could have struck her
for.

"O, smile away!" I cried. "I have seen your bonny father smile on the
wrong side this day. Not that I mean he was afraid, of course," I added
hastily, "but he preferred the other way of it."

"What is this?" she asked.

"When I offered to draw with him," said I.

"You offered to draw upon James More?" she cried.

"And I did so," said I, "and found him backward enough, or how would we
be here?"

"There is a meaning upon this," said she. "What is it you are meaning?"

"He was to make you take me," I replied, "and I would not have it. I
said you should be free, and I must speak with you alone; little I
supposed it would be such a speaking! _And what if I refuse?_ says
he.--_Then it must come to the throat-cutting_, says I, _for I will no
more have a husband forced on that young lady than what I would have a
wife forced upon myself_. These were my words, they were a friend's
words; bonnily have I been paid for them! Now you have refused me of
your own clear free will, and there lives no father in the Highlands, or
out of them, that can force on this marriage. I will see that your
wishes are respected; I will make the same my business, as I have all
through. But I think you might have that decency as to affect some
gratitude. 'Deed, and I thought you knew me better! I have not behaved
quite well to you, but that was weakness. And to think me a coward, and
such a coward as that--O my lass, there was a stab for the last of it!"

"Davie, how would I guess?" she cried. "O, this is a dreadful business!
Me and mine"--she gave a kind of wretched cry at the word,--"me and mine
are not fit to speak to you. O, I could be kneeling down to you in the
street, I could be kissing your hands for your forgiveness!"

"I will keep the kisses I have got from you already," cried I. "I will
keep the ones I wanted and that were something worth; I will not be
kissed in penitence."

"What can you be thinking of this miserable girl?" says she.

"What I am trying to tell you all this while!" said I, "that you had
best leave me alone, whom you can make no more unhappy if you tried, and
turn your attention to James More, your father, with whom you are like
to have a queer pirn to wind."

"O, that I must be going out into the world alone with such a man!" she
cried, and seemed to catch herself in with a great effort. "But trouble
yourself no more for that," said she. "He does not know what kind of
nature is in