The palace stood, shining like
home, and it was he who was afar, in the mist and the wood, and the
web of idleness and oblivion in shreds about him. Set in the
throne-room, upon the throne, he saw the queen.
His mood, that May day, had given the moment, and wide circumstance
had met it. Now the hand was in the glove, the statue in the niche,
the bow upon the string, the spark in the tinder, the sea through the
dike. Now what had reached being must take its course.
He felt that so fatally that he did not think of resistance....
Elspeth, upon the grassy cape, beneath the blooming thorn, heard steps
down the glen path, and turned her eyes to see the young laird moving
between the birch stems. Now he was level with the holding; now he
spoke to her, lifting his hat. She answered, with the smile beneath
her eyes:
"Aye, Glenfernie, it's a braw day!"
"May I come into the fairy country and sit awhile and visit?"
"Aye." She welcomed him to a hillock of green rising from the water's
edge. "It _is_ fairyland, and these are the broad seas around, and I
know if I came here by night I should find the Good People before me!"
She looked at him with friendliness, half shy, half frank. "It is the
best of weather for wandering."
"Are you fond of that, too? Do you go up and down alone?"
"By my lee-lane when Gilian's not here.
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