"They're bonny lasses!" said Ian.
"Aye. They're so."
"But, oh, man! you should see Miss Delafield of Tower Place in
Surrey!"
"Is she so bonny?"
"She's more than bonny. She's beautiful and high-born and an heiress.
When I'm a colonel of dragoons--"
"Are you going to be a colonel of dragoons?"
"Something like that. You talk of thinking that you were this and that
in the past. Well, I was a fighting-man!"
"We're all fighting-men. It's only what we fight and how."
"Well, say that I had been a chief, and they lifted me on their
shields and called me king, the very next day I should have made her
queen!"
"You think like a ballad. And, oh, man, you talk mickle of the
lasses!"
Ian looked at him with long, narrow, dark-gold eyes. "They're found in
ballads," he said.
Alexander just paused in his stride. "Humph! that's true!..."
They entered the glen. The stream began to brawl; on either hand the
hills closed in, towering high. Some of the trees were bare, but to
most yet clung the red-brown or the gold-brown dress. The pines showed
hard, green, and dead in the shadow; in the sunlight, fine,
green-gold, and alive. The fallen leaves, moved by foot or by breeze,
made a light, dry, talking sound. The white birch stems clustered and
leaned; patches of bright-green moss ran between the drifts of leaves.
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