The laird could not stand the abrupt, harsh interference which in the twinkling of an eye dissolved these enchanting scenes. It would cost him his wits. He would rather carry off Peggy, with or without her will, where nobody should ever come between them. What did she mean by giving him up at any third person’s word, be that person her mother twice over? Had the two-faced lass no heart in her breast? He would be upsides with her yet, for the pain and mortification she was causing him. He confided all this to Balcairnie, who gave no further answer than a shake of his head and a resolute ‘I’ll no be your man in sic an ill job, Drumsheugh,’ so the laird went on fuming and storming if he did not speak of ‘louping ower a linn.’ The comical side of the question was that he was his own master all the time to do what he liked in the circumstances. He had been left the Laird of Drumsheugh without limitation. He could marry Peggy Hedderwick to-morrow, in spite of his mother, and it was not likely that Peggy or her mother for her, would decline a plain offer of marriage from so high a quarter, or that either would draw so fine a distinction as to refuse the proposed honour, unless it were accompanied by the free and full consent of the Lady to her son’s throwing himself away. But, somehow, the laird stopped short of such rank insubordination and thoroughgoing independence. There was a strain of weakness in his wilfulness, or else the times were against him. People had not yet shaken off the old feudal prejudices. Drumsheugh, in his simplicity and homeliness, was still, both in his own estimation and in that of other people, the Laird, the scion of the great house of Dalwolsie, and Peggy was the cotter lass, come of hynds and nobodies. Balcairnie, who was not so far before her in the last respect, might have married her without reservation, though she was by no means his social equal; but the most disinterested unworldly version of the affair which the most single-hearted judges looked for from Drumsheugh was that he should be found fond enough of Peggy, and faithful enough to her, while he was sufficiently regardless of his own interests, to engage in a secret ancient troth-plight equivalent to a marriage with her, and right in the eyes of the law, though it was censurable by the Kirk. It would be a contract which must hamper him all his days, and if he were ever so far left to himself as to seek to evade it, might drag him down to crime and misery. Why on such small temptation, out of two courses--the one clear and above-board, the worst consequences of which would be faced at once--the other a flattering more than half-cowardly compromise done in the dark, and only coming to the light and encountering the natural results after a long interval--a manly fellow like the laird should inevitably, as if it were a matter of necessity, have adopted the second and lower course, remains a testimony to the force of habit and of one-sided reasoning.