which were gathered aloft into sponges all water and no sponge; and
from this, through many an airy, many an earthy channel, deflowered
of its mystery, his ancient, self-producing fountain to a holy
merry river, was FED--only FED! He grew very sad, and well he
might. Moved by the spring eternal in himself, of which the love in
his heart was but a river-shape, he turned away from the deathened
stream, and without knowing why, sought the human elements about
the place.



CHAPTER II.

THE KITCHEN.

He entered the wide kitchen, paved with large slabs of slate. One
brilliant gray-blue spot of sunlight lay on the floor. It came
through a small window to the east, and made the peat-fire glow red
by the contrast. Over the fire, from a great chain, hung a
three-legged pot, in which something was slowly cooking. Between
the fire and the sun-spot lay a cat, content with fate and the
world. At the corner of the fire sat an old lady, in a chair
high-backed, thick-padded, and covered with striped stuff. She had
her back to the window that looked into the court, and was knitting
without regarding her needles. This was Cosmo's grandmother. The
daughter of a small laird in the next parish, she had started in
life with an overweening sense of her own importance through that
of her family, nor had she lived long enough to get rid of it. I
fancy she had clung to it the more that from the time of her
marriage nothing had seemed to go well with the family into which