Sometimes the rose and saffron of the dawn were there, ascending with a soft suffusion behind the purple dome of St. Paul’s; sometimes there were blown and breezy days, with flying showers and watery gleams of sunlight; and sometimes the night lay blue and still and clear, the Surrey side in black and mysterious shadow, the white moon high in the south. These silent altitudes were a fine place for dreaming, after all the toil and moil of the working-hours were over; and a fine place for listening, too; sometimes, towards the morning, just as the leaves began to stir, you could fancy the wind was bringing a message with it—it seemed, coming from far away, to say something about _Claire Fontaine_. CHAPTER VIII. IN A NORTHERN VILLAGE. But there were to be no three years of absence, still less of forgetfulness. One afternoon, on Vincent’s going down to the House, he found a telegram along with his letters. He opened it mechanically, little thinking; but the next moment his eyes were staring with amazement. For these were the words he saw before him:—"_Grandfather very ill; would like to see you. Maisrie Bethune, Crossmains, by Cupar_." Then through his bewilderment there flashed the sudden thought: why, the lands of Balloray were up in that Fifeshire region!—had, then, the old man, tired of his world-wanderings, and feeling this illness coming upon him, had he at length crept home to die, perhaps as a final protest? And Maisrie was alone there, among strangers, with this weight of trouble fallen upon her. Why could not these intervening hours, and the long night, and the great distance, be at once annihilated?—he saw Maisrie waiting for him, with piteous eyes and outstretched hands. He never could afterwards recall with any accuracy how he passed those hours: it all seemed a dream. And a dream it seemed next day, when he found himself in a dogcart, driving through a placid and smiling country, with the sweet summer air blowing all around him. He talked to the driver, to free his mind from anxious and futile forecasts. Crossmains, he was informed, was a small place. There was but the one inn in it—the Balloray Arms. Most likely, if two strangers were to arrive on a visit, they would put up at the inn; but very few people did go through—perhaps an occasional commercial traveller. "And where is Balloray House—or Balloray Castle?" was the next question. "Just in there, sir," said the man, with a jerk of his whip towards the woods past which they were driving.