“Come,” she said, after a while, “let us go to my father!”

And now, the rubicon being passed, there shone a quick and alert gladness upon her face. Her feet scarcely seemed to touch the ground. The mood of sedateness had passed away, and she hummed a gay tune as we went down the stairs.

Alexander Gordon was coming across the yard to speak with his wife as Mary and I appeared hand in hand at the stair foot.

He stopped as it had been suddenly aghast when he caught sight of us.

“Mary!” he cried.

She nodded and made him a little prim curtesy.

“What means this?” he said, sternly.

“Just that Quintin and I love one another!”{351}

And as she spoke I saw the frown gather ominously on Alexander Gordon’s face. His wife came near and looked at him. I saw him flash a glance at her so quick, so stern, and full of meaning that the ready river of her speech froze on her lips.

“This is rank foolishness, Mary!” he cried; “go indoors this instant and get to your broidering. Let me hear no more of this!”

But the spirit of the Gordons was in the daughter as well as in the sire.

“I will not,” she said; “I am of age, and though in all else I have obeyed you, in this I will not.”

Glance for glance their eyes encountered, nor could I see that either pair quailed.

The Laird of Earlstoun turned to me.

“And you, sir, whom I trusted as my friend, how came you here under pretext of amity, thus to lead away my daughter?”

The question was fiercely spoken, the tone sullenly angry. Yet somehow both rang hollow.

I was about to answer when Mary interrupted.

“Nay, father,” she cried, looking him fearlessly in the face; “it was I that proffered my{352} love. He would not ask me, though I tried to make him. I had to tell him that I loved him, and make him ask me to marry him!”

Was it fancy that the flicker of a smile passed at that moment over the grim countenance of the Bull?

His wife was again about to speak, but he turned fiercely on her and bade her be silent.

“And now,” he said, turning to his daughter, “what do you propose to do with your man when ye have ‘speered’ him?”

He used the local country expression for a proposal of marriage. “I will marry him here and now,” she said; adding hastily, “that is, if he will have me.”

“Ye had better speer him that too!” said her father, grimly.

“I will do better,” cried Mary Gordon. “I will acknowledge him!”

And holding up my hand in hers she cried aloud: “I take you for my husband, Quintin MacClellan!” She looked up at me with a challenge in her eye.

“My wife!” was all that I could utter.

“Well,” said Sandy, “that is your bed made, my lassie. You have both said it before{353} witnesses. You must take him now, whether ye will or not!

“Hugh,” he cried, with a sudden roar towards the servants’ quarters. And from the haymow in the barn where he had been making a pretence of work a retainer appeared with a scared expression on his face.

“Run over to the cot-house at the road-end and tell the minister lad that the Dumfries Presbytery deposed to come to the Earlstoun and that smartly, else I will come down and fetch him myself!”

The man was already on his way ere the sentence was ended, and when the Laird roared the last words after him he fairly seemed to jump.

He was out of sight among the trees a moment after.

“Now,” said Alexander Gordon, “Mary and you have proclaimed yourselves man and wife. Ye shall be soundly married by a minister, and then ye shall go your ways forth. Think not that I will give you the worth of a boddle either in gear or land. Ye have asked me no permission. Ye have defied me. I say not that I will disown ye. But, at least, I owe you nothing.”{354}

“Father,” said Mary, “did I ask you for aught, or did Quintin?”

“Nay,” said he, grimly, “not even for my daughter.”

“Then,” said she, “do not refuse that for which you have not been asked!”

“And how may you propose to live?” her father went on triumphantly. “Ye would not look at him when he had kirk and glebe, manse and stipend. And now ye take him by force when he is no better than a beggar at the dykeback. That it is to be a woman!”

She kindled at the words.

“And what a thing to be a man! Ye think that a woman’s love consists in goods and gear, comfortable beds and fine apparelling!”

“Comfortable beds are not to be lightlied,” said her father; “as ye will find, my lass, or a’ be done.”

She did not heed him, but flashed on with her defiance.

“You, and those like you, think that the way to win a woman is to bide till ye have made all smooth, so that there be not a curl on the rose-leaves, nor yet a bitter drop in the cup. Even Quintin there thought thus, till he learned better.”{355}

She did not so much as pause to smile, though I think her father did—but covertly.

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