Henceforth Fletcher’s life was that of a private ‘person of quality.’ He never married. When asked the reason why, he used to answer, ‘My brother has got the woman that should have been my wife.’ This was Margaret Carnegie, the eldest daughter of Sir David Carnegie of Pittarrow. Perhaps Andrew Fletcher did not attract her--‘the low, thin man of brown complexion, full of fire, with a stern, sour look,’ to quote the well-known description of the Laird of Saltoun. At all events she fell in love with Henry, the younger brother, who, besides, had this in his favour, that Andrew was an outlaw in Holland while he was paying his court to the young lady. Her father was at first against the marriage; but the young people insisted on having their own way, and they were married on the 27th of April 1688.[21] The couple were very poor, and Henry became tenant of the mill at Saltoun, after the estate had been restored to his brother. Mrs. Henry Fletcher was a woman of great capacity, and it was she who, acting probably on hints given by her brother-in-law, got machinery from Holland, introduced the Dutch system of making ‘pot barley,’ till then unknown in Scotland, imported a winnowing machine, or fanners, and, in short, was the founder of the Saltoun Barley Mill, which was a household word in Scotland for many years. ‘So jealous,’ says Sir William Fraser, ‘was Lady Saltoun of the secret of the construction of her machinery, and so anxious was she to retain a monopoly of this particular trade, that, whilst she occupied, during the day, a room in the mill specially fitted up for herself, all orders for barley were received across a door which was securely fastened by a chain to prevent strangers from entering.’ [21] Sir William Fraser’s _History of the Carnegies, Earls of Southesk_, ii. 275. This clever Scottish lady of the old school also started the manufacture of Holland cloth on a wide field near the mill; and in a hollow near Saltoun Hall the British Linen Company worked for many years, until they changed their business into that of a banking company. Perhaps a dame of so very practical a turn would not have sympathised with the Utopian dreams of her famous brother-in-law, and had chosen wisely. The walls of a new mill which was erected at Saltoun in 1710 are still as strong as when they were built; and some fragments of the old machinery still remain.