Stair understood not one word of his speech. He even began to think he had fallen among a collection of amiable lunatics, when Patsy turned swiftly upon him and, without a quiver of the voice, with her eyes dark and level upon his face, demanded point blank-- _"Will you, Stair Garland, take me, Patricia Ferris, for your wife?"_ The world spun round the astonished Stair. He clutched at the thing which happened to be nearest. This chanced to be the arm of Godfrey McCulloch, who seemed to wear a smile of diabolic sarcasm on his face. "Steady there--stand up and say 'Yes' or 'No!' Will you or won't you?" "I WILL!" cried Stair Garland, finding his voice in a manner that scared the gulls on the cliff ledges, so wild and raucous it was. _"Then I, Patricia Ferris, take you for my husband!"_ "Before God and these witnesses!" added the man with the ragged college cloak: "to wit, before me, James Fraser, Magister Artium, minister of this pairish, and of the unworthy Saunders Duff, session clerk of the same. Saunders, ye were braw at the sittin' afore. Clatch doon noo, man, and make your entry. Get all the names and surnames, while I collect the fees. The business is, ecclesiastically speaking, a little irregular (though perfectly legal), but that will doubtless be considered in the matter of the marital dues. If I am duly satisfied as to these, I shall know how to arrange with the Presbytery." "Let me attend to this business," said Godfrey McCulloch, suddenly alive, and forestalling Stair Garland. "Step this way, minister." And while the session clerk, cross-legged like a Turk on the sand, made his entries with much dipping of ink out of a tax-collector's bottle swung from his breast pocket, weird screechings of goose-quill, and dabbings of pounce box, the sound of confused argumentation came from the other group. "I tell ye I will not risk the scandal for less than half-a-dozen kegs--all the best Hollands--cheap at the price. Think of the Presbytery!" "Minister, the thing is done and in your presence. I will promise no such quantity. But three of Hollands and three of Isle of Man brandy, as was agreed upon. Consider, it will be worse, for you to be denounced as art and part in an irregular marriage--a laird's daughter, too--a pretty-like thing to come before the Presbytery and you the moderator!" "Let it be as you will, Godfrey McCulloch, but if ye have a spark of human kindness in your hard heart let it be Hollands! Your Isle of Man brandy agrees but ill with my stammack, and if I dee o't my ghost will haunt ye. I will preach to ye, one by one, all my forty sermons on the King's birthday!" Godfrey McCulloch threw up his hands. "Hollands let it be--six kegs at the next run, only lift the interdict. I would rather be hanged at once and be done with it."