“You draw out your father’s drafts on the bank, Effie,” he continued. “Write one out for me, and I will put your father’s name to it. You can draw the money. I will be saved from ruin; and your father will never know.” A proposal which again brought a shudder over the girl. “Is it Robert Stormonth who asks me to do this thing?” she whispered again. “No,” said he; “for I am not myself. Yesterday, and before the messenger was after me, I would have shrunk from the suggestion. I am not myself, I say, Effie. Ay or no; keep me or lose me,--that is the alternative.” “Oh, I cannot,” was the language of her innocence, and for which he was prepared; for the stimulant was again applied in the most powerful of all forms--the word farewell was sounded in her ear. “Stop, Robert; let me think.” But there was no thought, only the heart beating wildly. “I will do it; and may the penalty be mine, and mine only.” So it was: “even virtue’s self turns vice when misapplied.” What her mind shrank from was embraced by the heart as a kind of sacred duty of a love making a sacrifice for the object of its first worship. It was arranged; and as the firmness of a purpose is often in proportion to the prior disinclination, so Effie’s determination to save her lover from ruin was forthwith put in execution; nay, there was even a touch of the heroine in her, so wonderfully does the heart, acting under its primary instincts, sanctify the device which favours its affection. That same evening Effie Carr wrote out the draft for twenty pounds on the Bank of Scotland, gave it to Stormonth, who from a signature of the father’s, also furnished by her, perpetrated the forgery--a crime at that time punishable by death. The draft so signed was returned to Effie. Next forenoon she went to the bank, as she had often done for her father before; and the document being in her handwriting, as prior ones of the same kind had also been, no scrutinising eye was turned to the signature. The money was handed over, but _not counted_ by the recipient, as before had been her careful habit--a circumstance with its effect to follow in due time. Meanwhile Stormonth was at a place of appointment out of the reach of the executor of the law, and was soon found out by Effie, who gave him the money with trembling hands. For this surely a kiss was due. We do not know; but she returned with the satisfaction, overcoming all the impulses of fear and remorse, that she had saved the object of her first and only love from ruin and flight.