is the winter of parting. Yet it is all done quietly.

"We'll meet again, Shon," said Sir Duke, "and you'll remember your
promise to write to me."

"I'll keep my promise, and I hope the news that'll please you best is
what you'll send us first from England. And if you should go to ould
Donegal--I've no words for me thoughts at all!"

"I know them. Don't try to say them. We've not had the luck together,
all kinds and all weathers, for nothing."

Sir Duke's eyes smiled a good-bye into the smiling eyes of Shon. They
were much alike, these two, whose stations were so far apart. Yet
somewhere, in generations gone, their ancestors may have toiled, feasted,
or governed, in the same social hemisphere; and here in the mountains
life was levelled to one degree again.

Sir Duke looked round. The pines were crowding up elate and warm towards
the peaks of the white silence. The river was brawling over a broken
pathway of boulders at their feet; round the edge of a mighty mountain
crept a mule train; a far-off glacier glistened harshly in the lucid
morning, yet not harshly either, but with the rugged form of a vast
antiquity, from which these scarred and grimly austere hills had grown.
Here Nature was filled with a sense of triumphant mastery--the mastery
of ageless experience. And down the great piles there blew a wind of
stirring life, of the composure of great strength, and touched the four,
and the man that mounted now was turned to go. A quick good-bye from him
to all; a God-speed-you from the Honourable; a wave of the hand between
the rider and Shon, and Sir Duke Lawless was gone.