It seemed an age while I was crossing the short, stubbly grass of the Meadows. The light within beaconed redder and warmer. On the window-blind I saw a gracious silhouette. Then there was the putting aside the edge of the blind with exploring finger--sure sign that my little wife had been regarding the clock and finding me a little late in getting home. As I ran up the short path to the gate I blew into my key. The latch of the garden-gate clicked in the blast which swept across from the Blackfords. But there at last before me was the door. The key glided, well-accustomed, into its place, not rattling, but with the slide of long-polished and intimate steel--soft, like silk on silk. But the key never turned. The door opened, seemingly of itself, and, gloriously loving, a candle held high in her hand, her full, white house-gown sweeping to her feet, the little wife stood waiting. I said nothing about the overplus of work that had filled my head as I turned from the high, bleak portals of the University--nothing of how, all unknowing, my traitor feet had carried me to the stairway in Rankeillor Street--nothing of the long way, or the suspicious man in the cloak, of the blast and the bent and the sting of the sleet in my face. I was at home, just she and I--the two of us alone. And upon us two the door was shut. CHAPTER XXXIV A VISIT FROM BOYD CONNOWAY "I wonder," said Irma one Saturday morning when, by a happy accident, I had no pressing need to go from home, so could stay and linger over breakfast with my little wife like a Christian, "I wonder what that man is doing down there? He has been sitting on the step outside our gate ever since it was light, and he looks as if he were taking root there!" I made but one bound from the table to the window. For I remembered the cloaked man who had crossed me in the Meadows the other night. Also my inbred, almost instinctive curiosity as to the purposes and antecedents of lurking folk of all kinds, pricked me. We were easy enough to get on with in Eden Valley once you knew us, but our attitude towards strangers was distinctly hostile. This man was muffled to the nose in a cloak, and might very well have been my inquiring friend of the other night. But when I had opened the door and marched with the firm ringing steps of a master down the paven walk towards the gate, the face I saw turned to my approach, altered my mood in a second. "Why, Boyd Connoway," I cried, "who would have thought of seeing you here? What are you doing in Edinburgh? But first come in--there is a friend here who will be glad to see you!" "Eh, Mr. Duncan, but I am not sure that I dare venture. 'Tis no more than decent I am, and the young lady, your wife--oh, but though to see her sweet face would be a treat for poor Boyd Connoway, what might she not be sayin' about me dirtying her carpets, the craitur? And as for sittin' in her fine arm-chairs----"