So she climbed up the stairs and stood in that, the room above her own, next to Ewan’s, half-dark and quite empty but for its shadows. It had had no lodger a three months now, Ellen Johns herself had never come back from that week-end she’d gone away with Ewan: Ewan himself had come back mud-splashed as though he’d been walking the roads like a tink. And then next day a messenger had come with a little note, asking Mrs Ogilvie if she’d pack Ellen’s things, Ellen was too busy to come herself and here was a week’s pay in place of notice. And she hoped Mrs Ogilvie would be awfully happy….

Chris had ceased wondering on that long ago; but now, going down to the kitchen where Ewan sat and the fire was whooming and the supper near ready, she minded it as in an ancient dream. As she closed the door Ewan looked up, he’d been deep for hours in papers and lists, marking off items of marching equipment, addresses, routes, notes for speeches: Chris had looked over his shoulder earlier and seen the stuff and left him a-be. But now, with that distant stare upon her, she asked if he’d ever seen Ellen since then?

He said Seen whom? and looked blank, and then shook his head. Not a glimpse. Why?

Chris said Oh nothing, she’d just wondered about her; and Ewan nodded, forgetting them both, finishing his lists while she laid the supper, the house unquiet without furnishing, filled with rustlings and little draughts. Then she called Ewan to supper and they ate in silence, night without close down on Duncairn.

He said suddenly and queerly The Last Supper, Chris. Will you manage all right where you’re going?

She said that he need have no fear of that, she was going to what she wanted, the same as he was going. And they smiled at each other, both resolute and cool, and Chris cleared the table and re-stoked the fire and they sat either side and watched the fire-lowe and heard the spleiter of the wet on the panes. And Ewan sat with his jaw in his hand, the briskness dropped from him, the hard young keelie with the iron jaw softening a moment to a moment’s memory: Do you mind Segget Manse and the lawn in Spring?

Chris said that she minded, and smiled upon him, in pity, seeing a moment how it shook him, she herself beyond Such quavers ever again. But his thoughts had gone back to other things in Segget: that day that Robert had died in the kirk—did Chris mind the creed he’d bade men seek out, a creed as clear and sharp as a knife? He’d never thought till this minute that that was what he himself had found—in a way, he supposed, Robert wouldn’t have acknowledged, a sentimentalist and a softie, though a decent sort, Robert.

Chris stirred the fire, looking into it, hearing the Spring wind rising over Duncairn, unending Spring, unending Spring! …. Rain tomorrow, Ewan said from the window, rotten for the march, but they’d got those boots. Then he came and sat down and looked at her, and asked her, teasing, of what she was dreaming. She said Of Robert and this faith of yours. The world’s sought faiths for thousands of years and found only death or unease in them. Yours is just another dark cloud to me—or a great rock you’re trying to push up a hill.