“Charlotte!” said I, taking in a sudden pity a step nearer and holding out my hand; but she only snatched her arm away fretfully and cried the more bitterly.

“Has your father been speaking unkindly to you?” I asked her, being much surprised.

She shook her head, and a wet handkerchief plashed on my hand like a sob as she shook it out.

“What is it, then?” I asked, more and more amazed at the turn things were taking. Never had I thought for a moment that Charlotte would not be as pleased and happy to have me as I was the reverse.

“Oh,” she burst out at last, sobbing between each hurried phrase, “I don’t blame you, Duncan. It’s all that horrid old cat, Miss Seraphina—Diabolina, the girls call her—she writes everything we do to our people at home. She’s always writing, and she spies on us, too, and listens—opens our letters! She has brought all this on me——”

“Brought what on you?” I inquired blankly.

“Having to marry you and all!” she said, and had recourse to her wet handkerchief again. But that being altogether too sodden to afford her any relief, she signalled to me, as if I had been Agnes Anne or another girl, to pass her mine. Fortunately for once I could do so without shame. For Miss Irma had been teaching me things—or at least the desire to appear well in her eyes.

Charlotte Anderson did not appear to notice, but went on crying.

“And don’t you want to marry me, Lottie?” I said softly, taking her hand. She let me now, perhaps considered as the proprietor of the handkerchief.

“Of course I don’t,” said she. “Oh, how could I?”

Now this, considered apart, was certainly hurtful to my pride. For, having frequently considered my person, as revealed in my mother’s big Sunday mirror, I thought that she could very well. On my side there was certainly nothing to render the matter impossible. Moreover, how about our walks and talks! She had, then, merely been playing with me. Oh, Perfidy, thy name is Woman!

I was silent and paused for an explanation. I soon got it, considered as before, as the sympathetic owner of the handkerchief.

“It’s Tam Galaberry,” she said, “my cousin, you know, Duncan. He used to come to see me ... before ... before you! But his sister went to Dumfries to learn the high-class millinery, and since then Miss Seraphina cannot thole him. As if he had anything to do with that. And she wrote home, and my father threatened Tam to shoot him with the gun if he came after me—all because we were cousins—and only seconds at any rate. Oh-h-h-h! What shall I do?”

I had to support Charlotte here—though merely as handkerchief-holder and in the purest interests of the absent Mr. Thomas Gallaberry.

But the relief to my own mind, in spite of the hurt to my pride, was immediate and enormous. But a thought leaped up in my heart which cooled me considerably.

“Oh, Lottie,” I said, as sadly as I could, “you have been false and deceitful. You have come near to breaking my heart——”

“I ken I have—I ken I have!” she cried. “Oh, can you ever forgive me?”“Only, Charlotte,” I answered nobly, “because I care for your happiness more than for my own!”

“Oh, Duncan, but you are good!” She threw herself into my arms. I really think she mistook me for Agnes Anne for the moment. But any consolations I applied were, as before, in the interests of Tam Gallaberry.

“I knew I was wicked and wrong all the time,” she said, “but when we walked out, you remember the dyke we used to lean against” (she glanced up at me with simple child-like eyes, tear-stained), “you must remember? Well, one of the stones was loose. And Tam used to put one letter there, and I took it out and slid it in my pocket, and put mine back the same! Agnes Anne was looking the other way, of course, and you—you——”

“Was otherwise employed than thinking of such deceit!” I said grandly.

“You were kissing me! And I let you—for Tam’s sake,” Charlotte murmured, smiling. “Otherwise the poor fellow would have had five miles to come that next day, and I could not bear that he should not find his letter!”

“No!” I answered dryly, “it would certainly have been a pity.”

She looked at me curiously.

“Do you know,” she said, “I always thought that you were playing, too!”

“Playing!” I exclaimed tragically. “Is it possible? Oh, Lottie!”

“Oh, I just thought it,” she said remorsefully. “I am sorry if it was true—if you do really care about me so much—as all that!”

I was still thinking of Tam Gallaberry. So apparently was she.

Virtue is its own reward, and so is mutual consolation. It is very consoling. Half the happy love stories in the world begin that way—just with telling about the unhappy ones that went before. You take my word for it—I, Duncan MacAlpine, know what I am talking about. Charlotte Anderson too.

So finally, after a while, I became very noble and said what a fine thing it was to give up something very precious for others. And I asked her if she could think of anything much nobler than willingly to give up as fine a girl as herself—Charlotte Anderson—for the sake of Tam Gallaberry? She thought awhile and said she could not.

So I told her we must keep up appearances for a time, till we had made our arrangements what to do. Charlotte said that she had no objections as long as Tam Gallaberry did not know. So I said that she could write a long letter that very night, and give it to Agnes Anne in the morning, and I would go out to the stone, and put it underneath.

Then she cried, “Oh, will you?” And thanked me ever so sweetly, asking if, when I was about it, would I bring back the one I found there and send it to her by my sister, in another envelope—“just over the top, you know, without breaking the seal. Because such letters were sacred.”

I said she need not trouble herself. I was only doing all this for her sake. I did not want to see what another man had to say to her!

And, if you will believe me, she was delighted, and said, “Now I know that you were not all pretending, but do care for me a little wee bit!”

Indeed, Charlotte was so delighted that it was perhaps as well for the smooth flowing of their love story that Tam Gallaberry was at that moment investigating their joint post office. For Lottie was a generous girl when her heart was moved, and though she kept the grand issues clear, she often confused details—as, for instance, whether the handkerchief was mine or my sister’s, and whether I was myself or Tam Gallaberry.

But I considered such slips as these pardonable at twenty. At that age forgetfulness is easy. Afterwards the prison doors close, and now I am not mistaken for Tam Gallaberry any more—and what is more, I don’t want to be. However, after a while I brought Charlotte to earth again, out of the exaltation of our mutual self-sacrifice, by the reminder that at that moment our fathers would be arranging as to our joint future—and that without the least regard for our present noble sentiments, or those of the happily absent Mr. Thomas Gallaberry.

She got down and looked at me, affrighted, her lips apart, and all panting like a bird newly ta’en in the hand.

“Oh, Duncan,” she cried, “you will help me, won’t you? You see how fond I am of you!”

I saw, exactly, but refrained from telling her that she had a strange way of showing it.

“I would do anything in the world for you,” she added,—“only I want to marry Tom. Ye see? I have always meant to marry Tom! So I can’t help it, can I?”

Her logic had holes in it, but her meaning was starry clear. I thanked her, and said that the best thing we could do was to take counsel together. Which we did there under the shelter of the great holly-bush. So much so that any one passing that way might have taken us for foolish lovers, instead of two people plotting how to get rid the one of the other.

What helped the illusion greatly was that it was a cold day, with every now and then a few driving flecks of snow. I had on a great rough Inverness cloak of my father’s, far too large for me. I asked Charlotte if she were warm. She said she was, but did not persist too much in the statement. So we left Tom Gallaberry out of the question, and set ourselves to arrange what we were to say to our two fathers.

“It will be terrible hard to pretend!” I said, shaking my head.

“It will be a sin—at least, for long!” she answered.

I exposed the situation. There was to be no immediate talk of marriage. Even her father had allowed that I must get through college first. He was to pay my fees as a doctor. I did not want to be a doctor. Besides, I could not take her father’s money——

Here Charlotte turned with so quick a flounce that she nearly landed herself in the little gutter which I had made with my stick to carry off the drainage of the slope behind.

“Not take the money? Nonsense!” she cried. “Father has more than he knows what to do with!”

She paused a while, finger on lip, meditating, the double ply of calculation, stamped on her father’s brow, very strongly marked on hers.

“Look here, Duncan,” she said caressingly, like a grown woman wooing to get her own way, so deep her voice was, “daddy is giving you that money because you are going to marry me, isn’t he?”

I signed, as well as I could, that Mr. Robert Anderson of Birkenbog considered himself as so doing.

She clapped her hands and cried out, as if she had stumbled on the solution of some exceedingly difficult problem, “Why, then, take the money and give it to Tom! He needs it for his farm—oh, just dreadful. He says the hill is not half stocked, and that a hundred or two more ewes would just be the saving of him!”

“But,” said I, “I shall be entering into an agreement with your father, and shall have to give him receipts!”“Well,” she continued boldly, “Thomas will enter into an agreement with you, if he doesn’t marry me—that is, if I am left on your hands—he will pay you the money back—or else give you the sheep!”

It will hardly be believed the difficulty I had to make Charlotte see the impossibility—nay, the dishonesty of an arrangement which appeared so simple to her. She thought for a while that I was just doing it out of jealousy, and she sulked.

I reasoned with her, but I might as well have tried logic on the Gallaberry black-faced ewes. She continued to revolve the project in her own mind.

“Whatever you—I mean we—can get out of father is to the good,” she said. “He will never miss it. If you don’t, I will ask him for the money for your fees myself and give it to Tom——”

“If you do!” I cried in horror,—“oh—you don’t know what you are talking about, girl!”

“You don’t love me a bit,” she said. “What would it matter to you? Besides, if it comes to giving a receipt, I can imitate your signature to a nicety. Agnes Anne says so.”

“But, Charlotte, it would be forgery,” I gasped. “They hang people for forgery.”

“No, they don’t—at least, not for that sort,” she argued, her eyes very bright with the working of her inward idea. “For how can it be forgery when it is your name I write, and I’ve told you of it beforehand? It’s my father’s money, isn’t it, and he gives it to you for marrying me? Very well, then, it’s yours—no, I mean it’s Tom’s because he means to marry me. At least I mean to marry him. Anyway, the money is not my father’s, because he gives it freely to you (or Tom) for a certain purpose. Well, Tom is going to be the one who will carry out that purpose. So the money is his. Therefore it’s honest and no forgery!”

These arguments were so strong and convincing to Charlotte that I did not attempt to discuss them further, salving my conscience by the thought that there remained his Majesty’s post, and that a letter addressed to her father at the Farmers’ Ordinary Room, in care of the King’s Arms, would clear me of all financial responsibility. But this I took care not to mention to Lottie, because it might have savoured of treachery and disturbed her.

On the other hand, I began urging her to find another confidant than Agnes Anne. She would do well enough for ordinary letters which I was to send on to Cousin Tom. But she must not know they were not for me. She must think that all was going on well between us. This, I showed her, was a necessity. Charlotte felt the need also, and suggested this girl and that at Miss Seraphina Huntingdon’s. But I objected to all. I had to think quick, for some were very nice girls, and at most times would have served their country quite well. But I stuck to it that they were too near head-quarters. They would be sure to get found out by Miss Huntingdon.

“It is true,” she meditated, “she is a prying old cat.”

“I don’t see anybody for it but Miss Irma, over at my grandmother’s!” I said, boldly striking the blow to which I had been so long leading up.

Charlotte gazed at me so long and so intently that I was sure she smelt a rat. But the pure innocence of my gaze, and the frank readiness with which I gave my reasons, disarmed her.

“You see,” I said, “she is the only girl quite out of the common run to whom you have access. You can go to Heathknowes as often as you like with Agnes Anne. Nobody will say a word. They will think it quite natural—to hear the latest about me, you know. Then when you are alone with Miss Irma, you can burst into tears and tell her our secret——”

“All——?” she questioned, with strong emphasis.

“Well,” I hastened to reply, “all that is strictly necessary for a stranger to know—as, for instance, that you don’t want to marry me, and that I never wanted to marry you——”

“Oh,” she cried, moving in a shocked, uneasy manner, “but I thought you did!”

“Well, but—,” I stammered, for I was momentarily unhinged, “you see you must put things that way to get Miss Irma to help us. She can do anything with my father, and I believe she could with yours too if she got a chance.”

“Oh, no, she couldn’t!”

“Well, anyway, she would serve us faithfully, so long as we couldn’t trust Agnes Anne. And you know we agreed upon that. If you can think of anything better, of course I leave it to you!”

She sat a long while making up her mind, with a woman’s intuition that all the cards were not on the table. But in the long run she could make no better of it.

“Well, I will,” she said; “I always liked her face, and I don’t believe she is nearly so haughty as people make out.”

“Not a bit, she isn’t——” I was beginning joyously, when I caught Lottie’s eye; “I mean—” I added lamely, “a girl always understands another girl’s affairs, and will help if she can—unless she has herself some stake in the game!”

And in saying this, I believe that for once in a way I hit upon a great and nearly universal truth.