ad not travelled very far when it had not in six years reached the
good woman of Boshang Gate, who knew everybody's affairs between the two
stones of the parish. M'Iver and I shared the secret with MacLachlan and
the nurse of his dead lover; it went no farther, and it was all the
more wonderful that John should keep his thumb on it, considering its
relevancy to a blunder that made him seem a scoundrel in the eyes of
Mistress Betty. Once I proposed to him that through her father she might
have the true state of affairs revealed to her.

"Let her be," he answered, "let her be. She'll learn the truth some
day, no doubt." And then, as by a second thought, "The farther off the
better, perhaps," a saying full of mystery.

The Dark Dame, as I say, gave me the cure for a sore heart. Her news, so
cunningly squeezed from her by John Splendid, relieved me at once of the
dread that MacLachlan, by his opportunities of wooing, had made himself
secure in her affections, and that those rambles by the river to
Carlunnan had been by the tryst of lovers. A wholesome new confidence
came to my aid when the Provost, aging and declining day by day to the
last stroke that came so soon after, hinted once that he knew no one he
would sooner leave the fortunes of his daughter with than with myself.
I mooted the subject to his wife too, in one wild valour of a sudden
meeting, and even she, once so shy of the topic, seemed to look upon my
suit with favour.

"I could not have a goodson more worthy than yourself," she was kind
enough to say. "Once I thought Betty's favour was elsewhere, in an airt
that scarcely pleased me, and------"

"But that's all over," I said, warmly, sure she thought of MacLachlan.

"I hope it is; I think it is," she said. "Once I had sharp eyes on my
daughter, and her heart's inmost throb was plain to me, for you see,
Colin, I have been young myself, long since, and I remember. A brave
heart will win the brawest girl, and you have every wish of mine for
your good fortune."

Then I played every art of the lover, emboldened the more since I knew
she had no tie of engagement. Remembering her father's words in the
harvest-field of Elrigmore, I wooed her, not in humility, but in the
confidence that, in other quarters, ere she ever came on the scene, had
given me liberty on the lips of any girl I met in a lane without more
than a laughing protest Love, as I learned now, was not an outcome of
the reason but will's mastership. D