But the "morrow's morn" he was leaving the Glen, and, worse than all, no
one knew for why. A mystery hung over the cause of his going, a mystery
deepened by his own bearing during the past twelve months, for all these
months a heavy gloom had shrouded him, and from all that had once been
his delight and their glory he had withdrawn. The challenge, indeed,
from the men of Glen Urquhart which he had accepted long ago, he refused
not, but even the overwhelming defeat which he had administered to his
haughty challengers, had apparently brought him no more than a passing
gleam of joy. The gloom remained unlifted and the cause the Glen knew
not, and no man of them would seek to know. Hence the grief of the
Glen was no common grief when the son of Mary Robertson, the son of the
House, the pride of the Glen, and the comrade and friend of them all,
was about to depart and never to return.
His last day in the Glen Allan spent making his painful way through
the cottages, leaving his farewell, and with each some slight gift of
remembrance. It was for him, indeed, a pilgrimage of woe. It was not
only that his heart roots were in the Glen and knit round every stick
and stone of it; it was not that he felt he was leaving behind him a
love and loyalty as deep and lasting as life itself.
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