“I will go; I will go at once,” he cried, but first he went far down on Blaraghour for wood for a fire to cheer her loneliness, and the dusk was down on them before he left her. She gave him her hand at the door, a hand for once with helpless dependence in the clinging and the confidence of it, and he held it long without dissent from her. Never before had she seemed so beautiful or so affable, so necessary to his life. Her trials had paled the colour of her face and her eyes had a hint of tears. Over his shoulder she would now and then cast a glance of apprehension at the falling night and check a shudder of her frame. “Good-night!” he said. “Good-night!” she answered, and yet she did not loose her prisoned hand. He sighed, and brought, in spite of her, an echo from her heart. Then he drew her suddenly to his arms and scorched her face with lips of fire. Nan released herself and fled within. The door closed; she dared not make her trial the more intense by seeing the night swallow up her only living link with the human world beyond the vague selvedge of the moor. And Gilian, till the dawn came over Cruach-an-Lochain, walked by the side of Little Fox Loch, within view of the hut that held his heart. CHAPTER XXXI--DEFIANCE That there was some unusual agitation in the town Gilian could gather as soon as he had set foot within the Arches in the early morning. It was in the air, it was mustering many women at the well. There they stood in loud and lingering groups, their stoups running over extravagantly while they kept the tap running, unconscious what they were about Or they had a furtive aspect as they whispered in the closes, their aprons wrapping their folded arms. At the door of the New Inns, Mr. Spencer was laying forth a theory of abduction. He had had English experience, he knew life; for the first time since he had come to this place of poor happenings he had found something he could speak upon with authority and an audience to listen with respect What his theory was, Gilian might have heard fully as he passed; but he was thinking of other things, and all that came to him were two or three words, and one of the errant sentences was seemingly about himself. That attracted all his attention. He gave a glance at the people at the door--the inn-keeper, MacGibbon, with an unusual Kilmarnock bonnet on that seemed to have been donned in a hurry; Rixa, in a great perturbation, having just come out of a shandry-dan with which he had been driving up Glen Shira; Major Paul, and Wilson the writer. The inn-keeper, who was the first to see the lad, stopped his speech with confusion and reddened. They gave him a stare and a curt acknowledgment of his passage of the time of day as the saying goes, looked after him as he passed round Old Islay’s corner, and found no words till he was out of sight.