Lottie. Aye, and ye can say to
Miss--what's her name--Thimbolina, the old dowager with the
corkscrews--with my compliments, that there's a sweet-milk cheese
ripening on the dairy shelves for her at Birkenbog. Hear ye that, lad?"

I took my leave as best I could. I felt I had hopelessly committed
myself. For though I had not said a word, I had not dared to reveal to
this fierce father, that being in love with another, I had been using
his daughter as a stalking horse.

"And, look here, Duncan lad," he said, "I'll just step up and have a
word with your father. The clearer understanding there is between
families on such like arrangements, the less trouble there will be in
the future!"

And he strode away out into the yard, halting, however, at the door to
call out in a voice that could be heard all over the neighbourhood,
"Come thy ways up to Birkenbog on Sunday and take a bit o' dinner wi'
us! Then thou canst see our Lottie and tell her how many times sweeter
she is than a sugar-plum! Ho, ho!"

He was gone at last and I fairly blushed myself down the street, pushing
my way between the ranks of the market stalls and the elbowing farmers.

"Are ye blind or only daft?" one apple wife called out, as I shook her
rickety erection of trestles and boards. She was as red in the face as
Birkenbog himself, for a cur with a kettle tied to its tail had taken
refuge under her stall, and she had been serving a writ of ejectment
with the same old umbrella with which she whacked thievish boys and
sheltered her goods on rainy days.

But I heeded not. I was seeking solitude. I felt that I wanted nothing
from the entire clan of human beings. I had lost all that I should ever
really love. Irma--Irma! And here was I, settled for life with one for
whom I cared not a penny!

By the time I had reached this stage, I had come out upon the bare woods
that mount the path by the riverside. I came to the great holly, a cave
of green shade in summer, and now a warm shelter in these tall solitudes
of wattled branches standing purple and black against the winter sky.

Ah, there was some one there already. I stepped out again quickly, but
not too fast to see that it was Charlotte Anderson herself I had
stumbled upon--_and that she was crying_!

CHAPTER XXVII

"THEN, HEIGH-HO, THE MOLLY!"

"Charlotte!" said I, taking in a sudden pity a step nearer and holding
out my hand; but she only snatched her arm away fretfully and cried the
more