Gilian expressed some commonplace and left the shelter of the pend close and went up the street round the factor’s corner. He looked behind him there. The ferry-boat from Kilcatrine was in. Young Islay had stepped the first off the skiff and was speaking--not to his father, but to General Turner, whose horse, spattered with foam and white with autumn dust, a boy held at the quay head. The post-runner took a newspaper from his pocket and handed it to the men waiting at the Cross; they hastened into the vintners, and one of them read aloud to the company with no need to replenish his glass. Against the breast wall the tide at the full lapped with a pleasant sound. Mr. Spencer came out to the front of the Inns, smoking a segar, very perjink with a brocade waistcoat and a collar so high it rasped his ears. Everything visible impressed itself that day acutely on Gilian as he went out of the town; not only as if he were naked but as if he were raw and feeling flesh, and he was glad when the turn of the road at the Arches hid this place from his view. A voice cried behind him, and turning around he found Peggy running after him with a basket, Miss Mary’s afterthought for the fugitive girl on the moor. Very quickly he sped up the hills; Nan ran out to meet him as he came up the brae from Little Fox. She had been crying in the morning till tears would come no longer, but now she was composed; at least her eyes were calm and her cheeks lost the pallor they had from a night almost sleepless in that lonely dwelling. As he saw her running out to meet him he filled with elation and with apprehension. She was so beautiful, so airy, so seemingly his alone as she ran out thus from their refuge, that he grudged the hours he had been gone from her. “Oh,” she cried, “the Spring was no more welcome to the wood. I hope you have brought good news, Gilian.” And up she went to him and linked an arm through his with some of the composure of the companion and some of the ardour of the sweetheart. “I think it’s all well,” said he, putting his arm round her as they went up towards the hut together. “Is it only thinking?” she asked with disappointment in her voice, all the ardour gone from her face, and her arm withdrawn. “I was so certain it would be sureness for once. Will Miss Mary not help me? I am sorry I asked her. It was not right, perhaps, that my father’s daughter should be expecting anything from the sister of the Campbells of Keil.” She was all tremulous with vexed pride and disappointment. “Miss Mary is your very kind friend, Nan,” he protested, “and she will help you as readily as she will help me.” “I am to go down then?” she cried, uplifted again. “Well, yes--that is, it is between ourselves.”