"My lamb, my lamb!" she whispered, fondly, "rise ye, for your love's sake. Here are your claes. Gang forth like a bridegroom rejoicing in your strength. Ye shallna gang menseless this day, though ye hae to ride on another man's horse. The time will come when ye shall hae mony braw plenished stables o' your ain." Obediently Wat rose, and put the fine clothes on him with a kind of wonder. He was still pale and wan, and his body was wasted by suffering and recent privation. Nevertheless, he felt his head clear, and there was an elastic ease in all his sinews. "To-day," he said to himself, gladly--"to-day I cast the die for love or death." The curate came for him in the boat, and Jean Gordon accompanied them. "I am loath to part," she said; "it was aye a kindly Galloway custom to convoy the lad ye liked best, and Guid kens that's Wat Gordon o' Lochinvar." "What do three horses there?" asked Wat, as they rowed the boat over to the landing-place, where a black charger and two humbler shelties were tethered close together among the dwarf moorland birches. "'Tis a grand day for pleasuring," said Jean, "and Peter and me have made it up to ride together to the Three Thorns o' Carlinwark by the end o' the loch. There ye will find us gin ye need us. Ye will hae to ride that gate onyway, gin ye win clear o' the house o' Balmaghie with life and good fortune." Wat mounted his cousin's horse Drumclog, a mighty black of rare paces, which, in spite of his size, on firm ground could distance any steed in the stewartry--aye, and as far as to Gretna on the border-side. Now when Wat Gordon turned to ride away, sitting erect on his black horse, there came a light of almost maiden's love into Jean Gordon's eye. "Never was there bride couched beside bridegroom like him!" she exclaimed, proudly. "Win her or lose her, it will be the height o' pride to the young lass all her life long, that on a day she had such a lover to venture all for her sake." And indeed, despite the wild eye, sunk in its rim of darkest purple, despite the hollow cheek and pale face of his wandering, well might she say it. For no such cavalier as Walter Gordon, Lord of Lochinvar and Gordonstoun, that day took the eyes of ladies in all broad Scotland. Doubly outlawed as he was--rebel, landless, friendless, penniless--there was yet something about the lad which carried hearts before him as the wind carries dandelion spray. And many a high dame and many a much-courted maiden had left her all that day to have followed him through the world at a waft of his right hand.