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Opportunity stood on tip-toe. The full tide of Duncan Rowallan’s affairs lipped the watershed, the stone dyke only standing between.

He turned towards her. Far away a sheep bleated. The sound came to Duncan scornfully, as though a wicked elf had laughed at his indecision.

He put out his hands across the rough stones to take her hand again. He touched her warm shoulders instead beneath the shawl. He drew her to him. Into the deep eyes luminous with blackness he looked as into the mirror of his fate. Now, what happened just then is a mystery, and I cannot explain it. Neither can Grace nor Duncan. They have gone many times to the very place to find out exactly how it all happened, but without success. Where they have failed, can I succeed?

I can only tell what did happen.

Duncan Rowallan seemed to rise into another world, as in his childhood he had often dreamed of doing, looking up and up into the fleecy waves of the highest cloudlets. Her lips beckoned to him in the gloaming, like a red flower whose petals have fallen a little apart. It came at last.

For the dyke proved too narrow, and in one swift electric touch their old world flew into flinders.

The stone dyke was not any longer between. Duncan Rowallan had overleaped it and stood by the side of Grace Hutchison.

* * * * *

The minister had come home to Howpaslet manse exceedingly elate. At last he had won the battle. The Kers had gone home gnashing their teeth. There was lament in the manse of the Calvins. After long endeavours he had got the farmer and the publican to vote for the dismissal of Duncan Rowallan. He smiled to himself as he came in. He was not a malicious man, but he could not bear being worsted in his own parish. His feeling against Duncan Rowallan was neither here nor there; but, indeed, the Kers were hard to bear.

His daughter met him with a grave face. The determined Hutchison blood ran still and sure in her veins.

“Father,” she said, “what I am going to tell you will give you pain: I have promised to marry Duncan Rowallan.”

The stern old minister swayed–doubting whether he had heard aright.

“Marry Duncan Rowallan, the dominie!” he said; “the lassie’s gane gyte! He’s dismissed and a pauper!”

“No,” she said; “on the contrary, he has got a mastership at the High School. I have promised to marry him.”

The old man said no word. He did not try to hector Grace, as he would have done any one outside the manse. Her household autocracy asserted itself even in that supreme moment. Besides, he knew that it would be so useless, for she was his own child. He put one hand up uncertainly and smoothed his brow vaguely, as though something hurt him and he did not understand.

He sat down in his great chair, and took up a little fire-screen that had stood many years by his chair. Grace had worked it as a sampler when as a little girl she went to the village school and had slept at night in his room in a little trundle-bed. He looked at it strangely.

“Grade,” he said, “Gracie–my wee Gracie!”–and then he set the fire-screen down very gently. “I am an old man and full of years,” he said. He looked worn and broken.

Grace went quickly and put her arms about his neck.

“No, no, father,” she said; “you have only gained a son.”

But the old man’s passions could not turn so quickly, not having the pliancy of youth and love. He only shook his head sadly.

“Not so,” he said; “I am left a lonely man–my house is left unto me desolate.”

Yet, nevertheless, Grace was right. He stays with them for a month every Assembly time, and lectures them daily on the relations of Church and State.