es with which the late incident had filled him began
to quail, as he reflected upon her altered demeanour--the tears in her
eyes, the obvious fear which occupied her features, and the pains
she had taken to show, as plainly as delicacy would permit, that the
advances which she had made to him were limited to the character with
which the rites of the day had invested him. Her father looked on his
fallen countenance with something like surprise and displeasure.

"In the name of good St. John, what has befallen you, that makes you
look as grave as an owl, when a lad of your spirit, having really such
a fancy for this poor girl as you pretend, ought to be as lively as a
lark?"

"Alas, father!" replied the crestfallen lover, "there is that written
on her brow which says she loves me well enough to be my Valentine,
especially since you wish it, but not well enough to be my wife."

"Now, a plague on thee for a cold, downhearted goosecap," answered the
father. "I can read a woman's brow as well, and better, than thou, and
I can see no such matter on hers. What, the foul fiend, man! there thou
wast lying like a lord in thy elbow chair, as sound asleep as a judge,
when, hadst thou been a lover of any spirit, thou wouldst have been
watching the east for the first ray of the sun. But there thou layest,
snoring I warrant, thinking nought about her, or anything else; and the
poor girl rises at peep of day, lest any one else should pick up her
most precious and vigilant Valentine, and wakes thee with a grace
which--so help me, St. Macgrider!--would have put life in an anvil; and
thou awakest to hone, and pine, and moan, as if she had drawn a hot iron
across thy lips! I would to St. John she had sent old Dorothy on the
errand, and bound thee for thy Valentine service to that bundle of dry
bones, with never a tooth in her head. She were fittest Valentine in
Perth for so craven a wooer."

"As to craven, father," answered the smith, "there are twenty good
cocks, whose combs I have plucked, can tell thee if I am craven or
no. And Heaven knows that I would give my good land, held by burgess'
tenure, with smithy, bellows, tongs, anvil, and all, providing it would
make your view of the matter the true one. But it is not of her coyness
or her blushes that I speak; it is of the paleness which so soon
followed the red, and chased it from her cheeks; and it is of the
tears which succeeded. It was like the April showers stealing upon and
obscu