me knight-errant like those she
had read about in the stories which her stepmother had forbidden her to
read. His mode of speech, his appearance, his sunny laugh, all made
her realise that there was a world hitherto unknown to her, but which
she now longed to enter.

This meeting led to others, until Douglas's friends began to wonder why
he so often desired to leave them and wander away alone. A few days
before the time when his visit to "Highlands" was to come to an end he
found Jean strangely perturbed. She was overwhelmed by some great
emotion, but she would not speak to him concerning it. At length,
however, with much hesitation, she confessed to him that she was
troubled greatly. "I have to be married," she said.

"Married, Jean!" he cried; "to whom--why?"

"To Willie Fearn," was her reply. "Father told me so last night."

"But why? Do you love him?" he asked.

"Nay, I hate him," was the reply, "especially since----" And then she
ceased speaking, her face becoming crimson. "Father says I shall never
get such a good chance again," she went on presently. "He has the best
farm hereabouts, and could give me a good home, and my stepmother, she
wants to get rid of me--but I hate him, I hate him!"

"Then you will not marry him?" said Douglas.

"What can I do?" replied the girl; "for more than a year they have been
trying to persuade me, and father owes him money, too, and Willie says
he will forgive him ever paying if I will marry him." And the girl
burst out sobbing.

Douglas was young and romantic. The Scotch side of his nature told him
that the resolution born in his mind was utterly mad, but this was
utterly destroyed by feelings of pity, and what to him was greater than
pity--a wild passion for the girl at his side. So, not thinking of
what his determination might mean, nor dreaming of what the future had
in store for him, he told Jean that she must never think of marrying
the farmer.

"But how can I help it?" she asked. "They never let me rest, and,
while I hate him, how can I dare disobey my father and my mother?
Besides, when the minister came to tea at our house last week, he spoke
of it as a thing settled, and said that Willie would soon be made an
elder of the kirk. He thought it would be a grand thing for me, I
suppose, to be an elder's wife--but how can I--how can I?"

I need not describe at length what followed. The young fellow casting
caution to the winds, mapped out his plan, a