“None of your fathers to me. Get out of my sight, and make yourself ready to do what I tell ye. It shall be in a fortnight. That’s all you shall make by your rebellion. Not another word, or I’ll turn you out of my house.” Kirsteen retired as he made a step towards her with his hands raised to her shoulders, to put her out. His fiery eyes, the foam that flew from his lips, the fury of his aspect frightened her. She turned and fled from the room without any further attempt to speak. CHAPTER XIII. Kirsteen rushed out of the house with the instinct of passion, to shake off all restraint, to get into the free air, where an oppressed bosom might get breath. She flew like a hunted deer, flashing past the window where Mary, sitting at her seam, saw her hurried escape and divined more or less what was the meaning of it. “Who’s that?” said Mrs. Douglas, conscious of the flying shadow. “It’s Kirsteen, and my father will have told her, and she’s just beside herself.” “Beside herself!” said the mother tranquilly over her knitting. “She may well be that; for who would have thought of such a prospect for the like of her, at her age.” Mary was not so sure that the agitation was that of joy, but she said nothing. And Kirsteen was out of sight in a moment, darting by. She went towards the linn, without knowing why. The stream was strong with the winter floods, and the roar of it as it poured down the rocky cleft was enough to make all voices inaudible, and to deaden more or less even the sound of one’s thoughts buzzing in one’s head with the passion and the sweep of them, themselves like a hurrying stream. Kirsteen fled as to a covert to the “den,” down which this passionate rivulet, swollen into a torrent, stormed and poured, flinging its spray over the wet and spongy turf into which her feet sank. She cared nothing for this in the absorption of her excitement, and flung herself down upon that damp slope, feeling the spray on her forehead and the roar of the water in her ears as a sort of relief from herself. Her feelings had been like to burst her heart and her brain together as she flew along, like some struggling things shut up in a space too narrow for them. She could not get her breath nor contain the hurry and confusion of her own being. But in that damp retreat where nobody would be likely to pursue her, where she could scarcely even hear the thumping of her own heart nor any voice calling her, nor be subject to interruption of any kind, Kirsteen after a moment began to come to herself. The shock, the fright, the horror quieted a little; her mind became accustomed, as it does so rapidly, to the new alarm, to the frightful danger which had suddenly revealed itself. It was danger which Kirsteen had not expected or foreseen. She had very well understood when she pledged herself to wait for Ronald what that meant. It was in all the traditions of romance with which she was acquainted--not waiting relieved by constant