When Wat awoke on the island and stirred his cramped limbs, on which the sun had already dried his wet clothes, in the warm and briskly stirring airs of the summer morning, he could hardly believe in the reality of his experiences of the night. One by one he remembered the passage of the cave, the Highland sentinel sleeping by his dying fire, his new and kindly protector, Bess Landsborough. Then last of all, and suddenly overflowing all his heart with mighty love (even as a volcano, Askja or Vatna, pours without warning its burning streams over icy provinces), the meeting with his love in the dusky undercloud of night rushed upon his memory and filled all his soul with a swift and desperate joy.

What wonder that the sweet, low voice he had heard call him "love" out of the darkness should in the broad common day scarce seem real to poor Wat Gordon of Lochinvar? He had passed through so many things to hear it. Also, ever since the death of Little Marie, he knew the accent of the voice that speaks not for the sake of "making love," but which unconsciously and inevitably reveals love in every syllable.

Wat had made love in his time, and ladies of beauty and repute not a few—my Lady Wellwood among the number—had made love to him. But he knew the difference now.

For love which must needs be "made" bears always the stamp of manufacture. True love, on the other hand, is a city set on a hill; it cannot be hid, and this is why the love-glance of a maiden's eye so eternally confutes the philosophers, and ofttimes lays the lives of the mighty, for making or marring, in the hollow of very little hands.

The day that succeeded this night adventure was a long one both for Wat and Kate. For the girl had been even less prepared for the astonishing event of the night than Wat himself. Providence, by the hand of Mistress Alister McAlister, had certainly worked strangely. Indeed, the only person wholly unmoved was that lady herself. She bustled about the flags of her kitchen, slapping them almost contemptuously with her broad bare feet, busy as a bee with her baking and brewing, like the tidy, thrifty, "eident"C Ayrshire good-wife that she was. Not a glance at Kate revealed that she had been instrumental in opening a new chapter in two lives only the night before.

When, midway through the forenoon, Alister brought his bulky body to the door-step, his loving wife drove him off again to the gateway of the tower with an aphorism which is held of the highest repute in the parish of Colmonel:

"Na, na, come na here for your brose—e'en get your meal o' meat where ye work your wark!"

And the stoop-shouldered giant coolly retreated without a word of protest, merely helping himself as he went out to a double handful of oatmeal from his wife's bake-board, for all the world like a theftuous school-boy, who keeps the while one eye on the master. With this he took his way to the spring which trickled down by the castle wall. And there, very deliberately and philosophically, he proceeded to make himself a dish of cold "drammoch" on the smooth surface of a stone which the water had hollowed.

"And mony is the hungry mouth that would be glad of it," said he, by way of grace after meat. For Alister was of the excellent and approven opinion that a dinner of herbs by the dikeside is better than a banquet of Whitehall with the sauce of an angry woman's tongue for seasoning thereto.

But when Bess Landsborough brought the prisoner his farles of cake and cool buttermilk (for it was "kirning day"), she took out also a handful of crisp bannocks for her husband. These she thrust under his nose with the sufficient and comprehensive monosyllable, "Hae!" And Alister accepted the act as at once honorable amend and judicious apology.

Nor was Alister behindhand in courtesy. For though the silent jailer did not utter a single word either to his wife or his prisoner, he drew his skean dhu and cut a whang from the sweet-milk cheese which he kept by him. To this he added a horn of strong island spirit, which of a surety proved very much to the taste of the late master-at-arms to their several Highnesses Louis, King of France, and William of Orange, Stadtholder of the Netherlands.

Thereafter, with consideration particularly delicate, he withdrew out of earshot and sat on a knoll before the castle, leaving his wife to talk at leisure to her ancient sweetheart. For Alister McAlister was a man without jealousy. He knew that he could keep his wife, even as he kept his head in battle, with the little wee point of his knife and the broad, broad blade of his claymore. And as for ancient sweethearts, what cared he for a peck of them? Bess Landsborough might have had a score of lovers in the 'Lowlands low'; yet had she not chosen to leave them all and follow him up the braes—aye, and over the sea straits, threading the ultimate islands till at last she had come to this barren holding of rock, scantily felted down with heather and peat, on the isle of Suliscanna?

But, on the other hand, Scarlett was not the man to lose his time, in spite of bonds and imprisonments.

"Ye are as weel-faured as ever, Bess. Ye were aye a bonny blithesome lass a' the days o' ye!" said he, complacently, as he munched his farles of cake and took sup about of usquebaugh from the horn and buttermilk from the pail.

"Havers!" said Mistress McAlister, "ye are an auld eneuch man to ken that ye canna blaw twice in my lug wi' the same flairdies. Ye forget I hae heard ye at that job before. And it lasted—hoo lang? Just e'en till your company rade awa' frae Girvan to Kirkcudbright, and then ye took up with Maggie Nicholson, the byre-lass o' Bombie, the very second week that ever ye were there! And telled her, I dare say, that she was weel-faured, blithe, and a bonny woman!"

"I see ye haena forgotten how to belie them that ye tried to break the hearts o', Bess Landsborough," said Scarlett, without, however, letting his broken heart interfere with a very excellent appetite. "Ye weel ken that ye sent me frae the door o' the Laggan wi' my tail atween my legs like a weel-lickit messan, and twa o' your ill-set cronies lookin' on at my shaming, too."

"I'm thinkin', my man John," retorted Bess Landsborough, "that ye had better say as little as ye can aboot that ploy. For the lasses were Mirren Semple o' the Auld Wa's and Meg Kennedy o' Kirriemore, that had come in the afternoon to keep me company. And as we sat talking ower ae thing after anither, we spak' amang ithers o' you, my braw trooper—Sergeant John Scarlett, no less, that rode so gallantly with the colors in his hand. And by this and that we had it made clear that ye had been for making up to a' the three o' us at once! An' so we compared your tricks. How ye had gotten doon on your knees and telled us that ye loved us best o' a' the world. Ye had kissed oor hands—at least, mine and Meg Kennedy's. But your favorite fashion was to take the skirts o' oor gouns and kiss the hem o' them, swearin' that ye wad raither kiss the border o' oor cloaks than the mouth o' the grandest woman in Scotland. (A' the three o' us!) Then ye asked for a curl cut off aboon our brows—at least, frae mine and Mirren Semple's. For Meg Kennedy never had sic a thing in her life, but had aye flat, greasy hair, sleekit like a mowdiewartD hingin' by the neck in a trap on a wat day. And her ye telled that ye couldna bide hair that wadna keep smooth, but was aye a'kinked and thrawn into devalls and curliewigs. Oh, sic a bonny, true-speakin', decent, mensefu' callant as the three o' us made ye oot to be! So when we had ye gye-and-weel through-hands, wha should ride up to the door but my gay lad himsel', this same braw cavalier. So Mirren and Meg and me, we gaed oot ontil the step and telled ye what we thocht o' ye. Ow aye, ye were a puir disjaskit cuif that day, Sergeant John Scarlett, for a' your silver spurs and your red sodjer's coat!"

D Mole.