With the sunset they moved over the great, clean slope to where it ran
down to fields and trees. Before them was White Farm, below them the
glistening stream, coral and gold between and around the
stepping-stones. They parted here, Gilian going on to the house, the
laird turning again over the moor.
He passed the village; he came by the white kirk and the yew-trees and
the kirkyard. All were lifted upon the hilltop, all wore the color of
sunset and the color of dawn. The laird of Glenfernie moved beside the
kirkyard wall. He seemed to hold in his hand marigolds, pinks, and
pansies. He saw a green mound, and he seemed to put the flowers there,
out of old custom and tenderness. But no longer did he feel that
Elspeth was beneath the mound. A wide tapering cloud, golden-feathered,
like a wing of glory, stretched half across the sky. He looked at it;
he looked at that in which it rested. His lips moved, he spoke aloud.
"_O Death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory?_"
CHAPTER XXXIV
Days and weeks went by. Autumn came and stepped in russet toward
winter. Yet it was not cold and the mists and winds delayed. The
homecoming of the laird of Glenfernie slipped into received fact--a
fact rather large, acceptable, bringing into the neighborhood
situation of things in general a perceptible amount of expansion and
depth, but settling now, for the general run, into comfortable
every-day.
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