th'----"

Timothy's sore heart rebelled at this last rifling of the shrine, and he
made for the door. Moira's sweet solicitude held him for an instant in
check. "Oh, Tim, ye'd best stay in an' warm your knee by the good fire.
I've a pile of mendin' to do, and you'll tell me all about your family in
th' West and how you farmed there. It'll be real cozy-like."

Timothy uttered an outraged sound and snatching up his pipes fled out of
the pleasant, low-ceilinged room, up the road, now white as chalk beneath
the newly risen moon. At the Round Stone he sat down and, putting his
pipes to his lips, he played resolutely through to the end "The Song of
Angus to the Stars." As the last, high, confident note died, he put his
pipes down hastily, and dropped his face in his hands with a broken murmur
of Gaelic lament.

When he looked abroad again, the valley was like a great opal, where the
moon shot its rays into the transparent fog far below him. The road was
white and the shadows black and one was no more devoid of mystery than the
other.

The sky for all its stars hung above the valley like an empty bowl above
an empty vessel, and in his heart he felt no swelling possibilities to
fill this void. To the haggard old eyes the face of the world was like a
dead thing, which did not return his gaze even with hostility, but
blankly--a smooth, thin mask which hid behind it nothing at all.

He was startled by the sudden appearance of a dog from out of the shadows,
a shaggy collie who trotted briskly down the road, stopping to roll a
friendly, inquiring eye on his bent figure. His eyes followed the animal