"There's nocht like a loch trout newly catched, in a' this bonny God's warld," he said. "I wonder how men can be haythens and ill-doers when there's sic braw loch trout in Gallowa'! And burn trout are just as guid--in fact, there's some that actually prefers them!" All this day Jean Gordon might have been heard in solemn confabulation with the curate, while Wat lay and listened to the din of their voices, sometimes uplifted in controversy, sometimes hushed in gossip, but ever coming to him pleasantly dulled and harmonized through the thick walls and long echoing passages of the house of Lochinvar. It was a windy day also, and the water sang him a lullaby of his childhood, as it lapped and swished all about him, with a noise like the leafy boughs of trees brushing against the foundations of his ancient castle. "To-morrow! To-morrow! To-morrow!" said Wat, over and over to himself. "To-morrow my die will be cast for life or death." CHAPTER L LOCHINVAR KEEPS TRYST The morning of the tenth came--still, uncolored below, rising to grayish-blue above, rose-rimmed only along the eastern horizon. The reapers were out in the high fields about Gordonstoun by daybreak, with their crooked reaping-hooks in their hands, busily grasping the handfuls of grain and cutting them through with a pleasant "risp" of sound. Cocks crowed early that morning, for they knew it was going to be a day of fervent heat. It would be as well, therefore, to have the pursuit of slippery worm and rampant caterpillar over betimes in the dawning. Then each chanticleer could stand in the shade and scratch himself applausively with alternate foot all the hot noontide, while his wives clucked and nestled in the dusty holes along the banks, interchanging intimate reflections upon the moral character of the giddier and more skittish young pullets of the farmyard. But long after the sun had risen Wat Gordon lay asleep. Jean Gordon had a suit of clothes lying ready brushed for him on a chair--frilled linen, lace so cobwebby and fine, that it seemed to be spun from the foam of the loch after a storm. His father's sword swung by a belt of faded scarlet leather from the oaken angle of the nearest chair-back. "I'll gie him half an hour yet," said she; "Peter will no' be here wi' Sandy Gordon's muckle horse before that time." The minutes passed slowly. Jean opened the window of the tower, and the fresh air of the moorland stole in. Wat Gordon lay on his pillow knitting his brows and working his hands as if in grips with some deadly problem that lacked a solution. "Puir lad, puir lad, whatna kittle thing love is!" murmured the old lady; "it works us, it drives us, and it harls us. It grieves us and gars us greet. And yet, what wad life be without it and the memory o't! And 'tis Jean Gordon that should ken, for she has lived sixty years on the memory o' ae bonny month o' maist heavenly bliss." At last she bent over him, hearing a loud and piercing whistle from the shore of the loch.