what he saw there. He had seen the blue but gloomy eyes of the
western Highlander troubled by as many tempests as his own west
Highland seas, but there had always been a fixed star of faith
behind the storms. Now the star had gone out, and there was only
misery.

Yet MacIan had the strength to answer the question where
Turnbull, taken by surprise, had not the strength to ask it.

"They are right, they are right!" he cried. "O my God! they are
right, Turnbull. I ought to be here!"

He went on with shapeless fluency as if he no longer had the
heart to choose or check his speech. "I suppose I ought to have
guessed long ago--all my big dreams and schemes--and everyone
being against us--but I was stuck up, you know."

"Do tell me about it, really," cried the atheist, and, faced with
the furnace of the other's pain, he did not notice that he spoke
with the affection of a father.

"I am mad, Turnbull," said Evan, with a dead clearness of speech,
and leant back against the garden seat.

"Nonsense," said the other, clutching at the obvious cue of
benevolent brutality, "this is one of your silly moods."

MacIan shook his head. "I know enough about myself," he said, "to
allow for any mood, though it opened heaven or hell. But to see
things--to see them walking solid in the sun--things that can't