... Memories of his boyhood crowded
thick and fast. The spell of the place deepened about him with the
darkness. He recalled the village postman--fragment of another
romance, though a tattered and discredited one. For this postman was
the descendant of that audacious pale-frenier who married Lord Wemyss'
daughter, to live the life of peasants with her in a yet tinier hamlet
higher up the slopes. If you asked him, he would proudly tell you,
with his bullet-shaped, close-cropped head cocked impertinently on one
side, how his brother, now assistant in a Paris shop, still owned the
title of baron by means of which his reconciliated lordship sought
eventually to cover up the unfortunate escapade. He would hand you
English letters--and Scotch ones too!--with an air of covert insolence
that was the joy of half the village. And on Sundays he was to be
seen, garbed in knickerbockers, gaudy stockings, and sometimes high,
yellowish spats, walking with his peasant girl along the very road his
more spirited forbear covered in his runaway match....
The night stepped down more quickly every minute from the heights.
Deep-noted bells floated upwards to him from Colombier, bringing upon
the evening wind some fragrance of these faded boyhood memories. The
stars began to peep above the peaks and ridges, and the mountains of
the Past moved nearer.
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