a little lace kerchief
from her bosom, she sank her head into it in apparent abandonment of
grief.

"Oh, what shall I do?" she wailed, "Sholto says he will not marry me,
and I have asked him so sweetly. What shall I do? What shall I do? I
will e'en go and drown me in the Dee water!"

And with her kerchief still held to her eyes--or at least (to be
wholly accurate) to one of them--the despised maiden ran towards the
river bank. She did not run very fast, but still she ran.

Now this was more than Sholto had bargained for, and he in turn
pursued her light-foot, swifter than he had ever run in his life. He
overtook her just as she reached the little ascent of the rocks by the
river margin.

His hand fell upon her shoulder and he turned her round. She was still
shaking with sobs--or something.

"I will--I will, I _will_ drown myself!" she cried, her kerchief
closer to her eyes.

"I will marry you--I will do anything. I love you, Maud!"

"You do not--you cannot!" she cried, pushing him fiercely away, "you
said you would not! That I was not fit to marry."

"I did not mean it--I lied! I did not know what I said! I will do
whatever you bid me!" Sholto was grovelling now.

"Then you will marry me--if I do not drown myself?"

She spoke with a sort of relenting, delicious and tentative.

"Yes--yes! When you will--to-morrow--now!"

She dropped the kerchief and the laughing eyes of naughty Maud
Lindesay looked suddenly out upon Sholto like sunshine in a dark
place. They were dry and full of merriment. Not a trace of tears was
to be discerned in either of them.

Then she gave another little skip, and, catching him by the arm,
forced him to walk with her toward Castle Thrieve.

"Of course you will marry me, silly! You could not help yourself,
Sholto--and it shall be when I like too. But now that you have been so
stern and crusty with me, I am not sure that I will not take Landless
Jock after all!"

* * * * *

This is the end, and yet not the end. For still, say the country folk,
when the leaves are greenest by the lakeside, when the white thorn is
whitest and the sun drops most gloriously behind the purpling hills of
the west, when the children sing like mavises on the clachan greens,
you may chance to spy under the Three Thorns of Carlinwark a lady
fairer than mortal eye hath seen. She will be sitting gracefully on a
white palfrey and hearkening to the bairns singing by the watersi