When Granny Stirk, months before, had stood at her door, and cried, ‘Haste ye back, then,’ to Gilbert Speid, she meant what she said, and was taken at her word, for he returned some days after the roup, and his visit was the first of many. Her racy talk, her shrewd sense, and the masterly way in which she dominated her small world pleased him, and he guessed that her friendship, once given, would be a solid thing. He had accepted it, and he returned it. She made surprising confidences and asked very direct questions, in the spring evenings when the light was growing daily, and he would stroll out to her cottage for half an hour’s talk. She advised him lavishly on every subject, from underclothing to the choice of a wife and her subsequent treatment, and from these conversations he learned much of the temper and customs of those surrounding him. In the seven months which had elapsed since his arrival he had learned to understand his poorer neighbours better than his richer ones. The atmosphere of the place was beginning to sink into him, and his tenants and labourers had decided that they liked him very well; for, though there were many things in him completely foreign to their ideas, they had taken these on trust in consideration of other merits which they recognised. But, with his equals, he still felt himself a stranger; there were few men of his own age among the neighbouring lairds, and those he had met were as local in character as the landscape. Not one had ever left his native country, or possessed much notion of anything outside its limits. He would have been glad to see more of Fullarton, but the elder man had an unaccountable reserve in his manner towards him which did not encourage any advance. Crauford Fordyce he found both ridiculous and irritating. The women to whom he had been introduced did not impress him in any way, and four only had entered his life--the Miss Robertsons, who were his relations; Lady Eliza, who by turns amused, interested, and repelled him; and Cecilia Raeburn, with whom he was in love. The two people most congenial to him were Granny Stirk and Captain Somerville. Between himself and the sailor a cordial feeling had grown, as it will often grow between men whose horizon is wider than that of the society in which they live, and, though Somerville was almost old enough to be Speid’s grandfather, the imperishable youth that bubbled up in his heart kept it in touch with that wide world in which he had worked and fought, and which he still loved like a boy. The episode at the dovecot of Morphie had served to cement the friendship.