"What is it all for?" she asked dreamily, her eyes gazing out on
the calm ecstasy of colour, which seemed to have broken the bonds
of law, and ushered in a new chaos, fit matrix of new heavens and
new earth.
"To catch herrin'," answered Malcolm, ignorant of the mood that
prompted the question, and hence mistaking its purport.
But a falling doubt had troubled the waters of her soul, and through
the ripple she could descry it settling into form. She was silent
for a moment.
"I want to know," she resumed, "why it looks as if some great thing
were going on. Why is all this pomp and show? Something ought to
be at hand. All I see is the catching of a few miserable fish! If
it were the eve of a glorious battle now, I could understand it
--if those were the little English boats rushing to attack the
Spanish Armada, for instance. But they are only gone to catch fish.
Or if they were setting out to discover the Isles of the West, the
country beyond the sunset!--but this jars."
"I canna answer ye a' at ance, my leddy," said Malcolm; "I maun
tak time to think aboot it. But I ken brawly what ye mean." Even
as he spoke he withdrew, and, descending the mound, walked away
beyond the bored craig, regardless now of the far lessening sails
and the sinking sun. The motes of the twilight were multiplying fast
as he returned along the shore side of the dune, but Lady Florimel
had vanished from its crest. He ran to the top: thence, in the dim
of the twilight, he saw her slow retreating form, phantom-like,
almost at the grated door of the tunnel, which, like that of a
tomb, appeared ready to draw her in, and yield her no more.
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