Never had I understood anything more clearly than I understood then.
Yes, yes! That would be it. Remembering all the waste of fear, how he
would stand and SMILE!

He was smiling himself, the golden gorse about him already losing its
flame in the light returning mist-wraiths closing again over it, when I
heard a sound far away and high up the moor. It sounded like the playing
of a piper. He did not seem to notice it.

"We shall be shut in again," he said. "How mysterious it is, this
opening and closing! I like it more than anything else. Let us sit down,
Ysobel."

He spread the plaid we had brought to sit on, and laid on it the little
strapped basket Jean had made ready for us. He shook the mist drops from
our own plaids, and as I was about to sit down I stopped a moment to
listen.

"That is a tune I never heard on the pipes before," I said. "What is a
piper doing out on the moor so early?"

He listened also. "It must be far away. I don't hear it," he said.
"Perhaps it is a bird whistling."

"It is far away," I answered, "but it is not a bird. It's the pipes, and
playing such a strange tune. There! It has stopped!"

But it was not silent long; I heard the tune begin again much nearer,
and the piper was plainly coming toward us. I turned my head.