So there was a wedding in the early morning at the Manse of the Kells, and a young bride was brought home to Bargany. As for old Roy Campbell, he was made the deputy-keeper of the Forest of Buchan, which was an old Cassilis distinction--and a post that exactly suited his Highland blood. Time and again, however, had his son to intercede with him not to be too severe with those smugglers and gangrel bodies who had come to look upon the fastnesses of the Forest as their own. "Have ye no fellow-feeling, Roy, for old sake's sake?" Kennedy would ask. "Feeling? havers!" growled Roy impolitely, for Roy was spoiled. "I'm a chief's man noo, and I'll harbour nae gangrel loons on the lands o' Kennedy." So the old cateran would depart humming the Galloway rhyme-- "Frae Wigtown to the Toon o' Ayr, Portpatrick to the Cruives o' Cree; Nae man need hope to bide safe there, Unless he court wi' Kennedy." "Body o' MacCallum More," chuckled the deputy-keeper of the Forest of Buchan, "but it was Kennedy that cam' coortin' to the 'Back o' Beyont' that time, whatever, I'm thinkin'!" VI NORTH TO THE ARCTIC _At home 'tis sunny September, Though here 'tis a waste of snows, So bleak that I scarce remember How the scythe through the cornland goes_. _With an aching heart I wander Through the cold and curved wreaths, And dream that I see meander Brown burns amid purple heaths_: _That I hear the stags on the mountains Bray loud in the early morn, And that scarlet gleams by the fountains The red-berried wild-rose thorn_. "It was bad enough in the Free Command," said Constantine, leaning back in his luxurious easy-chair and joining his thin fingers easily before him as though he were measuring the stretch between thumb and middle finger. "But, God knows, it was Paris itself to the hell on earth up at the Yakût Yoort." It was a strange sentence to hear, sitting thus in the commonplace drawing-room of a London house with the baker's boy ringing the area bell and the last edition of the _Pall Mall_ being cried blatantly athwart the street. But no one could look twice at Constantine Nicolai and remain in the land of the commonplace. I had known him nearly two years, and we had talked much--usually on literary and newspaper topics, seldom of Russia, and never of his experiences. Constantine and I had settled down together as two men will sometimes do, who work together and are drawn by a sympathy of unlikeness which neither can explain. Both of us worked on an evening paper of pronounced views upon moral questions and a fine feeling for a good advertising connection. We had been sitting dreamily in the late twilight of a gloomy November day. Work was over, and we were free till Monday morning should call us back again to the Strand. We sat silent a long while, till Constantine broke out unexpectedly with the words which startled me.