hought I did see it. But thanks to Mrs. Bal MacDonald, they'd got you
in their clutches, those two. It suddenly occurred to me when I lost
Mrs. James, to go and get your grandmother--bring her by force if she
wouldn't come. I knew she had a sneaking kindness for me, as a MacDonald
man. There was a queer bond of sympathy between us, which we'd both felt
when we met. All our worst faults are alike. I dashed off to
Carlisle--quickest way, by train, and threw myself on the old lady's
mercy--told her everything. She was a trump, though perhaps her desire
to help was as much a wish to thwart her daughter-in-law as anything
else. She was too rheumatic to come with me in the car. I suppose it was
a wild scheme! But she herself suggested my going to London to invite
the MacDonalds. She thought, if I offered inducements--and she was
right. It was an inspiration on her part."

"But," I broke in, "isn't it glorious not to have chaperons at all?"

He didn't answer in words. Yet he made me understand in a far more
emphatic and satisfactory way, that he agreed.

"You can imagine what I felt when you coolly went off from Ballachulish
with Norman and his sister," Ian went on. "Then I _did_ think it was all
up--that I had been a fool for my hopes and my pains, till dear old
Vedder hummed and hawed and apologized for taking a liberty, and
mentioned that Salomon had boasted he was going to get his 'party' to
Gretna Green in the shortest time on record. 'It's a plot!' I said to
myself, as Mrs. James had warned me. And five minutes later Vedder and I
and the Gray Dragon were off at a pace--well, I'm afraid we exceeded the
legal limit most of the way; but the gods looked after us."

"And so did the heather moon!" I added.

* * * * *

Now we are at Dhrum, our own dear purple island set in a sea of gold;
but first we went back to Carlisle and visited Grandma; and to please
her and Ian, I consented to be married all over again, in church, with a
special license and everything such as the conventional bride does,
though it seemed treacherous to that happy moment at Gretna Green, which
was like heaven after the valley of death. Grandma was wonderful to Ian,
and very nearly nice to me. Not an unkind word did she say of Barbara,
and she didn't even refer to my running away.

"You have had the sense to choose a real man, and the good fortune to
win him. I'd hardly have thought it of you. A MacDonald too!" she
rem