clearness contrasted finely enough. Her brother, who understood her
very little, yet had for her an odd, appealing affection, strange in
one who had so positively settled what was life and the needs of life.
It was his habit to speak of her as though she were more helplessly
dependent even than other women. But at times there might be seen who
was more truly the dependent.

August passed into September, September into brown October. Alexander
and Ian were almost continually in company. The attraction between
them was so great that it appeared as though it must stretch backward
into some unknown seam of time. If they had differences, these
apparently only served in themselves to keep them revolving the one
about the other. They might almost quarrel, but never enough to drag
their two orbs apart, breaking and rending from the common center. The
sun might go down upon a kind of wrath, but it rose on hearts with the
difference forgotten. Their very unlikenesses pricked each on to seek
himself in the other.

They were going to Edinburgh after Christmas, to be students there, to
grow to be men. Here at home, upon the eve of their going, rein upon
them was slackened. They would so soon be independent of home
discipline that that independence was to a degree already allowed.
Black Hill did not often question Ian's comings and goings, nor
Glenfernie Alexander's. The school-room saw the latter some part of
each morning. For the rest of the day he might be almost anywhere with
Ian, at Glenfernie, or at Black Hill, or on the road between, or in
the country roundabout.

William Jardine, chancing to be one day at Black Hill, watched from
Mrs. Alison's parlor the two going down the avenue, the dogs at their