smiled.  "It was only a
+childish name I gave them," I hesitated.  "I
+forgot you wouldn't understand.  I dare say it
+sounds silly."
+
+He looked at me so quickly.
+
+"No! no! no!" he exclaimed.  "You mustn't
+think that!  Certainly not silly."
+
+I do not think he knew that he put out his
+hand and gently touched my arm, as one might
+touch a child to make it feel one wanted it to
+listen.
+
+"You don't know," he said in his low, slow
+voice, "how glad I am that you have talked to
+me.  Sir Ian said you were not fond of talking
+to people, and I wanted to know you."
+
+"You care about places like Muircarrie. 
+That is why," I answered, feeling at once how
+much he understood.  "I care for Muircarrie
+more than for all the rest of the world.  And I
+suppose you saw it in my face.  I dare say that
+the people who love that kind of life cannot help
+seeing it there."
+
+"Yes," he said, "it is in your eyes.  It was
+what I saw and found myself wondering about
+when I watched you in the train.  It was really
+the moor and the mist and the things you think
+are hidden in it."
+
+"Did you watch me?" I asked.  "I could not
+help watching you a little, when you were so
+kind to the poor woman.  I was afraid you
+would see me and think me rude."
+
+"It was the far look in your face I watched,"
+he said.  "If you will come to tea under the
+big apple-tree I will tell you more about it."
+
+"Indeed I will come," I answered.  "Now
+we must go and sit among the other people--
+those who don't care about Muircarrie at all."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+I went to tea under the big apple-tree.  It
+was very big and old and wonderful.  No
+wonder Mr. MacNairn and his mother loved it. 
+Its great branches spread out farther than I
+had ever seen the branches of an apple-tree
+spread before.  They were gnarled and knotted
+and beautiful with age.  Their shadows upon
+the grass were velvet, deep and soft.  Such a
+tree could only have lived its life in such a
+garden.  At least it seemed so to me.  The
+high, dim-colored walls, with their curious,
+low corner towers and the leafage of the wall
+fruits spread against their brick, inclosed it
+embracingly, as if they were there to take care
+of it and its beauty.  But the tree itself seemed
+to have grown there in all its dignified loveliness
+of shadow to take care of Mrs. MacNairn, who
+sat under it.  I felt as if it loved and was proud
+of her.
+
+I have heard clever literary people speak of
+Mrs. MacNairn as a "survival of type."  Sometimes
+clever people bewilder me by the terms
+they use, but I thought I understood what they
+meant in her case.  She was quite unlike the
+modern elderly woman, and yet she was not in
+the least old-fashioned or demodee.  She was
+only exquisitely distinct.
+
+When she rose from her chair under the
+apple-tree boughs and came forward to meet me
+that afternoon, the first things which struck me
+were her height and slenderness and her light
+step.  Then I saw that her clear profile seemed
+cut out of ivory and that her head was a beautiful
+shape and was beautifully set.  Its every
+turn and movement was exquisite.  The mere
+fact that both her long, ivory hands enfolded
+mine thrilled me.  I wondered if it were possible
+that she could be unaware of her loveliness. 
+Beautiful people are thrilling to me, and Mrs.
+MacNairn has always seemed more so than any
+one else.  This is what her son once said of her:
+
+"She is not merely beautiful; she is Beauty--
+Beauty's very spirit moving about among us
+mortals; pure Beauty."
+
+She drew me to a chair under her tree, and
+we sat down together.  I felt as if she were glad
+that I had come.  The watching look I had seen
+in her son's eyes was in hers also.  They watched
+me as we talked, and I found myself telling her
+about my home as I had found myself telling
+him.  He had evidently talked to her about it
+himself.  I had never met any one who thought
+of Muircarrie as I did, but it seemed as if they
+who were strangers were drawn by its wild,
+beautiful loneliness as I was.
+
+I was happy.  In my secret heart I began to
+ask myself if it could be true that they made me
+feel a little as if I somehow belonged to some one. 
+I had always seemed so detached from every
+one.  I had not been miserable about it, and I
+had not complained to myself; I only accepted
+the detachment as part of my kind of life.
+
+Mr. MacNairn came into the garden later
+and several other people came in to tea.  It was
+apparently a sort of daily custom--that people
+who evidently adored Mrs. MacNairn dropped
+in to see and talk to her every afternoon.  She
+talked wonderfully, and her friends' joy in her
+was wonderful, too.  It evidently made people
+happy to be near her.  All she said and did
+was like her light step and the movements of
+her delicate, fine head--gracious and soft and
+arrestingly lovely.  She did not let me drift
+away and sit in a corner looking on, as I usually
+did among strangers.  She kept me near her,
+and in some subtle, gentle way made me a part
+of all that was happening--the talk, the charming
+circle under the spreading boughs of the
+apple-tree, the charm of everything.  Sometimes
+she would put out her exquisite, long-
+fingered hand and touch me very lightly, and
+each time she did it I felt as if she had given
+me new life.
+
+There was an interesting elderly man who
+came among the rest of the guests.  I was
+interested in him even before she spoke to me of
+him.  He had a handsome, aquiline face which
+looked very clever.  His talk was brilliantly
+witty.  When he spoke people paused as if they
+could not bear to lose a phrase or even a word. 
+But in the midst of the trills of laughter
+surrounding him his eyes were unchangingly sad. 
+His face laughed or smiled, but his eyes never.
+
+"He is the greatest artist in England and the
+most brilliant man," Mrs. MacNairn said to me,
+quietly.  "But he is the saddest, too.  He had
+a lovely daughter who was killed instantly, in
+his presence, by a fall.  They had been
+inseparable companions and she was the delight
+of his life.  That strange, fixed look has been in
+his eyes ever since.  I know you have noticed
+it."
+
+We were walking about among the flower-
+beds after tea, and Mr. MacNairn was showing
+me a cloud of blue larkspurs in a corner when I
+saw something which made me turn toward
+him rather quickly.
+
+"There is one!" I said.  "Do look at her! 
+Now you see what I mean!  The girl standing
+with her hand on Mr. Le Breton's arm."
+
+Mr. Le Breton was the brilliant man with the
+sad eyes.  He was standing looking at a mass
+of white-and-purple iris at the other side of the
+garden.  There were two or three people with
+him, but it seemed as if for a moment he had
+forgotten them--had forgotten where he was. 
+I wondered suddenly if his daughter had been
+fond of irises.  He was looking at them with
+such a tender, lost expression.  The girl, who
+was a lovely, fair thing, was standing quite close
+to him with her hand in his arm, and she was
+smiling, too--such a smile!
+
+"Mr. Le Breton!" Mr. MacNairn said in a
+rather startled tone.  "The girl with her hand in
+his arm?"
+
+"Yes.  You see how fair she is," I answered.
+
+"And she has that transparent look.  It is so
+lovely.  Don't you think so?  SHE is one of the
+White People."
+
+He stood very still, looking across the flowers
+at the group.  There was a singular interest and
+intensity in his expression.  He watched the
+pair silently for a whole minute, I think.
+
+"Ye-es," he said, slowly, at last, "I do see what
+you mean--and it IS lovely.  I don't seem to
+know her well.  She must be a new friend of my
+mother's.  So she is one of the White People?"
+
+"She looks like a white iris herself, doesn't
+she?" I said.  "Now you know."
+
+"Yes; now I know," he answered.
+
+I asked Mrs. MacNairn later who the girl was,
+but she didn't seem to recognize my description
+of her.  Mr. Le Breton had gone away by that
+time, and so had the girl herself.
+
+"The tall, very fair one in the misty, pale-
+gray dress," I said.  "She was near Mr. Le
+Breton when he was looking at the iris-bed. 
+You were cutting some roses only a few yards
+away from her.  That VERY fair girl?"
+
+Mrs. MacNairn paused a moment and looked
+puzzled.
+
+"Mildred Keith is fair," she reflected, "but
+she was not there then.  I don't recall seeing
+a girl.  I was cutting some buds for Mrs.
+Anstruther.  I--"  She paused again and turned
+toward her son, who was standing watching
+us.  I saw their eyes meet in a rather arrested way.
+
+"It was not Mildred Keith," he said.  "Miss
+Muircarrie is inquiring because this girl was one
+of those she calls the White People.  She was
+not any one I had seen here before."
+
+There was a second's silence before Mrs.
+MacNairn smilingly gave me one of her light,
+thrilling touches on my arm.
+
+"Ah!  I remember," she said.  "Hector told
+me about the White People.  He rather fancied
+I might be one."
+
+I am afraid I rather stared at her as I slowly
+shook my head.  You see she was almost one,
+but not quite.
+
+"I was so busy with my roses that I did not
+notice who was standing near Mr. Le Breton,"
+she said.  "Perhaps it was Anabel Mere.  She
+is a more transparent sort of girl than Mildred,
+and she is more blond.  And you don't know
+her, Hector?  I dare say it was she."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+I remained in London several weeks.  I
+stayed because the MacNairns were so good
+to me.  I could not have told any one how I
+loved Mrs. MacNairn, and how different everything
+seemed when I was with her.  I was never
+shy when we were together.  There seemed to
+be no such thing as shyness in the world.  I
+was not shy with Mr. MacNairn, either.  After
+I had sat under the big apple-tree boughs in the
+walled garden a few times I realized that I had
+begun to belong to somebody.  Those two
+marvelous people cared for me in that way--
+in a way that made me feel as if I were a real
+girl, not merely a queer little awkward ghost
+in a far-away castle which nobody wanted to
+visit because it was so dull and desolate and far
+from London.  They were so clever, and knew
+all the interesting things in the world, but
+their cleverness and experience never bewildered
+or overwhelmed me.
+
+"You were born a wonderful little creature,
+and Angus Macayre has filled your mind with
+strange, rich furnishings and marvelous color
+and form," Mrs. MacNairn actually said to me
+one day when we were sitting together and she
+was holding my hand and softly, slowly patting
+it.  She had a way of doing that, and she
+had also a way of keeping me very near her
+whenever she could.  She said once that she
+liked to touch me now and then to make sure
+that I was quite real and would not melt away. 
+I did not know then why she said it, but I
+understood afterward.
+
+Sometimes we sat under the apple-tree until
+the long twilight deepened into shadow, which
+closed round us, and a nightingale that lived in
+the garden began to sing.  We all three loved
+the nightingale, and felt as though it knew
+that we were listening to it.  It is a wonderful
+thing to sit quite still listening to a bird singing
+in the dark, and to dare to feel that while it
+sings it knows how your soul adores it.  It is
+like a kind of worship.
+
+We had been sitting listening for quite a long
+time, and the nightingale had just ceased and
+left the darkness an exquisite silence which fell
+suddenly but softly as the last note dropped,
+when Mrs. MacNairn began to talk for the
+first time of what she called The Fear.
+
+I don't remember just how she began, and
+for a few minutes I did not quite understand
+what she meant.  But as she went on, and Mr.
+MacNairn joined in the talk, their meaning
+became a clear thing to me, and I knew that
+they were only talking quite simply of something
+they had often talked of before.  They
+were not as afraid of The Fear as most people
+are, because they had thought of and reasoned
+about it so much, and always calmly and with
+clear and open minds.
+
+By The Fear they meant that mysterious
+horror most people feel at the thought of passing
+out of the world they know into the one they
+don't know at all.
+
+How quiet, how still it was inside the walls of
+the old garden, as we three sat under the
+boughs and talked about it!  And what sweet
+night scents of leaves and sleeping flowers were
+in every breath we drew!  And how one's
+heart moved and lifted when the nightingale
+broke out again!
+
+"If one had seen or heard one little thing,
+if one's mortal being could catch one glimpse of
+light in the dark," Mrs. MacNairn's low voice
+said out of the shadow near me, "The Fear
+would be gone forever."
+
+"Perhaps the whole mystery is as simple as
+this," said her son's voice "as simple as this:
+that as there are tones of music too fine to be
+registered by the human ear, so there may be
+vibrations of light not to be seen by the human
+eye; form and color as well as sounds; just
+beyond earthly perception, and yet as real as
+ourselves, as formed as ourselves, only existing
+in that other dimension."
+
+There was an intenseness which was almost
+a note of anguish in Mrs. MacNairn's answer,
+even though her voice was very low.  I
+involuntarily turned my head to look at her,
+though of course it was too dark to see her face. 
+I felt somehow as if her hands were wrung
+together in her lap.
+
+"Oh!" she said, "if one only had some
+shadow of a proof that the mystery is only that
+WE cannot see, that WE cannot hear, though they
+are really quite near us, with us--the ones who
+seem to have gone away and whom we feel we
+cannot live without.  If once we could be sure! 
+There would be no Fear--there would be none!"
+
+"Dearest"--he often called her "Dearest,"
+and his voice had a wonderful sound in the
+darkness; it was caress and strength, and it
+seemed to speak to her of things they knew
+which I did not--"we have vowed to each other
+that we WILL believe there is no reason for The
+Fear.  It was a vow between us."
+
+"Yes!  Yes!" she cried, breathlessly, "but
+sometimes, Hector--sometimes--"
+
+"Miss Muircarrie does not feel it--"
+
+"Please say `Ysobel'!" I broke in.  "Please
+do."
+
+He went on as quietly as if he had not even
+paused:
+
+"Ysobel told me the first night we met that
+it seemed as if she could not believe in it."
+
+"It never seems real to me at all," I said. 
+"Perhaps that is because I can never forget
+what Jean told me about my mother lying still
+upon her bed, and listening to some one calling
+her."  (I had told them Jean's story a few
+days before.)  "I knew it was my father; Jean
+knew, too."
+
+"How did you know?" Mrs. MacNairn's
+voice was almost a whisper.
+
+"I could not tell you that.  I never asked
+myself HOW it was.  But I KNEW.  We both
+KNEW.  Perhaps"--I hesitated--"it was because
+in the Highlands people often believe
+things like that.  One hears so many stories all
+one's life that in the end they don't seem
+strange.  I have always heard them.  Those
+things you know about people who have the
+second sight.  And about the seals who change
+themselves into men and come on shore and
+fall in love with girls and marry them.  They
+say they go away now and then, and no one
+really knows where but it is believed that they
+go back to their own people and change into
+seals again, because they must plunge and riot
+about in the sea.  Sometimes they come home,
+but sometimes they do not.
+
+"A beautiful young stranger, with soft, dark
+eyes, appeared once not far from Muircarrie,
+and he married a boatman's daughter.  He was
+very restless one night, and got up and left her,
+and she never saw him again; but a few days
+later a splendid dead seal covered with wounds
+was washed up near his cottage.  The fishers
+say that his people had wanted to keep him
+from his land wife, and they had fought with
+him and killed him.  His wife had a son with
+strange, velvet eyes like his father's, and she
+couldn't keep him away from the water.  When
+he was old enough to swim he swam out one
+day, because he thought he saw some seals
+and wanted to get near them.  He swam out
+too far, perhaps.  He never came back, and the
+fishermen said his father's people had taken
+him.  When one has heard stories like that all
+one's life nothing seems very strange."
+
+"Nothing really IS strange," said Hector
+MacNairn.  "Again and again through all the
+ages we have been told the secrets of the gods
+and the wonders of the Law, and we have
+revered and echoed but never believed.  When
+we believe and know all is simple we shall not
+be afraid.  You are not afraid, Ysobel.  Tell
+my mother you are not."
+
+I turned my face toward her again in the
+darkness.  I felt as if something was going on
+between them which he somehow knew I could
+help them in.  It was as though he were calling
+on something in my nature which I did not
+myself comprehend, but which his profound
+mind saw and knew was stronger than I was.
+
+Suddenly I felt as if I might trust to him and
+to It, and that, without being troubled or
+anxious, I would just say the first thing which
+came into my mind, because it would be put
+there for me by some power which could
+dictate to me.  I never felt younger or less
+clever than I did at that moment; I was only
+Ysobel Muircarrie, who knew almost nothing. 
+But that did not seem to matter.  It was such
+a simple, almost childish thing I told her.  It
+was only about The Dream.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+"The feeling you call The Fear has never
+come to me," I said to her.  "And if it
+had I think it would have melted away because
+of a dream I once had.  I don't really believe it
+was a dream, but I call it one.  I think I really
+went somewhere and came back.  I often wonder
+why I came back.  It was only a short
+dream, so simple that there is scarcely anything
+to tell, and perhaps it will not convey anything
+to you.  But it has been part of my life--that
+time when I was Out on the Hillside.  That is
+what I call The Dream to myself, `Out on the
+Hillside,' as if it were a kind of unearthly poem. 
+But it wasn't.  It was more real than anything
+I have ever felt.  It was real--real!  I wish
+that I could tell it so that you would know
+how real it was."
+
+I felt almost piteous in my longing to make
+her know.  I knew she was afraid of something,
+and if I could make her know how REAL that one
+brief dream had been she would not be afraid
+any more.  And I loved her, I loved her so
+much!
+
+"I was asleep one night at Muircarrie," I
+went on, "and suddenly, without any preparatory
+dreaming, I was standing out on a hillside
+in moonlight softer and more exquisite than I
+had ever seen or known before.  Perhaps I
+was still in my nightgown--I don't know.  My
+feet were bare on the grass, and I wore something
+light and white which did not seem to touch
+me.  If it touched me I did not feel it.  My
+bare feet did not feel the grass; they only knew
+it was beneath them.
+
+"It was a low hill I stood on, and I was only
+on the side of it.  And in spite of the thrilling
+beauty of the moon, all but the part I stood on
+melted into soft, beautiful shadow, all below
+me and above me.  But I did not turn to look
+at or ask myself about anything.  You see the
+difficulty is that there are no earthly words to
+tell it!  All my being was ecstasy--pure, light
+ecstasy!  Oh, what poor words--  But I know
+no others.  If I said that I was happy--HAPPY!
+--it would be nothing.  I WAS happiness itself,
+I WAS pure rapture!  I did not look at the
+beauty of the night, the sky, the marvelous
+melting shadow.  I was PART of it all, one with
+it.  Nothing held me nothing!  The beauty
+of the night, the light, the air WERE what I was,
+and I was only thrilling ecstasy and wonder at
+the rapture of it."
+
+I stopped and covered my face with my
+hands, and tears wet my fingers.
+
+"Oh, I cannot make it real!  I was only there
+such a short, short time.  Even if you had been
+with me I could not have found words for it,
+even then.  It was such a short time.  I only
+stood and lifted my face and felt the joy of it,
+the pure marvel of joy.  I only heard myself
+murmuring over and over again:  `Oh, how
+beautiful! how beautiful!  Oh, how BEAUTIFUL!'
+
+"And then a marvel of new joy swept through
+me.  I said, very softly and very slowly, as if
+my voice were trailing away into silence: 
+`Oh--h!  I--can--lie--down--here--on--the
+grass--and--sleep . . . all--through--the
+night--under--this--moonlight. . . .  I can sleep
+--sleep--'
+
+"I began to sink softly down, with the
+heavenliest feeling of relaxation and repose, as
+if there existed only the soul of beautiful rest. 
+I sank so softly--and just as my cheek almost
+touched the grass the dream was over!"
+
+"Oh!" cried Mrs. MacNairn.  "Did you
+awaken?"
+
+"No.  I came back.  In my sleep I suddenly
+found myself creeping into my bed again
+as if I had been away somewhere.  I was
+wondering why I was there, how I had left the
+hillside, when I had left it.  That part WAS a
+dream--but the other was not.  I was allowed
+to go somewhere--outside--and come back."
+
+I caught at her hand in the dark.
+
+"The words are all wrong," I said.  "It is
+because we have no words to describe that.  But
+have I made you feel it at all?  Oh!  Mrs.
+MacNairn, have I been able to make you know
+that it was not a dream?"
+
+She lifted my hand and pressed it passionately
+against her cheek, and her cheek, too, was
+wet--wet.
+
+"No, it was not a dream," she said.  "You
+came back.  Thank God you came back, just
+to tell us that those who do not come back
+stand awakened in that ecstasy--in that
+ecstasy.  And The Fear is nothing.  It is only
+The Dream.  The awakening is out on the
+hillside, out on the hillside!  Listen!"  She
+started as she said it.  "Listen!  The nightingale
+is beginning again."
+
+He sent forth in the dark a fountain--a rising,
+aspiring fountain--of golden notes which seemed
+to reach heaven itself.  The night was made
+radiant by them.  He flung them upward like
+a shower of stars into the sky.  We sat and
+listened, almost holding our breath.  Oh! the
+nightingale! the nightingale!
+
+"He knows," Hector MacNairn's low voice
+said, "that it was not a dream."
+
+When there was silence again I heard him
+leave his chair very quietly.
+
+"Good night! good night!" he said, and went
+away.  I felt somehow that he had left us
+together for a purpose, but, oh, I did not even
+remotely dream what the purpose was!  But
+soon she told me, almost in a whisper.
+
+"We love you very much, Ysobel," she said. 
+"You know that?"
+
+"I love you both, with all my heart," I
+answered.  "Indeed I love you."
+
+"We two have been more to each other than
+mere mother and son.  We have been sufficient
+for each other.  But he began to love you that
+first day when he watched you in the railway
+carriage.  He says it was the far look in your
+eyes which drew him."
+
+"I began to love him, too," I said.  And
+I was not at all ashamed or shy in saying it.
+
+"We three might have spent our lives
+together," she went on.  "It would have been a
+perfect thing.  But--but--"  She stood up as
+if she could not remain seated.  Involuntarily I
+stood up with her.  She was trembling, and she
+caught and held me in her arms.  "He cannot
+stay, Ysobel," she ended.
+
+I could scarcely hear my own voice when I
+echoed the words.
+
+"He cannot--stay?"
+
+"Oh! the time will come," she said, "when
+people who love each other will not be separated,
+when on this very earth there will be no pain,
+no grief, no age, no death--when all the world
+has learned the Law at last.  But we have not
+learned it yet.  And here we stand!  The
+greatest specialists have told us.  There is some
+fatal flaw in his heart.  At any moment, when
+he is talking to us, when he is at his work, when
+he is asleep, he may--cease.  It will just be
+ceasing.  At any moment.  He cannot stay."
+
+My own heart stood still for a second.  Then
+there rose before me slowly, but clearly, a
+vision--the vision which was not a dream.
+
+"Out on the hillside," I murmured.  "Out
+on the hillside."
+
+I clung to her with both arms and held her
+tight.  I understood now why they had talked
+about The Fear.  These two who were almost
+one soul were trying to believe that they were
+not really to be torn apart--not really.  They
+were trying to heap up for themselves proof
+that they might still be near each other.  And,
+above all, his effort was to save her from the
+worst, worst woe.  And I understood, too, why
+something wiser and stronger than myself had
+led me to tell the dream which was not a dream
+at all.
+
+But it was as she said; the world had not
+learned the Secret yet.  And there we stood. 
+We did not cry or talk, but we clung to each
+other--we CLUNG.  That is all human creatures
+can do until the Secret is known.  And as we
+clung the nightingale broke out again.
+
+"O nightingale!  O nightingale!" she said in
+her low wonder of a voice.  "WHAT are you
+trying to tell us!" 
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+What I feel sure I know by this time is
+that all the things we think happen by
+chance and accident are only part of the weaving
+of the scheme of life.  When you begin to
+suspect this and to watch closely you also begin to
+see how trifles connect themselves with one
+another, and seem in the end to have led to a
+reason and a meaning, though we may not be
+clever enough to see it clearly.  Nothing is an
+accident.  We make everything happen ourselves:
+the wrong things because we do not
+know or care whether we are wrong or right,
+the right ones because we unconsciously or
+consciously choose the right even in the midst of
+our ignorance.
+
+I dare say it sounds audacious for an ordinary
+girl to say such things in an ordinary way;
+but perhaps I have said them in spite of myself,
+because it is not a bad thing that they should be
+said by an every-day sort of person in simple
+words which other every-day people can understand. 
+I am only expressing what has gradually
+grown into belief in my mind through reading
+with Angus ancient books and modern ones
+--books about faiths and religions, books about
+philosophies and magics, books about what the
+world calls marvels, but which are not marvels
+at all, but only workings of the Law most
+people have not yet reasoned about or even
+accepted.
+
+Angus had read and studied them all his life
+before he began to read them with me, and we
+talked them over together sitting by the fire
+in the library, fascinated and staring at each
+other, I in one high-backed chair and he in
+another on the opposite side of the hearth. 
+Angus is wonderful--wonderful!  He KNOWS
+there is no such thing as chance.  He KNOWS
+that we ourselves are the working of the Law--
+and that we ourselves could work what now
+are stupidly called "miracles" if we could only
+remember always what the Law is.
+
+What I intended to say at first was merely
+that it was not by chance that I climbed to the 
+shelf in the library that afternoon and pushed
+aside the books hiding the old manuscript
+which told the real story of Dark Malcolm of
+the Glen and Wee Brown Elspeth.  It seemed
+like chance when it happened, but it was really
+the first step toward my finding out the strange,
+beautiful thing I knew soon afterward.
+
+From the beginning of my friendship with the
+MacNairns I had hoped they would come and
+stay with me at Muircarrie.  When they both
+seemed to feel such interest in all I told them of
+it, and not to mind its wild remoteness, I took
+courage and asked them if they would come to
+me.  Most people are bored by the prospect of
+life in a feudal castle, howsoever picturesquely
+it is set in a place where there are no neighbors
+to count on.  Its ancient stateliness is too dull. 
+But the MacNairns were more allured by what
+Muircarrie offered than they were by other
+and more brilliant invitations.  So when I went
+back to the castle I was only to be alone a week
+before they followed me.
+
+Jean and Angus were quite happy in their
+quiet way when I told them who I was expecting. 
+They knew how glad I was myself.  Jean
+was full of silent pleasure as she arranged the
+rooms I had chosen for my guests, rooms which
+had the most sweeping view of the moor. 
+Angus knew that Mr. MacNairn would love the
+library, and he hovered about consulting his
+catalogues and looking over his shelves, taking
+down volumes here and there, holding them
+tenderly in his long, bony old hand as he dipped
+into them.  He made notes of the manuscripts
+and books he thought Mr. MacNairn would
+feel the deepest interest in.  He loved his library
+with all his being, and I knew he looked forward
+to talking to a man who would care for it in the
+same way.
+
+He had been going over one of the highest
+shelves one day and had left his step-ladder
+leaning against it when he went elsewhere.  It
+was when I mounted the steps, as I often did
+when he left them, that I came upon the
+manuscript which related the old story of Dark
+Malcolm and his child.  It had been pushed
+behind some volumes, and I took it out because it
+looked so old and yellow.  And I opened at once
+at the page where the tale began.
+
+At first I stood reading, and then I sat down
+on the broad top of the ladder and forgot
+everything.  It was a savage history of ferocious hate
+and barbarous reprisals.  It had been a feud
+waged between two clans for three generations. 
+The story of Dark Malcolm and Ian Red Hand
+was only part of it, but it was a gruesome thing. 
+Pages told of the bloody deeds they wrought on
+each other's houses.  The one human passion
+of Dark Malcolm's life was his love for his
+little daughter.  She had brown eyes and brown
+hair, and those who most loved her called her
+Wee Brown Elspeth.  Ian Red Hand was richer
+and more powerful than Malcolm of the Glen,
+and therefore could more easily work his cruel
+will.  He knew well of Malcolm's worship of his
+child, and laid his plans to torture him through
+her.  Dark Malcolm, coming back to his rude,
+small castle one night after a raid in which he
+had lost followers and weapons and strength,
+found that Wee Brown Elspeth had been carried
+away, and unspeakable taunts and threats left
+behind by Ian and his men.  With unbound
+wounds, broken dirks and hacked swords, Dark
+Malcolm and the remnant of his troop of fighting
+clansmen rushed forth into the night.
+
+"Neither men nor weapons have we to win
+her back," screamed Dark Malcolm, raving
+mad, "but we may die fighting to get near
+enough to her to drive dirk into her little breast
+and save her from worse."
+
+They were a band of madmen in their black
+despair.  How they tore through the black
+night; what unguarded weak spot they found
+in Ian's castle walls; how they fought their way
+through it, leaving their dead bodies in the
+path, none really ever knew.  By what strange
+chance Dark Malcolm came upon Wee Brown
+Elspeth, craftily set to playing hide-and-seek
+with a child of Ian's so that she might not cry
+out and betray her presence; how, already
+wounded to his death, he caught at and drove
+his dirk into her child heart, the story only
+offers guesses at.  But kill and save her he did,
+falling dead with her body held against his
+breast, her brown hair streaming over it.  Not
+one living man went back to the small, rude
+castle on the Glen--not one.
+
+I sat and read and read until the room grew
+dark.  When I stopped I found that Angus
+Macayre was standing in the dimness at the
+foot of the ladder.  He looked up at me and I
+down at him.  For a few moments we were both
+quite still.
+
+"It is the tale of Ian Red Hand and Dark
+Malcolm you are reading?" he said, at last.
+
+"And Wee Brown Elspeth, who was fought
+for and killed," I added, slowly.
+
+Angus nodded his head with a sad face.  "It
+was the only way for a father," he said.  "A
+hound of hell was Ian.  Such men were savage
+beasts in those days, not human."
+
+I touched the manuscript with my hand
+questioningly.  "Did this fall at the back there by
+accident," I asked, "or did you hide it?"
+
+"I did," he answered.  "It was no tale for
+a young thing to read.  I have hidden many
+from you.  You were always poking about in
+corners, Ysobel."
+
+Then I sat and thought over past memories for
+a while and the shadows in the room deepened.
+
+"Why," I said, laggingly, after the silence--
+"why did I call the child who used to play with
+me `Wee Brown Elspeth'?"
+
+"It was your own fancy," was his reply.  "I
+used to wonder myself; but I made up my
+mind that you had heard some of the maids
+talking and the name had caught your ear. 
+That would be a child's way."
+
+I put my forehead in my hands and thought
+again.  So many years had passed!  I had been
+little more than a baby; the whole thing
+seemed like a half-forgotten dream when I
+tried to recall it--but I seemed to dimly
+remember strange things.
+
+"Who were the wild men who brought her to
+me first--that day on the moor?" I said.  "I
+do remember they had pale, savage, exultant
+faces.  And torn, stained clothes.  And broken
+dirks and swords.  But they were glad of
+something.  Who were they?"
+
+"I did not see them.  The mist was too
+thick," he answered.  "They were some wild
+hunters, perhaps."
+
+"It gives me such a strange feeling to try to
+remember, Angus," I said, lifting my forehead
+from my hands.
+
+"Don't try," he said.  "Give me the
+manuscript and get down from the step-ladder. 
+Come and look at the list of books I have made
+for Mr. MacNairn."
+
+I did as he told me, but I felt as if I were
+walking in a dream.  My mind seemed to have
+left my body and gone back to the day when I
+sat a little child on the moor and heard the dull
+sound of horses' feet and the jingling metal and
+the creak of leather coming nearer in the thick
+mist.
+
+I felt as if Angus were in a queer, half-awake
+mood, too--as if two sets of thoughts were
+working at the same time in his mind: one his
+thoughts about Hector MacNairn and the
+books, the other some queer thoughts which
+went on in spite of him.
+
+When I was going to leave the library and
+go up-stairs to dress for dinner he said a strange
+thing to me, and he said it slowly and in a heavy
+voice.
+
+"There is a thing Jean and I have often talked
+of telling you," he said.  "We have not known
+what it was best to do.  Times we have been
+troubled because we could not make up our
+minds.  This Mr. Hector MacNairn is no common
+man.  He is one who is great and wise
+enough to decide things plain people could
+not be sure of.  Jean and I are glad indeed
+that he and his mother are coming.  Jean can
+talk to her and I can talk to him, being a man
+body.  They will tell us whether we have been
+right or wrong and what we must do."
+
+"They are wise enough to tell you anything,'
+I answered.  "It sounds as if you and Jean had
+known some big secret all my life.  But I am
+not frightened.  You two would go to your
+graves hiding it if it would hurt me."
+
+"Eh, bairn!" he said, suddenly, in a queer,
+moved way.  "Eh, bairn!"  And he took hold
+of both my hands and kissed them, pressing
+them quite long and emotionally to his lips. 
+But he said nothing else, and when he dropped
+them I went out of the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+It was wonderful when Mr. MacNairn and
+his mother came.  It was even more
+beautiful than I had thought it would be.  They
+arrived late in the afternoon, and when I took
+them out upon the terrace the sun was reddening
+the moor, and even the rough, gray towers
+of the castle were stained rose-color.  There
+was that lovely evening sound of birds twittering
+before they went to sleep in the ivy.  The
+glimpses of gardens below seemed like glimpses
+of rich tapestries set with jewels.  And there
+was such stillness!  When we drew our three
+chairs in a little group together and looked out
+on it all, I felt as if we were almost in heaven.
+
+"Yes! yes!" Hector said, looking slowly--
+round; "it is all here."
+
+"Yes," his mother added, in her lovely, lovely
+voice.  "It is what made you Ysobel."
+
+It was so angelic of them to feel it all in that
+deep, quiet way, and to think that it was part
+of me and I a part of it.  The climbing moon
+was trembling with beauty.  Tender evening
+airs quivered in the heather and fern, and the
+late birds called like spirits.
+
+Ever since the night when Mrs. MacNairn
+had held me in her arms under the apple-tree
+while the nightingale sang I had felt toward her
+son as if he were an archangel walking on the
+earth.  Perhaps my thoughts were exaggerated,
+but it seemed so marvelous that he should be
+moving among us, doing his work, seeing and
+talking to his friends, and yet that he should
+know that at any moment the great change
+might come and he might awaken somewhere
+else, in quite another place.  If he had been
+like other men and I had been like other girls,
+I suppose that after that night when I heard the
+truth I should have been plunged into the
+darkest woe and have almost sobbed myself to
+death.  Why did I not?  I do not know except
+--except that I felt that no darkness could come
+between us because no darkness could touch
+him.  He could never be anything but alive
+alive.  If I could not see him it would only be
+because my eyes were not clear and strong
+enough.  I seemed to be waiting for something. 
+I wanted to keep near him.
+
+I was full of this feeling as we sat together
+on the terrace and watched the moon.  I could
+scarcely look away from him.  He was rather
+pale that evening, but there seemed to be a
+light behind his pallor, and his eyes seemed to
+see so much more than the purple and yellow
+of the heather and gorse as they rested on them.
+
+After I had watched him silently for a little
+while I leaned forward and pointed to a part
+of the moor where there was an unbroken blaze
+of gorse in full bloom like a big patch of gold.
+
+"That is where I was sitting when Wee
+Brown Elspeth was first brought to me," I said.
+
+He sat upright and looked.  "Is it?" he
+answered.  "Will you take me there to-morrow? 
+I have always wanted to see the place."
+
+"Would you like to go early in the morning? 
+The mist is more likely to be there then, as it
+was that day.  It is so mysterious and beautiful. 
+Would you like to do that?" I asked him.
+
+"Better than anything else!" he said.  "Yes,
+let us go in the morning."
+
+"Wee Brown Elspeth seems very near me this
+evening," I said.  "I feel as if--"  I broke off
+and began again.  "I have a puzzled feeling
+about her.  This afternoon I found some
+manuscript pushed behind a book on a high shelf in
+the library.  Angus said he had hidden it there
+because it was a savage story he did not wish
+me to read.  It was the history of the feud
+between Ian Red Hand and Dark Malcolm
+of the Glen.  Dark Malcolm's child was called
+Wee Brown Elspeth hundreds of years ago--
+five hundred, I think.  It makes me feel so
+bewildered when I remember the one I played
+with."
+
+"It was a bloody story," he said.  "I heard
+it only a few days before we met at Sir Ian's
+house in London."
+
+That made me recall something.
+
+"Was that why you started when I told you
+about Elspeth?" I asked.
+
+"Yes.  Perhaps the one you played with was
+a little descendant who had inherited her name,"
+he answered, a trifle hurriedly.  "I confess I
+was startled for a moment."
+
+I put my hand up to my forehead and rubbed
+it unconsciously.  I could not help seeing a
+woesome picture.
+
+"Poor little soul, with the blood pouring from
+her heart and her brown hair spread over her
+dead father's breast!"  I stopped, because a
+faint memory came back to me.  "Mine," I
+stammered--"mine--how strange!--had a great
+stain on the embroideries of her dress.  She
+looked at it--and looked.  She looked as if she
+didn't like it--as if she didn't understand how
+it came there.  She covered it with ferns and
+bluebells."
+
+I felt as if I were being drawn away into a
+dream.  I made a sudden effort to come back. 
+I ceased rubbing my forehead and dropped my
+hand, sitting upright.
+
+"I must ask Angus and Jean to tell me about
+her," I said.  "Of course, they must have
+known.  I wonder why I never thought of
+asking questions before."
+
+It was a strange look I met when I
+involuntarily turned toward him--such an absorbed,
+strange, tender look!
+
+I knew he sat quite late in the library that
+night, talking to Angus after his mother and I
+went to our rooms.  Just as I was falling asleep
+I remember there floated through my mind a
+vague recollection of what Angus had said to
+me of asking his advice about something; and
+I wondered if he would reach the subject in their
+talk, or if they would spend all their time in
+poring over manuscripts and books together.
+
+The moor wore its most mysterious look when
+I got up in the early morning.  It had hidden
+itself in its softest snows of white, swathing
+mist.  Only here and there dark fir-trees showed
+themselves above it, and now and then the
+whiteness thinned or broke and drifted.  It
+was as I had wanted him to see it--just as I
+had wanted to walk through it with him.
+
+We had met in the hall as we had planned,
+and, wrapped in our plaids because the early
+morning air was cold, we tramped away together. 
+No one but myself could ever realize
+what it was like.  I had never known that there
+could be such a feeling of companionship in the
+world.  It would not have been necessary for
+us to talk at all if we had felt silent.  We should
+have been saying things to each other without
+words.  But we did talk as we walked--in quiet
+voices which seemed made quieter by the mist,
+and of quiet things which such voices seemed
+to belong to.
+
+We crossed the park to a stile in a hedge where
+a path led at once on to the moor.  Part of the
+park itself had once been moorland, and was
+dark with slender firs and thick grown with
+heather and broom.  On the moor the mist grew
+thicker, and if I had not so well known the path
+we might have lost ourselves in it.  Also I
+knew by heart certain little streams that rushed
+and made guiding sounds which were sometimes
+loud whispers and sometimes singing babbles. 
+The damp, sweet scent of fern and heather was
+in our nostrils; as we climbed we breathed its
+freshness.
+
+"There is a sort of unearthly loveliness in it
+all," Hector MacNairn said to me.  His voice
+was rather like his mother's.  It always seemed
+to say so much more than his words.
+
+"We might be ghosts," I answered.  "We
+might be some of those the mist hides because
+they like to be hidden."
+
+"You would not be afraid if you met one of
+them?" he said.
+
+"No.  I think I am sure of that.  I should
+feel that it was only like myself, and, if I could
+hear, might tell me things I want to know."
+
+"What do you want to know?" he asked me,
+very low.  "You!"
+
+"Only what everybody wants to know--that
+it is really AWAKENING free, ready for wonderful
+new things, finding oneself in the midst of
+wonders.  I don't mean angels with harps and
+crowns, but beauty such as we see now; only
+seeing it without burdens of fears before and
+behind us.  And knowing there is no reason to
+be afraid.  We have all been so afraid.  We
+don't know how afraid we have been--of everything."
+
+I stopped among the heather and threw my
+arms out wide.  I drew in a great, joyous
+morning breath.
+
+"Free like that!  It is the freeness, the
+light, splendid freeness, I think of most."
+
+"The freeness!" he repeated.  "Yes, the
+freeness!"
+
+"As for beauty," I almost whispered, in a sort
+of reverence for visions I remembered, "I have
+stood on this moor a thousand times and seen
+loveliness which made me tremble.  One's soul
+could want no more in any life.  But `Out on
+the Hillside' I KNEW I was part of it, and it was
+ecstasy.  That was the freeness."
+
+"Yes--it was the freeness," he answered.
+
+We brushed through the heather and the
+bracken, and flower-bells shook showers of
+radiant drops upon us.  The mist wavered and
+sometimes lifted before us, and opened up
+mystic vistas to veil them again a few minutes
+later.  The sun tried to break through, and
+sometimes we walked in a golden haze.
+
+We fell into silence.  Now and then I glanced
+sidewise at my companion as we made our
+soundless way over the thick moss.  He looked
+so strong and beautiful.  His tall body was so
+fine, his shoulders so broad and splendid!  How
+could it be!  How could it be!  As he tramped
+beside me he was thinking deeply, and he
+knew he need not talk to me.  That made me
+glad--that he should know me so well and
+feel me so near.  That was what he felt when
+he was with his mother, that she understood
+and that at times neither of them needed words.
+
+Until we had reached the patch of gorse
+where we intended to end our walk we did not
+speak at all.  He was thinking of things which
+led him far.  I knew that, though I did not
+know what they were.  When we reached the
+golden blaze we had seen the evening before it
+was a flame of gold again, because--it was only
+for a few moments--the mist had blown apart
+and the sun was shining on it.
+
+As we stood in the midst of it together--Oh!
+how strange and beautiful it was!--Mr. MacNairn
+came back.  That was what it seemed to
+me--that he came back.  He stood quite still
+a moment and looked about him, and then he
+stretched out his arms as I had stretched out
+mine.  But he did it slowly, and a light came
+into his face.
+
+"If, after it was over, a man awakened as you
+said and found himself--the self he knew, but
+light, free, splendid--remembering all the ages
+of dark, unknowing dread, of horror of some
+black, aimless plunge, and suddenly seeing all
+the childish uselessness of it--how he would
+stand and smile!  How he would stand and
+SMILE!"
+
+Never had I understood anything more 
+clearly than I understood then.  Yes, yes! 
+That would be it.  Remembering all the waste
+of fear, how he would stand and SMILE!
+
+He was smiling himself, the golden gorse
+about him already losing its flame in the light
+returning mist-wraiths closing again over it,
+when I heard a sound far away and high up the
+moor.  It sounded like the playing of a piper. 
+He did not seem to notice it.
+
+"We shall be shut in again," he said.  "How
+mysterious it is, this opening and closing!  I like
+it more than anything else.  Let us sit down,
+Ysobel."
+
+He spread the plaid we had brought to sit on,
+and laid on it the little strapped basket Jean
+had made ready for us.  He shook the mist
+drops from our own plaids, and as I was about
+to sit down I stopped a moment to listen.
+
+"That is a tune I never heard on the pipes
+before," I said.  "What is a piper doing out on
+the moor so early?"
+
+He listened also.  "It must be far away.  I
+don't hear it," he said.  "Perhaps it is a bird
+whistling."
+
+"It is far away," I answered, "but it is not
+a bird.  It's the pipes, and playing such a
+strange tune.  There!  It has stopped!"
+
+But it was not silent long; I heard the tune
+begin again much nearer, and the piper was
+plainly coming toward us.  I turned my head.
+
+The mist was clearing, and floated about like
+a thin veil through which one could see objects. 
+At a short distance above us on the moor I saw
+something moving.  It was a man who was
+playing the pipes.  It was the piper, and almost
+at once I knew him, because it was actually my
+own Feargus, stepping proudly through the
+heather with his step like a stag on the hills. 
+His head was held high, and his face had a sort
+of elated delight in it as if he were enjoying
+himself and the morning and the music in a
+new way.  I was so surprised that I rose to my
+feet and called to him.
+
+"Feargus!" I cried.  "What--"
+
+I knew he heard me, because he turned and
+looked at me with the most extraordinary
+smile.  He was usually a rather grave-faced
+man, but this smile had a kind of startling
+triumph in it.  He certainly heard me, for he
+whipped off his bonnet in a salute which was as
+triumphant as the smile.  But he did not
+answer, and actually passed in and out of sight
+in the mist.
+
+When I rose Mr. MacNairn had risen, too. 
+When I turned to speak in my surprise, he had
+fixed on me his watchful look.
+
+"Imagine its being Feargus at this hour!" I
+exclaimed.  "And why did he pass by in such
+a hurry without answering?  He must have
+been to a wedding and have been up all night. 
+He looked--"  I stopped a second and laughed.
+
+"How did he look?" Mr. MacNairn asked.
+
+"Pale!  That won't do--though he certainly
+didn't look ill."  I laughed again.  "I'm
+laughing because he looked almost like one of the
+White People."
+
+"Are you sure it was Feargus?" he said.
+
+"Quite sure.  No one else is the least like
+Feargus.  Didn't you see him yourself?"
+
+"I don't know him as well as you do; and
+there was the mist," was his answer.  "But he
+certainly was not one of the White People when
+I saw him last night."
+
+I wondered why he looked as he did when
+he took my hand and drew me down to my
+place on the plaid again.  He did not let it go
+when he sat down by my side.  He held it in
+his own large, handsome one, looking down on it
+a moment or so; and then he bent his head and
+kissed it long and slowly two or three times.
+
+"Dear little Ysobel!" he said.  "Beloved,
+strange little Ysobel."
+
+"Am I strange!" I said, softly.
+
+"Yes, thank God!" he answered.
+
+I had known that some day when we were
+at Muircarrie together he would tell me what
+his mother had told me--about what we three
+might have been to one another.  I trembled
+with happiness at the thought of hearing him
+say it himself.  I knew he was going to say it
+now.
+
+He held my hand and stroked it.  "My
+mother told you, Ysobel--what I am waiting
+for?" he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you know I love you?" he said, very low.
+
+"Yes.  I love you, too.  My whole life
+would have been heaven if we could always
+have been together," was my answer.
+
+He drew me up into his arms so that my
+cheek lay against his breast as I went on,
+holding fast to the rough tweed of his jacket
+and whispering:  "I should have belonged to
+you two, heart and body and soul.  I should
+never have been lonely again.  I should have
+known nothing, whatsoever happened, but
+tender joy."
+
+"Whatsoever happened?" he murmured.
+
+"Whatsoever happens now, Ysobel, know
+nothing but tender joy.  I think you CAN.  `Out on
+the Hillside!'  Let us remember."
+
+"Yes, yes," I said; " `Out on the Hillside.' " 
+And our two faces, damp with the sweet mist,
+were pressed together.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The mist had floated away, and the moor
+was drenched with golden sunshine when
+we went back to the castle.  As we entered the
+hall I heard the sound of a dog howling, and
+spoke of it to one of the men-servants who had
+opened the door.
+
+"That sounds like Gelert.  Is he shut up
+somewhere?"
+
+Gelert was a beautiful sheep-dog who
+belonged to Feargus and was his heart's friend. 
+I allowed him to be kept in the courtyard.
+
+The man hesitated before he answered me,
+with a curiously grave face.
+
+"It is Gelert, miss.  He is howling for his
+master.  We were obliged to shut him in the
+stables."
+
+"But Feargus ought to have reached here by
+this time," I was beginning.
+
+I was stopped because I found Angus Macayre
+almost at my elbow.  He had that moment
+come out of the library.  He put his hand on
+my arm.
+
+`Will ye come with me?" he said, and led me
+back to the room he had just left.  He kept
+his hand on my arm when we all stood together
+inside, Hector and I looking at him in wondering
+question.  He was going to tell me something--
+we both saw that.
+
+"It is a sad thing you have to hear," he said. 
+"He was a fine man, Feargus, and a most
+faithful servant.  He went to see his mother last
+night and came back late across the moor. 
+There was a heavy mist, and he must have lost
+his way.  A shepherd found his body in a tarn
+at daybreak.  They took him back to his
+father's home."
+
+I looked at Hector MacNairn and again at
+Angus.  "But it couldn't be Feargus," I cried.
+"I saw him an hour ago.  He passed us playing
+on his pipes.  He was playing a new tune I
+had never heard before a wonderful, joyous
+thing.  I both heard and SAW him!"
+
+Angus stood still and watched me.  They
+both stood still and watched me, and even in
+my excitement I saw that each of them looked
+a little pale.
+
+"You said you did not hear him at first, but
+you surely saw him when he passed so near,"
+I protested.  "I called to him, and he took
+off his bonnet, though he did not stop.  He was
+going so quickly that perhaps he did not hear
+me call his name."
+
+What strange thing in Hector's look checked
+me?  Who knows?
+
+"You DID see him, didn't you?" I asked of
+him.
+
+Then he and Angus exchanged glances, as if
+asking each other to decide some grave thing. 
+It was Hector MacNairn who decided it.
+
+"No," he answered, very quietly, "I neither
+saw nor heard him, even when he passed. 
+But you did."
+
+"I did, quite plainly," I went on, more and
+more bewildered by the way in which they kept
+a sort of tender, awed gaze fixed on me.  "You
+remember I even noticed that he looked pale.  I
+laughed, you know, when I said he looked almost
+like one of the White People--"
+
+Just then my breath caught itself and I
+stopped.  I began to remember things--hundreds
+of things.
+
+Angus spoke to me again as quietly as Hector
+had spoken.
+
+"Neither Jean nor I ever saw Wee Brown
+Elspeth," he said--"neither Jean nor I.  But
+you did.  You have always seen what the rest
+of us did not see, my bairn--always."
+
+I stammered out a few words, half in a
+whisper.  "I have always seen what you others
+could not see?  WHAT--HAVE--I--SEEN?"
+
+But I was not frightened.  I suppose I could
+never tell any one what strange, wide, bright
+places seemed suddenly to open and shine before
+me.  Not places to shrink back from--oh no!
+no!  One could be sure, then--SURE!  Feargus
+had lifted his bonnet with that extraordinary
+triumph in his look--even Feargus, who had
+been rather dour.
+
+"You called them the White People," Hector
+MacNairn said.
+
+
+Angus and Jean had known all my life. 
+A very old shepherd who had looked in my
+face when I was a baby had said I had the eyes 
+which "SAW."  It was only the saying of an old
+Highlander, and might not have been remembered. 
+Later the two began to believe I had
+a sight they had not.  The night before Wee
+Brown Elspeth had been brought to me Angus
+had read for the first time the story of Dark
+Malcolm, and as they sat near me on the moor
+they had been talking about it.  That was why
+he forgot himself when I came to ask them where
+the child had gone, and told him of the big,
+dark man with the scar on his forehead.  After
+that they were sure.
+
+They had always hidden their knowledge from
+me because they were afraid it might frighten
+me to be told.  I had not been a strong child. 
+They kept the secret from my relatives because
+they knew they would dislike to hear it and
+would not believe, and also would dislike me as
+a queer, abnormal creature.  Angus had fears
+of what they might do with doctors and severe
+efforts to obliterate from my mind my "nonsense,"
+as they would have been sure to call it. 
+The two wise souls had shielded me on every
+side.
+
+"It was better that you should go on thinking
+it only a simple, natural thing," Angus said. 
+"And as to natural, what IS natural and what
+is not?  Man has not learned all the laws of
+nature yet.  Nature's a grand, rich, endless
+thing, always unrolling her scroll with writings
+that seem new on it.  They're not new.  They
+were always written there.  But they were not
+unrolled.  Never a law broken, never a new
+law, only laws read with stronger eyes."
+
+Angus and I had always been very fond of the
+Bible--the strange old temple of wonders, full of
+all the poems and tragedies and histories of man,
+his hates and battles and loves and follies, and
+of the Wisdom of the universe and the promises
+of the splendors of it, and which even those of
+us who think ourselves the most believing
+neither wholly believe nor will understand. 
+We had pored over and talked of it.  We had
+never thought of it as only a pious thing to do. 
+The book was to us one of the mystic, awe-
+inspiring, prophetic marvels of the world.
+
+That was what made me say, half whispering: 
+"I have wondered and wondered what it meant
+--that verse in Isaiah:  `Behold the former things
+are come to pass and new things do I declare;
+before they spring forth I tell you of them.' 
+Perhaps it means only the unrolling of the
+scroll."
+
+"Aye, aye!" said Angus; "it is full of such
+deep sayings, and none of us will listen to them."
+
+"It has taken man eons of time," Hector
+MacNairn said, thinking it out as he spoke--
+"eons of time to reach the point where he is
+beginning to know that in every stock and stone
+in his path may lie hidden some power he has
+not yet dreamed of.  He has learned that
+lightning may be commanded, distance
+conquered, motion chained and utilized; but he,
+the one CONSCIOUS force, has never yet begun
+to suspect that of all others he may be the one
+as yet the least explored.  How do we know
+that there does not lie in each of us a wholly
+natural but, so far, dormant power of sight--a
+power to see what has been called The Unseen
+through all the Ages whose sightlessness has
+made them Dark?  Who knows when the
+Shadow around us may begin to clear?  Oh, we
+are a dull lot--we human things--with a queer,
+obstinate conceit of ourselves."
+
+"Complete we think we are," Angus murmured
+half to himself .  "Finished creatures! 
+And look at us!  How many of us in a million
+have beauty and health and full power?  And
+believing that the law is that we must crumple
+and go to pieces hour by hour!  Who'd waste
+the time making a clock that went wrong as
+often?  Nay, nay!  We shall learn better than
+this as time goes on.  And we'd better be
+beginning and setting our minds to work on it. 
+'Tis for us to do--the minds of us.  And what's
+the mind of us but the Mind that made us? 
+Simple and straight enough it is when once
+you begin to think it out.  The spirit of you
+sees clearer than we do, that's all," he said to
+me.  "When your mother brought you into
+the world she was listening to one outside
+calling to her, and it opened the way for
+you."
+
+At night Hector MacNairn and his mother
+and I sat on the terrace under stars which
+seemed listening things, and we three drew
+nearer to one another, and nearer and nearer.
+
+"When the poor mother stumbled into the
+train that day," was one of the things Hector
+told me, "I was thinking of The Fear and of my
+own mother.  You looked so slight and small
+as you sat in your corner that I thought at first
+you were almost a child.  Then a far look in
+your eyes made me begin to watch you.  You
+were so sorry for the poor woman that you
+could not look away from her, and something
+in your face touched and puzzled me.  You
+leaned forward suddenly and put out your hand
+protectingly as she stepped down on to the
+platform.
+
+"That night when you spoke quite naturally
+of the child, never doubting that I had seen it,
+I suddenly began to suspect.  Because of The
+Fear"--he hesitated--"I had been reading and
+thinking many things new to me.  I did not
+know what I believed.  But you spoke so
+simply, and I knew you were speaking the
+truth.  Then you spoke just as naturally of
+Wee Brown Elspeth.  That startled me because
+not long before I had been told the tale in the
+Highlands by a fine old story-teller who is the
+head of his clan.  I saw you had never heard
+the story before.  And yet you were telling me
+that you had played with the child."
+
+"He came home and told me about you,"
+Mrs. MacNairn said.  "His fear of The Fear
+was more for me than for himself.  He knew
+that if he brought you to me, you who are more
+complete than we are, clearer-eyed and nearer,
+nearer, I should begin to feel that he was not
+going--out.  I should begin to feel a reality
+and nearness myself.  Ah, Ysobel!  How we
+have clung to you and loved you!  And then
+that wonderful afternoon!  I saw no girl with
+her hand through Mr. Le Breton's arm; Hector
+saw none.  But you saw her.  She was THERE!"
+
+"Yes, she was there," I answered.  "She
+was there, smiling up at him.  I wish he could
+have known."
+
+
+What does it matter if this seems a strange
+story?  To some it will mean something; to
+some it will mean nothing.  To those it has a
+meaning for it will open wide windows into the
+light and lift heavy loads.  That would be quite
+enough, even if the rest thought it only the
+weird fancy of a queer girl who had lived alone
+and given rein to her silliest imaginings.  I
+wanted to tell it, howsoever poorly and
+ineffectively it was done.  Since I KNEW I have 
+dropped the load of ages--the black burden. 
+Out on the hillside my feet did not even feel the
+grass, and yet I was standing, not floating.  I
+had no wings or crown.  I was only Ysobel out
+on the hillside, free!
+
+
+This is the way it all ended.
+
+For three weeks that were like heaven we
+three lived together at Muircarrie.  We saw
+every beauty and shared every joy of sun and
+dew and love and tender understanding.
+
+After one lovely day we had spent on the
+moor in a quiet dream of joy almost strange in its
+perfectness, we came back to the castle; and,
+because the sunset was of such unearthly
+radiance and changing wonder we sat on the terrace
+until the last soft touch of gold had died out
+and left the pure, still, clear, long summer
+twilight.
+
+When Mrs. MacNairn and I went in to dress
+for dinner, Hector lingered a little behind us
+because the silent beauty held him.
+
+I came down before his mother did, and I
+went out upon the terrace again because I saw
+he was still sitting there.  I went to the stone
+balustrade very quietly and leaned against it as
+I turned to look at him and speak.
+
+Then I stood quite still and looked long--for
+some reason not startled, not anguished, not
+even feeling that he had gone.  He was more
+beautiful than any human creature I had ever
+seen before.  But It had happened as they said
+it would.  He had not ceased--but something
+else had.  Something had ceased.
+
+
+It was the next evening before I came out on
+the terrace again.  The day had been more
+exquisite and the sunset more wonderful than
+before.  Mrs. MacNairn was sitting by her son's
+side in the bedroom whose windows looked over
+the moor.  I am not going to say one word of
+what had come between the two sunsets. 
+Mrs. MacNairn and I had clung--and clung. 
+We had promised never to part from each other. 
+I did not quite know why I went out on the
+terrace; perhaps it was because I had always
+loved to sit or stand there.
+
+This evening I stood and leaned upon the
+balustrade, looking out far, far, far over the
+moor.  I stood and gazed and gazed.  I was
+thinking about the Secret and the Hillside.  I
+was very quiet--as quiet as the twilight's self. 
+And there came back to me the memory of what
+Hector had said as we stood on the golden
+patch of gorse when the mist had for a moment
+or so blown aside, what he had said of man's
+awakening, and, remembering all the ages of
+childish, useless dread, how he would stand--
+
+I did not turn suddenly, but slowly.  I was
+not startled in the faintest degree.  He stood
+there close to me as he had so often stood.
+
+And he stood--and smiled.
+
+I have seen him many times since.  I shall
+see him many times again.  And when I see
+him he always stands--and smiles.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The White People, by Burnett
+
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