She looked down at herself with a smile for her gear and then took to the climb of the brae again, following the windings of the half-hidden path, choked with whins and the creep of the heather since the last time men had trauchled up here. Then, greatly cupped and entrenched and stone-shielded, she saw the summit tower above her, so close and high here the play of the gloaming it seemed to her while she stood and breathed if she stretched up her hand she could touch the lift—the bending bowl of colours that hung like a meikle soap-bubble above her head.

Treading through the staying drag of the heather she made her way under the shoggle of the walls to a high, cleared space with stones about, to the mass of stone where once the astronomers had come a hundred years before to take an eclipse of the moon or sun—some fairely or other that had bothered them and set them running and fashing about and peering up at the lift and gowking, and yammering their little supposings, grave: and all long gone and dead and forgotten. But they’d left a great mass of crumbling cement that made a fine seat for a wearied body—a silly old body out on a jaunt instead of staying at home with her work, eident and trig, and seeing to things for the morn—that the morn she might get up and see to more things.

That the reality for all folk’s days, however they clad its grim shape in words, in symbols of cloud and rock, mountain that endured, or shifting sands or changing tint—like those colours that were fading swift far in the east, one by one darkening and robing themselves in their grave-clouts grey, happing their heads and going to the dark…. Change that went on as a hirpling clock, with only benediction to ring at the end—knowledge that the clock would stop some time, that even change might not endure.

She leaned her chin in her hand and rested, the crumbling stone below her, below that the world, without hope or temptation, without hate or love, at last, at long last. Though attaining it she had come a way strewn with thorns and set with pits, like the strayings of a barefoot bairn in the dark—

She’d not failed in her bargain she told herself that night in the house on Windmill Place, been glad for the man with kindness and good heart, given that which he needed and that which he sought, neither shrinking not fearing. And he’d given her a pat Ay, lass, but you’re fine, and thrust her from him, assuaged, content, and slept sound and douce, alien, remote. Her husband, Ake Ogilvie.

She bit her lips till they bled in those hours that followed, seeking not to think, not to know or heed or believe when every cell of her body tingled and moved to a shivering disgust that would not cease—Oh, she was a fool, what had happened to her that wasn’t what she’d known, expected to happen? Idiot and gype to shiver so, she’d to sleep, to get up in the morning and get on with her work, get her man’s meat ready, his boots fresh-polished, sit by his side and eat in a kitchen, watch his slobberings of drink and his mouthings of food while he took no notice of her, read his paper, laced his boots and went showding out to look for a job, a contented childe…. She’d all that waiting for her the morn, all morns: sleep and be still, Oh, sleep and be still!