In Secret

In the intense stillness from far across the noon-day world she heard the bells of Banff--a far, sweet reiteration stealing inland on the wind. She had never been so happy in her life.

Swinging back across the moor together, he with slanting rod and weighted creel, she with her wind-blown yellow hair and a bunch of reed at her belt in his honour, both seemed to understand that they had had their hour, and that the hour was ending--almost ended now.

They had remained rather silent. Perhaps grave thoughts of what lay before them beyond the bright moor's edge--beyond the far blue horizon--preoccupied their minds. And each seemed to feel that their play-day was finished--seemed already to feel physically the approach of that increasing darkness shrouding the East--that hellish mist toward which they both were headed--the twilight of the Hun.

Nothing stained the sky above them; a snowy cloud or two drifted up there,--a flight of lapwings now and then--a lone curlew. The long, squat white-washed house with its walled garden reflected in Isla Water glimmered before them in the hollow of the rolling hills.

McKay was softly and thoughtfully whistling the "Lament for Donald"--the lament of CLAN AOIDH--his clan.

"That's rather depressing, Kay--what you're whistling," said Evelyn Erith.

He glanced up from his abstraction, nodded, and strode on humming the "Over There" of that good bard George of Broadway.

After a moment the girl said: "There seem to be some people by Isla Water."

His quick glance appraised the distant group, their summer tourist automobile drawn up on the bank of Isla Water near the Bridge, the hampers on the grass.

"Trespassers," he said with a shrug. "But it's a pretty spot by Isla Bridge and we never drive them away."

She looked at them again as they crossed the very old bridge of stone. Down by the water's edge stood their machine. Beside it on the grass were picnicking three people--a very good-looking girl, a very common-looking stout young man in flashy outing clothes, and a thin man of forty, well-dressed and of better appearance.

The short, stout, flashy young man was eating sandwiches with one hand while with the other he held a fishing-rod out over the water.

McKay noticed this bit of impudence with a shrug. "That won't do," he murmured; and pausing at the parapet of the bridge he said pleasantly: "I'm sorry to disturb you, but fishing isn't permitted in Isla Water."

At that the flashy young man jumped up with unexpected nimbleness--a powerful frame on two very vulgar but powerful legs.

"Say, sport," he called out, "if this is your fish-pond we're ready to pay what's right. What's the damage for a dozen fish?"