Winter descended upon the land and the moor was shrouded in snow; but ere the snow fell, the sheep had been gathered into the lower fold and none were lost. Each short, dark day was followed by the delight of a long and cosy evening by the fireside, what time the baffled wind howled over the well-thatched roof. Andrew and I would engage in doughty combats on the dambrod, while Mary and her mother plied their needles busily: and sometimes, to my great delight, when Andrew was not in the mood for such worldly amusement, Mary would take his place at the game. He is a poor lover who cannot, amid the moves of the black and white men, make silent but most eloquent love, and many a tender message leaped across the checkered board from my eyes to Mary’s, and from Mary’s to mine. Once on an evening when we had been playing together while her father slept in the ingle-nook, and Jean busied herself with her knitting, Mary brushed the men aside and resting her elbows on the table poised her chin on her finger-tips. My eyes followed the perfect line of her white arms from her dimpled elbows, half-hidden in a froth of lace, to her slender hands that supported the exquisite oval of her face. "Let’s talk," she said. "Yes, talk," I answered. "I shall love to listen, and as you talk I’ll drink your beauty in." She wrinkled her nose into the semblance of a frown, and then laughed. "For a book-learned man ye’re awfu’ blate." "Ah, sweetheart," I answered, "no man can learn the language of love from books. That comes from life." "No," she said, laughingly; "no’ frae life, but frae love. I’m far far wiser than you"--and she held her hands apart as though to indicate the breadth of her wisdom--"and I learned it a’ frae love. For when you knocked at the door o’ my he’rt an’ it flew open to let you in, a’ the wisdom that love cairries in its bosom entered tae. So I’m wiser than you--far wiser." She leaned towards me. "But I’m yer ain wee Mary still--am I no? Let me hear ye say it. Love is like that. It makes us awfu’ wise, but it leaves us awfu’ foolish. Kiss me again." Book-learning teaches no man how to answer such a challenge--but love does, and I need not set it down. Sometimes Mary would read aloud old ballads of love and high adventure--while Andrew and I sat listening, and Jean, as she knitted, listened too. As she read, she had a winsome trick of smoothing back into its place a little lock of hair that would persist in straying over her left ear. That vagrant curl fascinated me. Evening by evening I watched to see it break loose for the joy of seeing her pretty hand restore it to order. I called it the Covenanting curl, and when she asked me why, I stole a kiss, and said, "Because it is a rebel," whereat she slapped me playfully on the cheek, and whispered, "If ye are a trooper ye should make it a prisoner," which I was fain to do, but she resisted me.