Now amid all his preparations for departure nothing distressed him so much as the difficulty he found in trying to write something worthy of being placed in Meenie’s book. It was to be his last gift to her; she herself had asked for it; surely he ought to do his best? And perhaps it was this very anxiety that baffled him. Even of such small lyrical faculty as he possessed, he was in no sense the master. He could write easily enough at the instigation of some passing fancy; but the fancy had to come uncalled-for; it was not of his summoning. And now, in this hour of direst need, no kindly Ariel would come to help him. Walking across the lonely moors, with the dogs for his sole companions, or lying on a far hillside, and tearing twigs of heather with his teeth, he worried his brain for a subject, and all to no purpose. Perhaps, if praise of Meenie had been permissible—if he could have dared to write anything about herself in her own book—he might have found the task more easy; for that was the one direction in which his imagination was always facile enough. One morning, indeed, when he was coming down the Clebrig slopes, he saw Miss Carry and Meenie walking together along the road; and he had not much difficulty in shaping out some such verses as these—jingling the rhymes together without much concern about the sense, and then scribbling the result on the back of an envelope to see how it looked: _By Mudal’s river she idly strayed,_ _And drank afresh the morning breeze:_ _Tell me, you beautiful dark-eyed maid,_ _That’s come across the Atlantic seas—_ _See you our winsome Sutherland flower,_ _Her cheek the tint of the summer rose,_ _Her gold-brown hair her only dower,_ _Her soul as white as Ben Clebrig’s snows;_ _Blue as the ruffled loch her eyes,_ _Sweet her breath as the blossoming heather:_ _O do you think the whole world’s skies_ _Can see aught fairer than you together?_ _Sisters twain—one slender and dark,_ _Her cheek faint-tanned by the tropic south;_ _One northern bred, her voice like a lark,_ _The joy of the hills in her gladsome youth._ _Ben Clebrig shall judge—nay, shall keep the two,_ _And bind them in chains of love for ever;_ _Look to it, Clebrig; guard them true:_ _Sisters twain—and why should they sever?_ But even here there was a false note; and he knew it. Perhaps he was vaguely jealous of any alien interference: was not Meenie the sole and only care of the giant mountain? Anyhow, the verses were of no avail for Meenie’s book; and otherwise he did not care for them; so the envelope was crumpled up and thrown away. On the evening before the brother and sister were to leave for the south, Meenie came along to see them. Ronald had got quite accustomed to find Miss Douglas in the house of late; for Maggie needed a good deal of direction and help—the tearful little lass being sorely distraught at the thought of going away. But on this occasion it was himself she had come to seek.