The breeze quickened from the south. The lugger sped through the water, and Stair Garland still sat dazed. Never had any man felt such a fool. Here he was firmly and legally wedded, and he dare not even address a word to his bride. He had spoken no syllable of gladness or affection—triple dolt—quadruple fool—prize-winner among idiots! He had nothing to say—he could say nothing. Nor was it the presence of a third person which prevented him. Perhaps, rather, something in Patsy's eye, and, though that he would not acknowledge, a lurking grimness in the smile about the wicks of Godfrey's mouth.

It was not courage that Stair lacked—only everything about Patsy awed him. He did not yet understand her. The whys and the wherefores of her actions were still completely dark to him.

But Patsy was not a young woman to wrap up her mind. When she had anything to say, she said it. So after they had turned about and were beating up against wind and tide for their island, under the lee of which they had been laid to all the afternoon, she vouchsafed an explanation—or at least as much of a vindication as Patsy ever permitted herself.

"Stair Garland," she said, "listen to me; and you, Godfrey McCulloch, take that Satanic leer off your face. You have no idea how unattractive it makes you look! You should be framed and hung up to frighten naughty children.

"I am sick of being looked after. I am weary of being educated and leading-stringed and chaperoned. Now I am going to chaperon myself for ever and ever. I told father I should do this if he pestered me with his princesses. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of coddling—I hate Hanover Lodge. I hate all the things Uncle Julian loves, except only some few books. I cannot even have little Miss Aline put over me. It is too cruel to tag her round after me, jigging this way and that like the skiff there in our wake. She was made and invented to abide at Ladykirk, and to rule over Eelen Young and the brass preserving-pans. Why, because I am a girl, should the poor lady be traiked all over the world in an agony of dispeace? So I married you, Stair. It is hard on you, I know. Being a gentleman you could not very well refuse when I asked you before the minister—"

Here Stair made an indefinite noise in his throat, which, if he could have spoken, would have been an eloquent statement-at-large of the state of his affections. He cursed himself for his imbecility. Louis Raincy, he felt sure, would have found the right thing to say—even the Poor Scholar—not to say any of the fine gentlemen whom Patsy had left behind in London. After all she had left them. That was one comfort. She had come to save him. But what in the name of the prince of darkness was that idiot of a Godfrey McCulloch grinning at? Surely there was nothing so absolutely strange about the situation. The man they had seen was a minister—the minister of a parish. He was in Geneva gown, and bands—such as they were. His session clerk was with him. The kirk register had been duly signed.

If that ugly, black-browed McCulloch would only stop grinning and take himself off—perhaps even yet he could put the matter right.

"I only wanted you to know, before we land," said the clear-cut, faceted voice of Patsy, ringing out the syllables like the pouring of little diamonds into a thin wine-glass, "that you, Stair Garland, must be my chaperon—no princesses or Miss Alines any more. You can protect me from grand dukes with no more courage and determination than you did before, but now you will have an open indubitable right in that you are my husband! But here we are at the island. And there down on the rocks, do you see, Stair, who are there to welcome us? Your sister Jean, and Whitefoot. And Kennedy—Kennedy McClure—!"

She hung about the neck of a stout red-faced man, who murmured all the time of the embrace, "Tut, lassie. Think shame, lassie!" and dabbed at his eyes and blew his nose with a bandanna handkerchief with the noise of many trumpets.

"Guid-day to ye, lass, and to you, Stair Garland! Ye hae a wild filly to gentle. Be not downcast if the job be a long one. She will be worth it."

"What, Jean, you are never going?" cried Stair, when he saw his sister preparing to accompany the Laird of Supsorrow into the lugger. Somehow it seemed that he could have seen his way plainer before him if Jean had stayed. But as Godfrey McCulloch hoisted the sail, he shouted, "Go she must. There are a pair of fathers away yonder in the Cairn Ferris Valleys to be contented. And I am not sure that they will be easy to satisfy. But your sister Jean and Kennedy McClure there, and this extract from the parish register signed by parish minister and session clerk will show them that you and your wife are beyond all pursuit. As for the prison-breaking and the law, there will doubtless be great riding and running, but I do not believe that here on Isle Rathan you will be in any way disquieted."

It was nine of the clock when Patsy and Stair stood on the shore of the Isle Rathan of many famous exploits, and watched the lugger with its cargo of three go dancing out on the full current of the Solway ebb.

The two were left alone and the island seemed incredibly small and strange about them—at least to Stair. But Patsy was not in the least put about. She did the honours of the old tower of the Herons. She led the way to where Jean had spread their first meal, and motioned Stair to his place. He sat down like an automaton and looked about him as if he were seeing through a haze. It was a large and pleasant kitchen, stone-floored, with oak furniture as old as the time of Patrick Heron and May Mischief his wife. A bright fire was burning on the old-fashioned hearth, and the room looked cosy enough in spite of the old small-paned windows. It had recently been put into order, and new, bright utensils hung upon the ranges of pins and hooks against the wall.

But Stair's food seemed to choke him, somehow. He felt the imperious need of speech.

"Oh, Patsy!" he began—but he got no farther. Patsy was in possession of the field in a moment.

"Stair," she said warningly, as she held up her hand to stop him; "Stair, you have never failed me yet. Don't let me trust you in vain. I married you because I had need of you—"

"Not," said Stair, speaking disjointedly, "not because you wanted to marry me—not because—you loved me?"

"Oh, I wanted to marry you! Yes, I wanted that. I needed you to help me to do what I could not do in any other way. But—wait a while. Neither you nor I know what love means yet. I certainly do not. I am too young. Meanwhile, you are the most dependable person in my world. Let love alone for a little. What difference can it make to you and me? Let us help one another, depend one on the other—I have run off with you, and if you are under age I dare say I could be put into prison for that. But that is the way of the Pict woman. What she wants, she takes. I ran away from London. I took you out of prison, and when I had you, I brought you here to live on herrings. I wanted to be rid of princes who pestered me to marry them, of royal dukes who ran away with me, of kind uncles and princesses who thought to make my bed all eider down and cotton wool, my food all rose-leaves and honey!"

"I understand—I understand," said Stair, with a certain fierce determination in his eye, "you shall have no cause to regret that you have chosen me as your squire and armour-bearer. I shall not claim more than is my due, and of what that is I have a very small opinion indeed!"

Patsy looked at Stair. He seemed to be understanding—almost too well. There was no need that he should remove himself to so vast a distance. She wanted them to be two comrades—two Crusoes without a man Friday, working harmoniously for the common good of the community. But Stair held out for a position frankly subaltern.

"If you will tell me what I am to do—you know the place better than I—it is time to do it!" He was outwardly calm, inwardly raging, as he spoke.

"There is, thank you, some water to bring in—the spring is within the courtyard. The well-rope has a bucket. Thank you!"

And Patsy was left alone. She thought Stair Garland long in returning. He had, indeed, looked into all the outbuildings, where he discovered a couple of cows that needed to be milked and let out on the dewy pastures for the night, fowls that must be shut up, and in the barn the remains of a once full mow of hay which would make excellent sleeping accommodation.

When he got back Patsy was covering up the fire for the night. She had washed the dishes, and dried them with a dispatch to which Julian Wemyss and he had never attained after months of practice on the Wild of Blairmore.

She listened to the relation of the discoveries he had made out of doors, and agreed when he told her that he must be on hand to drive the cows back to the byre at daybreak. As seen from the sea, there must be nothing to mark the island as inhabited.

"Remember to lock the door on the inside," he said. "I shall sleep in the barn that I may be ready for my work in the morning. You will be quite safe here in the tower. Good-night, Patsy!"

And without waiting for a single word he was gone into the darkness. Patsy had pictured something much more idyllic than this. How they would enjoy their first meal! How they would chatter over it like a pair of daws in the same nest. How they would fight their battles over again, Patsy telling all her adventures in London, of the Prince Eitel, the riding of the dukes, the balls and levees—how she had met with Kennedy McClure, and how she had come all the way in the Good Intent to save him. She had her night-rides, her plots and combinations to relate—how this parish would have sent so many, but could not have them up to time—how another set of good lads were terrorized by a wrathful overlord.

From Stair she would sit and listen to the story of the defence of the Bothy on the Wild. She would hear of the Princess's letter to her uncle, how they passed the long dark winter months when the snow blocked all, the coming of spring, the cutting of the dunes by the company of sappers, and the capture. But instead, it was all distant and dry. A "Good-night" such as one might have thrown at a dog—no, he would not throw the word at Whitefoot. For even as she passed the postern window, looking out she saw Stair crossing the court in the direction of the barn, side by side with Whitefoot. The dog's eyes were raised to those of his master in a kind of adoration, and his tail waved triumphantly. As Stair bent to stroke the dog's head, Patsy became conscious of a strange new thing within her.

It was something she had never felt before, though almost any other woman would have diagnosed at once. It was, in fact, nothing less than her first twinge of jealousy.

She chose to forget all the wise precepts by which she had regulated Stair's conduct toward her. She forgot how she had carefully explained to him that all the duties were to be on his side, and all the benefits on hers.

"He did not even shake hands," she thought, looking at the wrist which the Prince and other great gentlemen has so often fervently kissed, "and yet he can stop to pat that dog's head!"

Nobody had told Patsy that marriage is a dish that cannot be eaten by one while the other looks on. She had chosen her way. She had carried it through, and now in spite of the luminous explanations which she had given Stair as to their relative positions and duties, he had chosen to misunderstand, and had marched off straight as a ramrod.

And she caught herself murmuring over and over to herself, "Stiff-necked and rebellious—stiff-necked and rebellious!"

It was to Stair she referred, but the accompanying stamp of the little foot might possibly have raised doubts as to the correctness of her application, had any been there to see.