A strange pang ran responsively to Vara's heart—a flash of rapture to Kit's. They parted without a word, the girl walking sedately out of the shadows in one direction, and the lad running with all his might back to the farm in the other. Each had their own several communings. Vara said to herself, "Why does not Cleg think to speak to me like that?" It was a great blunder on Cleg's part, certainly, and, if heart-aches were to be spared, one which he should speedily set himself to repair. And as Kit Kennedy went home he said, over and over, "I hae kissed her. I hae kissed her. Naething and naebody can take that from me, at least." But with the stilling of his leaping and rejoicing heart came the thought, "But had I the right? He fed them and clothed them, and never asked as much. He is better than I. I will not trouble them any more. For he is better and worthier than I." So Kit's dreams and imaginings helped him to something more knightly in his renunciation than in the brief rapturous flash of possession. ADVENTURE LV. A YOUNG MAN'S FANCY. Meanwhile Cleg was looking after the General's interests when, had he known it, he ought rather to have been looking after his own. He closed the doors of the great house that afternoon, as he had done for many months, and left his master in his strange bed. He was not afraid now, any more. For, in spite of his madness, there was something engaging about the General, something at once childlike and ingenuous, which came out in the close intercourse of two people living altogether alone. Cleg went into the little brick addition at the back, and the barred doors of the great house shut mechanically behind him. Cleg was making up his mind to ask the General to let him live out of the house. Cleg was thinking, also, of speaking to Vara. But then Vara might not agree. Had he ever asked her? Of course he had not. It was "soft"—so he had held up to this point to speak to a girl about such things. But yet the idea had its pleasures, and some day he would speak to her about it. Had he been hidden that day in the little copse by the march-dyke, on the road from Loch Spellanderie, he might have heard something very much to his advantage, which might have spurred him on to speak for himself, even at the risk of being considered exceedingly "soft." But the mere fact that he thought of it at all, argued a mighty change in this Cleg of ours. He was no more only an Arab of the city all these years. He had given Mirren half his wages and saved the rest, so that, with the Christmas presents the General had given him, he had nearly a hundred pounds in the bank. Cleg pushed his way through the thickly matted copses of spurge laurel and wet-shot alder. He was going to Sandyknowes. The lush green Solomon's seal was growing all around, with its broad-veined green leaves. A little farther on he came on the pure white blossoms of bog trefoil, with its flossy, delicate petals, lace-edged like feminine frilleries.