This was his true career. Let others have the applause of
excited indoor folk or dull visionaries; for him a man's path, a man's
work, and a man's commendation.
The moon was up, riding high in a shoreless sea of blue, and in the
still weather the streams called to each other from the mountain sides,
as in some fantastic cosmic harmony. High on the ridge shoulder the
lights of Etterick twinkled starlike amid the fretted veil of trees. A
sense of extraordinary and crazy exhilaration, the recoil from the
constraint of weeks, laid hold on his spirit. He hummed a dozen
fragments of song, and at times would laugh with the pure pleasure of
life. The quixotic, the generous, the hopeless, the successful;
laughter and tears; death and birth; the warm hearth and the open
road--all seemed blent for the moment into one great zest for living.
"I'll to Lochiel and Appin and kneel to them," he was humming aloud,
when suddenly his bridle was caught and a man's hand was at his knee.
"Lewie," cried Wratislaw, "gracious, man! have you been drinking?" And
then seeing the truth, he let go the bridle, put an arm through the
stirrup leathers, and walked by the horse's side. "So that's the way
you take it, old chap? Do you know that you are a discredited and
defeated man? and yet I find you whistling like a boy. I have hopes
for you, Lewie. You have the Buoyant Heart, and with that nothing can
much matter.
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