Foes | Page 2

the water, and Jock's sark in my hand, and the lav'rock singing, and
that was all."
"I have heard tell of that," said Strickland. "It was near Braemar."
"And that's mony a lang league frae here! Sax days, and we had news
of the rising, with the gathering at Braemar. And said he wha told us,
'The gilt ball fell frae the standard pole, and there's nane to think that a
good omen!' But I saw it," said Mother Binning. She turned her wheel,
a woman not yet old and with a large, tranquil comeliness. "What I see
makes fine company!"
Strickland plucked a rose and smelled it. "This country is fuller of such
things than is England that I come from."
"Aye. It's a grand country." She continued to spin. The tutor looked at
the sun. It was time to be going if he wished another hour with the
stream. He took up his rod and book and rose from the door-step.
Mother Binning glanced aside from her wheel.
"How gaes things with the lad at the House?"

"Alexander or James?"
"The one ye call Alexander."
"That is his name."
"I think that he's had ithers. That's a lad of mony lives!"
Strickland, halting by the rose-bush, looked at Mother Binning. "I
suppose we call it 'wisdom' when two feel alike. Now that's just what I
feel about Alexander Jardine! It's just feeling without rationality."
"Eh?"
"There isn't any reason in it."
"I dinna know about 'reason.' There's being in it."
The tutor made as if to speak further, then, with a shake of his head,
thought better of it. Thirty-five years old, he had been a tutor since he
was twenty, dwelling, in all, in four or five more or less considerable
houses and families. Experience, adding itself to innate good sense, had
made him slow to discuss idiosyncrasies of patrons or pupils. Strong
perplexity or strong feeling might sometimes drive him, but ordinarily
he kept a rein on speech. Now he looked around him.
"What high summer, lovely weather!"
"Oh aye! It's bonny. Will ye be gaeing, since ye have na mair to say?"
English Strickland laughed and said good-by to Mother Binning and
went. The ash-tree, the hazels that fringed the water, a point of mossy
rock, hid the cot. The drone of the wheel no longer reached his ears. It
was as though all that had sunk into the earth. Here was only the deep,
the green, and lonely glen. He found a pool that invited, cast, and
awaited the speckled victim. In the morning he had had fair luck, but
now nothing.... The water showed no more diamonds, the lower slopes
of the converging hills grew a deep and slumbrous green. Above was
the gold, shoulder and crest powdered with it, unearthly, uplifted.

Strickland ceased his fishing. The light moved slowly upward; the trees,
the crag-heads, melted into heaven; while the lower glen lay in lengths
of shadow, in jade and amethyst. A whispering breeze sprang up, cool
as the water sliding by. Strickland put up his fisherman's gear and
moved homeward, down the stream.
He had a very considerable way to go. The glen path, narrow and rough,
went up and down, still following the water. Hazel and birch, oak and
pine, overhung and darkened it. Bosses of rock thrust themselves
forward, patched with lichen and moss, seamed and fringed with fern
and heath. Roots of trees, huge and twisted, spread and clutched like
guardian serpents. In places where rock had fallen the earth seemed to
gape. In the shadow it looked a gnome world--a gnome or a dragon
world. Then upon ledge or bank showed bells or disks or petaled suns
of June flowers, rose and golden, white and azure, while overhead was
heard the evening song of birds alike calm and merry, and through a
cleft in the hills poured the ruddy, comfortable sun.
The walls declined in height, sloped farther back. The path grew
broader; the water no longer fell roaring, but ran sedately between
pebbled beaches. The scene grew wider, the mouth of the glen was
reached. He came out into a sunset world of dale and moor and
mountain-heads afar. There were fields of grain, and blue waving
feathers from chimneys of cottage and farm-house. In the distance
showed a village, one street climbing a hill, and atop a church with a
spire piercing the clear east. The stream widened, flowing thin over a
pebbly bed. The sun was not yet down. It painted a glory in the west
and set lanes and streets of gold over the hills and made the little river
like Pactolus. Strickland approached a farm-house, prosperous and
venerable, mended and neat. Thatched, long, white, and low, behind it
barns and outbuildings, it stood tree-guarded, amid