h, or
your youth and beauty. I declare to you, Nelly Carnegie, your face is
fairer to me, lying lily white on your pillow there, than when it was
fresh like that rose; and when others deserted you and left you forlorn,
I thought I might try again, and wha kent but the ill would be blotted
out for the very sake of the strong love that wrought it?"

A dimness came across Nelly's eyes, and a faintness over her choking
heart; but she pressed her hands upon her breast, and strove against it
for the sake of her womanhood.

"And I dreamed," she answered slowly and tremulously, "that it bude to
be true, true love, however it had sinned, that neither slight nor
hate, nor absence nor fell decay could uproot; and that could tempt me
to break my plighted word, and lay my infirmity on the man that
bargained for me like gear, and that I swore--Heaven absolve me!--I
would gar rue his success till his deein' day. Adam Home, what are you
seekin' at my hands?"

"Nae mair than you'll grant, Nelly Carnegie--pardon and peace, and my
young gudewife, the desire o' my eyes. I'll be feet to you, Nelly, as
long's I'm to the fore."

"Big tramping feet, Staneholme," said Nelly, trying to jest, and pushing
him back; "dinna promise ower fair. Na, Adam Home, you'll wauken the
bairn!"

So Staneholme bought the grand new family coach of which the Homes had
talked for the last generation; and Lady Carnegie curtsied her
supercilious adieus, and hoped her son and daughter would be better
keepers at home for the future. And Nanny Swinton wore her new gown
and cockernonie, and blessed her bairn and her bairn's bairn, through
tears that were now no more than a sunny shower, the silver mist of
the past storm.

There was brooding heat on the moors and a glory on the sea when
Staneholme rode by his lady's coach, within sight of home.

"There will be no great gathering to-night, Staneholme; no shots or
cheers; no lunt in the blue sky; only doubt and amaze about an old man
and wife: but there will be two happy hearts that were heavy as stane
before. Well-a-day! to think I should be fain to return this way!"

Staneholme laughed, and retorted something perhaps neither quite modest
nor wise; but the ready tongue that had learnt so speedily to pour
itself out to his greedy ears did not now scold and contradict him, but
sighed--

"Ah, Adam Home, you do not have the best of it; it is sweet to be beat;
I didna ken--I never guessed that."

Gladly astounded