a girl as fine as silk and as tender as
a flower you could crush in your hand with a touch ungentle, and you
saw one holding her with that sort of a touch,--even if it was meant
in love,--I'll not be unjust, he loved her as few love their
sisters--but he could not grasp her thus; I ask you what would you
do?"

"If I were a true man, and had a right to my manhood, I would take
her. I'd follow her to the ends of the earth."

"Right, my son--I did that. I took the little money I had from my
labor at the bank--all I had saved, and I went bravely to those two
old women--her aunts, and they turned me from their door. It was what
they had been enjoined to do. They said I was after the money and
without conscience or thrift. With the Scotch, often, the confusion is
natural between thrift and conscience. Ah, don't I know! If a man is
prosperous, he may hold out his hand to a maid and say 'Come,' and all
her relatives will cry 'Go,' and the marriage bells will ring. If he
is a happy Irishman with a shrunken purse, let his heart be loving and
true and open as the day, they will spurn him forth. For food and
raiment will they sell a soul, and for household gear will they clip
the wings of the little god, and set him out in the cold.

"But the arrow had entered Katherine's heart, and I knew and bided my
time. They saw no more of me, but I knew all her goings and comings. I
found her one day on the moor, with her collie, and her cheeks had
lost their color, and her gray eyes looked in my face with their tears
held back, like twin lakes under a cloud before a storm falls. I took
her in my arms, and we kissed. The collie looked on and wagged his
tail. It was all the approval we ever got from the family, but he was
a knowing dog.

"Well, then we walked hand in hand to a village, and it was near
nightfall, and we went straight to a magistrate and were married. I
had a little coin with me, and we stayed all night at an inn. There
was a great hurrying and scurrying all night over the moors for her,
but we knew naught of it, for we lay sleeping in each other's arms as
care free and happy as birds. If she wept a little, I comforted her.
In the morning we went to the great house where the aunts lived in the
town, and there, with her hand in mine, I told them, and the storm
broke. It was the disgrace of having been married clandestinely by a
magistrate that cut them most to the heart; and yet, what did they
think a man would do? And they