have
their ways. They would like to please you. But my heart is with them;
and a marriage-day would be no marriage-day to me that I did not spend
among my own people--my own people."

He was talking quite wildly. She had seen him in this mood once or twice
before, and she was afraid.

"But you know, Keith," said she, gently, and with averted eyes, "a great
deal has to be done before then. And a woman is not so impulsive as a
man; and you must not be angry if I beg for a little time--"

"And what is time?" said he, in the same glad and wild way--and now it
was his hand holding hers that was trembling. "It will all go by in a
moment--like a dream--when we know that the one splendid day is coming.
And I will send a haunch to the Dubh Artach men that morning; and I will
send a haunch to Skerryvore; and there will not be a man in Iona, or
Coll, or Mull, that will not have his dram that day. And what will you
do, Gerty--what will you do? Oh, I will tell you now what you will do on
that morning. You will take out some sheets of the beautiful, small,
scented paper; and you will write to this theatre and to that theatre:
'_Good-by--perhaps you were useful to me once, and I bear you no
ill-will: but--Good-by forever and ever!_' And I will have all the
children that I took to the Crystal Palace last summer given a fine
dinner; and the six boy-pipers will play _Mrs. Macleod of Raasay_ again;
and they will have a fine reel once more. There will be many a one know
that you are married that day, Gerty. And when is the day to be, Gerty?
Cannot you tell me now?"

"There is a drop of rain!" she exclaimed; and she suddenly sprang to her
feet. The skies were black overhead. "Oh, dear me!" she said, "how
thoughtless of us to leave your poor cousin Janet in that open boat, and
a shower coming on! Please give me your hand now, Keith. And you must
not take all these things so seriously to heart, you know; or I will say
you have not the courage of a feeble woman like myself. And do you think
the shower will pass over?"

"I do not know," said he, in a vague way, as if he had not quite
understood the question; but he took her hand, and in silence guided her
down to the rocks, where the boat was ready to receive them.

And now they saw the strange transformation that had come over the
world. The great troubled sea was all of a dark slate-green, with no
glad ripples of white, but with long-squally drifts of black; and a cold
wind was blowing