gin. The two saw each
other frequently, and were linked by that desultory companionship
of London life which sometimes indeed ripens into friendship, but as
often ends in a sudden quarrel. Such was the end of this acquaintance,
and one day some trifling difference having occurred between the
friends, a cartel reached Mr. Falconer couched in very haughty though
perfectly courteous language. These things were every-day matters in
such times, and very nonchalantly the challenged went in the early
morning to the appointed place to meet the challenger. Here the
versions of the story differ. Some say that Mr. Falconer and his
antagonist fought, but without witnesses; that the former got the
worst of the encounter, and remained at the other's mercy; that then,
_and not before_, the Countess Mary made herself known to him and
gave him his choice--a thrust from her sword or a speedy marriage with
herself. Others say that it was before the duel that she astonished
her lover by this discovery, and that the choice she gave him was
between marriage and ridicule.[A]

The fact of her marriage, and that it proved a happy one, is certain.
Mr. Falconer dropped his own name to assume that of Hay. The
countess was a devoted Jacobite and an earnest churchwoman. When
Presbyterianism had got the upper hand in Scotland, and was repaying
church persecutions with terrible interest, a Mr. Keith was
appointed to the Anglican parish of Deer. This was within the Erroll
jurisdiction, and it was not long before the zealous Countess Mary
came to the rescue of the congregation, who had assembled for some
time in an old farmhouse. In 1719 or '20 she had the upper floor of
a large granary fitted up for their accommodation, and this afforded
them a grateful shelter for more than a quarter of a century. Of
this same parish of Deer a curious story is told in the local annals,
showing how conservative and tenacious of traditions the north of
Scotland still was in 1711. The skirmish to which it relates goes
by the quaint title of the "Rabbling of Deer," and is thus reported:
"Some people of Aberdeen, in conjunction with the presbytry of
Deer, to the number of seventy horse or thereby, assembled on the
twenty-third of March, 1711, to force in a Presbyterian teacher in
opposition to the parish; but the presbytry and their satellites were
soundly beat off by the people, not without blood on both sides."

There was little of the martyr about the Scot of that war