Isla left Achree for the second time without any bitter pang. Nay, it pleased and comforted her to think that Peter Rosmead and his folk had it for a home. That thought somehow seemed to bring him nearer to her. In the months to come it would lessen the breadth and depth of that vast dividing sea. Yet how she would have been startled had her own thoughts been mirrored before her, who had never before taken such interest in a man! She thought of him as she walked down the dry, crisp road to Darrach, and she wondered where he would be at that moment and whether the telegram she had dispatched to them at the St. Enoch’s Hotel, announcing their departure to Creagh, would bring him back to Glenogle before he finally set out on his long journey. She did not admit even to herself her secret hope that he would, but it was of him she thought as she approached Elspeth’s hospitable gate, of his deep and encompassing tenderness, his continuous thought for her, his earnest eyes looking into hers and assuring her of his devotion to her cause. She lingered on these thoughts, fully conscious of their comforting sweetness and wholly unaware that they heralded the dawn of love. She found Elspeth working at her baking board with a downcast face. The baby was asleep in the box-bed by the side of the fire-place, and the rest of the children were at school, even little Colin, aged three and a half, having been admitted to the infant room. "There you are at last, Miss Isla--a sicht for sair een. I said to Donald this morning that if it should be that you didna come the day, then I must go and seek for ye either at Achree or at Creagh. Where should I have found you?" "We are leaving Achree to-day, and it is at Creagh that you will find me, Elspeth," said Isla as she took the chair that Elspeth set for her by the well-scrubbed table. "I’ve come for my tea, Elspeth, and these scones smell as they ought. If the butter is newly churned, too, then I am in luck, and I will forget all about the rich meats that the American cook has been setting before us at Achree." "But it wass the right thing for you to be there, Miss Isla, and it was fery, fery good of the folk. From end to end of the Glen you’ll hear nothing but praise of them for it." "It was good," said Isla with quiet conviction. "And they’ll be stoppin’ on, at least for a while, at Achree, I hope?" "Yes, they will be stopping on indefinitely at Achree." "The little one--her they call Miss Sadie--comes here a lot, Miss Isla, and she hass the pairns quite crazy about her. The other day--it wass the day before the Laird died--she wass here drilling them in the yard. It was the funniest thing you ever saw in your life--and her so sweet and winsome wi’ them! There be some that are all for the other one, but she seems high and proud-like and hass little to say to the folk." "She has had a lot of trouble, Elspeth. Yes--I would like my tea now, and you to sit down and drink it with me."