And at last she lay still with memories and ghosts, Εwan with dark hair and boy’s face, Ewan beside her, Ewan from the dust, who’d thought her the wonder of God in the wild, dear daftness of early love, Ewan whom she’d loved so and hated so, Ewan—oh, little need to come now, she’d paid the debt back that he’d given for her when they murdered him that raining morning in France, paid it to the last ounce, body and flesh. And then in the darkness another came, a face above her, blue-eyed, strong-lined, only a moment as that moment’s madness between them long syne. Not in longing or lust had they known each other, by chance, just a chance compassion and fear, foolish and aimless as living itself. Oh, Long Rob whose place was never with me, not now can you heed or help me at all….

Quiet and quiet, because not that third, not look at him or remember him. And she buried her face in the pillow not to see, and then turned and waited rigid: Robert.

And she saw him for the first time since he’d died Robert completed, who’d had no face in her memory so long, Robert with eyes and face and chin and the steady light of madness in his eyes. Robert not the lover but the fanatic, Robert turning from her coughing red in sleep in that last winter in Segget, Robert with red lips as he sat in the pulpit—she stared at him dreadfully in the close-packed dark, far under her feet the clocks came chiming while she lay and looked and forgot to shiver.

Not Ake alone, but beyond them all, or they beyond her and tormenting her. And she knew in that minute that never again in memory or reality might any man make in gladness unquiet a heart passed beyond lust and love alike—past as a child forgetting its toys, weeping over their poor, shattered shapes no longer, and turning dry-eyed to the lessons of Life.

Ewan tramped Duncairn in search of a job—he knew it would be too expensive a job to try and fight on the apprentice’s rights which Gowans and Gloag had torn up with his agreement. No chance of winning against them, of course, they could twist any court against a Red. He told that to Chris, cheery and cool; but his coolness was something different now. Cold and controlled he had always been, some lirk in his nature and upbringing that Chris loved, who so hated folk in a fuss. But now that quality she’d likened to grey granite itself, that something she’d seen change in Duncairn from slaty grey to a glow of fire, was transmuting again before her eyes—into something darker and coarser, in essence the same, in tint antrin queer. More like his father he seemed every day, if one could imagine that other Ewan with his angers and hasty resentments mislaid…. She told him that and he laughed and teased her: Only I’m a lot better looking! and she said absently he would never be that, there was over-much bone in his face.—And what job are you thinking of trying to get?