It would be rather interesting to let the fight go on while he raised no finger to protect his own personal rights; if indeed he had any, which he was beginning to doubt. He and Aura would be as happy--nay! happier without money. Yes! in the one thing worth having, the one thing without which even life itself was not worth having, money had no purchasing power whatever. "I am only just beginning to realise how I should hate to be rich." Aura's words came back to him. She need not fear. If she would only consent to marry him, he would chuck everything he possessed!--barring a modest competence of course!--after the sovereigns he had chucked that June morning into the little lochan at the gap. He had never thought of the hidden money since that day. It had gone clean out of his head. Now, as he stood up to try and locate the exact dip on the hills where it lay, his own words came back to him. "Neither I nor the world would suffer if I made ducks and drakes of these sovereign remedies." He seemed to hear the soft _whit whitter_ of the skimming gold and to see the blank look on the faces around him. There were other ways of getting rid of gold, however, than by chucking it into a pond. You had in this civilised world but to let your neighbour know that you had it in your pocket, and it was sure to go. So, despite his refusal, with a light laugh he started down the hill. CHAPTER XVII Aura, however, felt bruised and broken, as with slower, heavier foot than usual she crossed the drawbridge, and choosing the back way, went through the cottage to the kitchen. Her first look at that sanctuary of shiny saucepans showed her that something in the nature of a domestic cataclysm had occurred during her absence; for the kitchen-table was littered with cake-tins, and the materials for making cakes, a savoury smell telling of cakes rose from the oven, and Martha herself, with a hot flushed face, was beating viciously at the whites of eggs which were to go towards a further making of cakes. Now such activity was Martha's invariable method of showing that she had what she called "a bit o' time" to herself; therefore her invariable habit when she found herself once more monarch of all she surveyed and so presumably rather pressed for time. "Has Parkinson gone?" asked Aura swiftly.