"Why, Gerty, do you know why I have come to London? It is to carry you off--not with the pipes yelling to drown your screams, as Flora Macdonald's mother was carried off by her lover, but taking you by the hand, and waiting for the smile on your face. That is the way out of all our troubles, Gerty: we shall be plagued with no more words then. Oh, I understand it all, sweetheart--your doubts of yourself, and your thinking about the stage: it is all a return of the old and evil influences that you and I thought had been shaken off forever. Perhaps that was a little mistake; but no matter. You will shake them off now, Gerty. You will show yourself to have the courage of a woman. It is but one step, and you are free! Gerty," said he, with a smile on his face, "do you know what that is?" He took from his pocket a printed document, and opened it. Certain words there that caught her eye caused her to turn even paler than she had been; and she would not even touch the paper. He put it back. "Are you frightened, sweetheart? No! You will take this one step, and you will see how all those fancies and doubts will disappear forever! Oh, Gerty, when I got this paper into my pocket to-day, and came out into the street, I was laughing to myself; and a poor woman said, 'You are very merry, sir; will you give a poor old woman a copper?' 'Well,' I said, 'here is a sovereign for you, and perhaps you will be merry too?'--and I would have given every one a sovereign, if I had had it to give. But do you know what I was laughing at?--I was laughing to think what Captain Macallum would do when you went on board as my wife. For he put up the flags for you when you were only a visitor coming to Dare; but when I take you by the hand, Gerty, as you are going along the gangway, and when we get on to the paddle-box, and Captain Macallum comes forward, and when I tell him that you are now my wife, why, he will not know what to do to welcome you! And Hamish, too--I think Hamish will go mad that day. And then, sweetheart, you will go along to Erraidh, and you will go up to the signal-house on the rocks, and we will fire a cannon to tell the men at Dubh-Artach to look out. And what will be the message you will signal to them, Gerty, with the great white boards? Will you send them your compliments, which is the English way? Ah, but I know what they will answer to you. They will answer in the Gaelic; and this will be the answer that will come to you from the lighthouse--'_A hundred thousand welcomes to the young bride!_' And you will soon learn the Gaelic, too; and you will get used to our rough ways: and you will no longer have any fear of the sea. Some day you will get so used to us that you will think the very sea-birds to be your friends, and that they know when you are going away and when you are coming back, and that they know you will not allow any one to shoot at them or steal their eggs in the springtime. But if you would rather not