Going to the fireplace, he
leaned his forehead against the stone and looked down at the laid, not
kindled, wood. He turned and came back to Ian. "The world seems to me
all good."
Ian laughed at him, half in raillery, but half in a flood of kindness.
If what had stirred had been ancient betrayal, alive and vital one
knew not when, now again it was dead, dead. He rose, he put his arm
again about Alexander's shoulder. "Glenfernie! Glenfernie! you're in
deep! Well, I hope the world will stay heaven, e'en for your sake!"
They left the old room with its hauntings of a boy's search for gold,
with, back of that, who might know what hauntings of ancient times and
fortress doings, violences and agonies, subduings, revivings, cark and
care and light struggling through, dark nights and waited-for dawns!
They went down the stair and out of the keep. Late June flamed around
them.
Ian stayed another hour or two ere he rode back to Black Hill. With
Glenfernie he went over Glenfernie House, the known, familiar rooms.
They went to the school-room together and out through the breach in
the old castle wall, and sat among the pine roots, and looked down
through leafy tree-tops to the glint of water. When, in the sun-washed
house and narrow garden and grassy court, they came upon men and women
they stopped and spoke, and all was friendly and merry as it should be
in a land of good folk.
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