"There isn't any reason in it."

"I dinna know about 'reason.' There's _being_ in it."

The tutor made as if to speak further, then, with a shake of his head,
thought better of it. Thirty-five years old, he had been a tutor since
he was twenty, dwelling, in all, in four or five more or less
considerable houses and families. Experience, adding itself to innate
good sense, had made him slow to discuss idiosyncrasies of patrons or
pupils. Strong perplexity or strong feeling might sometimes drive him,
but ordinarily he kept a rein on speech. Now he looked around him.

"What high summer, lovely weather!"

"Oh aye! It's bonny. Will ye be gaeing, since ye have na mair to say?"

English Strickland laughed and said good-by to Mother Binning and
went. The ash-tree, the hazels that fringed the water, a point of
mossy rock, hid the cot. The drone of the wheel no longer reached his
ears. It was as though all that had sunk into the earth. Here was only
the deep, the green, and lonely glen. He found a pool that invited,
cast, and awaited the speckled victim. In the morning he had had fair
luck, but now nothing.... The water showed no more diamonds, the lower
slopes of the converging hills grew a deep and slumbrous green. Above
was the gold, shoulder and crest powdered with it, unearthly,
uplifted. Strickland ceased his fishing. The light moved slowly
upward; the trees, the crag-heads, melted into heaven; while the lower
glen lay in lengths of shadow, in jade and amethyst. A whispering
breeze sprang up, cool as the water sliding by. Strickland put up his
fisherman's gear and moved homeward, down the stream.