He had gathered a bunch of the finest, and had thrown himself down on the side of the dune, whence, as he lay, only the high road, the park wall, the temple of the winds, and the blue sky were visible. The vast sea, for all the eye could tell, was nowhere--not a ripple of it was to be seen, but the ear was filled with the night gush and flow of it. A sweet wind was blowing, hardly blowing, rather gliding, like a slumbering river, from the west. The sun had vanished, leaving a ruin of gold and rose behind him, gradually fading into dull orange and lead and blue sky and stars. There was light enough to read by, but he never opened his book. He was thinking over something Mr Graham had said to him a few days before, namely, that all impatience of monotony, all weariness of best things even, are but signs of the eternity of our nature--the broken human fashions of the divine everlastingness. “I dinna ken whaur it comes frae,” said a voice above him. He looked up. On the ridge of the mound, the whole of his dwarfed form relieved against the sky and looking large in the twilight, stood the mad laird, reaching out his forehead towards the west with his arms expanded as if to meet the ever coming wind. “_Naebody_ kens whaur the win’ comes frae, or whaur it gangs till,” said Malcolm. “Ye’re no a hair waur aff nor ither fowk, there, laird.” “Does ’t come frae a guid place, or frae an ill?” said the laird, doubtingly. “It’s saft an’ kin’ly i’ the fin’ o’ ’t,” returned Malcolm suggestively, rising and joining the laird on the top of the dune, and like him spreading himself out to the western air. The twilight had deepened, merging into such night as the summer in that region knows--a sweet pale memory of the past day. The sky was full of sparkles of pale gold in a fathomless blue; there was no moon; the darker sea lay quiet below, with only a murmur about its lip, and fitfully reflected the stars. The soft wind kept softly blowing. Behind them shone a light at the harbour’s mouth, and a twinkling was here and there visible in the town above; but all was as still as if there were no life save in the wind and the sea and the stars. The whole feeling was as if something had been finished in heaven, and the outmost ripples of the following rest had overflowed and were now pulsing faintly and dreamily across the bosom of the labouring earth, with feeblest suggestion of the mighty peace beyond. Alas, words can do so little! even such a night is infinite. “Ay,” answered the laird; “but it maks me dowfart (_melancholy_) like, i’ the inside.” “Some o’ the best things does that,” said Malcolm. “I think a kiss frae my mither wad gar me greet.” He knew the laird’s peculiarities well; but in the thought of his mother had forgotten the antipathy of his companion to the word. Stewart gave a moaning cry, put his fingers in his ears, and glided down the slope of the dune seawards.