They went through the woods, where the burn ran, rippling loudly, and the shadows were blue on the little, sandy path that wound among pines and birches. Neither spoke while they climbed the gradual ascent. They came out upon the height that ran in a long undulation to the far lift of mountain ranges. Under a solitary group of pines they sat down.
The woods of Kirklands were below them, and then the vast sea of purple, heaving in broad, long waves to the azure, intense and clear, of the horizon. The wind sighed, soft and shrill, through the pines above them, and far away they heard a sheep-bell tinkle. Beyond the delicate miniature of the village a wind-mill turned slow, gray sails. The whole world, seemed a sunlit island floating in the circling blue. Robbie sat at their feet, alert, upright, silhouetted against the sky.
“Robbie, Robbie,” said Gavan, gently, as he leaned forward and stroked the dog’s back. Eppie, too, stroked with him. The silence of his unknown grief weighed heavily on her heart and she guessed that though for him the pain of silence was great, the pain of speech seemed greater.
He presently raised himself again, clasping both hands about his knees and looking away into the vast distance. His head, with its thick hair, its fine, aquiline nose and delicately jutting chin, made Eppie think, vaguely, of a picture she had seen of a young Saint Sebastian, mutely enduring arrows, on a background of serene sky. With the thought, the silence became unendurable; she strung herself to speak. “Tell me, Gavan,” she said, “have you had bad news?”
He cast her a frightened glance, and, looking down, began to pull at the heather. “No, not bad news, exactly.”
Eppie drew a breath of dubious relief. “But you are so unhappy about something.”
After a pause he said, and she knew, with all the pain of it, what the relief of speaking must be: “I guess at things. I always feel if she is hiding things.”
“I wish I could think it; but I know not. I know what is happening to her.”
He was still wrenching away at the heather, tossing aside the purple sprays with their finely tangled sandy roots. Suddenly he put his head on his knees, hiding his face.
“Oh, Gavan! Oh, don’t be so unhappy,” Eppie whispered, drawing near him, helpless and awe-struck.