I need a little solitude to mend broken threads."

There was the true gentleman for you, and I sorrowed that I should ever
have misjudged him. He shook my hand in all brotherliness, and went
down the glen with Bertrand, who longed to see his children again.

Elspeth remained, and concerning her I fell into my old doubting mood.
The return of my strength had revived in me the passion which had dwelt
somewhere in my soul from, the hour she first sang to me in the rain.
She had greeted me as girl greets her lover, but was that any more than
the revulsion from fear and the pity of a tender heart? Doubts
oppressed me, the more as she seemed constrained and uneasy, her eyes
falling when she met mine, and her voice full no longer of its frank
comradeship.

One afternoon we went to a place in the hills where the vale of the
Shenandoah could be seen. The rain had gone, and had left behind it a
taste of autumn. The hill berries were ripening, and a touch of flame
had fallen on the thickets.

Soon the great valley lay below us, running out in a golden haze to the
far blue mountains.

"Ah!" she sighed, like one who comes from a winter night into a firelit
room. She was silent, while her eyes drank in its spacious comfort.

"That is your heritage, Elspeth. That is the birthday gift to which old
Studd's powder-flask is the key."

"Nay, yours," she said, "for you won it."