The laird had been accustomed to set his mother at nought in what seemed right in his own eyes. He was not dependent on her in money matters, and did not give a thought to the risk of forfeiting the savings of her jointure, since he was at this stage of his development as free-handed as he was open-hearted. Still, he could not summon up his courage to brave the high-spirited, determined old woman altogether. In the same way he could not make up his mind to despise the clamour and opposition of his circle of gentry, little as he had hitherto prized the hereditary association with them. Drumsheugh, when he was compelled to a decision, never dreamed of a more generous and honourable step than that of running away with Peggy, and vowing that he was her husband before two available witnesses; nay, the idea of anything less temporising and more magnanimous did not even cross Balcairnie’s mind. It was in serene satisfaction with the concession that he agreed to back the laird as usual in waylaying Peggy, in spite of her mother’s commands, and in propounding to her the grand yet sorry expedient for getting rid of all objections in future, by establishing the couple in the sure, if unacknowledged, relations of man and wife. After some spying and picking up of floating information, the two friends learnt that Peggy, while she now kept religiously indoors with her mother, for the most part of her time, was in the custom of recompensing the neighbour who went most of the girl’s errands. This reward consisted in Peggy’s ‘ca’ing,’ or driving out, the neighbour’s cow in the cool of the morning and late evening of the June season, to feed for an hour or two on the grass by the dyke sides and ditches, or on the short turf of a single knowe, which rose in solitary dignity among the flat corn-fields. The road to the knowe was for a certain distance that to Craigie, so often trodden in happier circumstances. The knowe itself, with its patches of rushes, had been Peggy’s seat when as a child she had played at plaiting the ‘thrashies’ into a crown and sceptre. She was an only child like her lover, and had known few playmates save her school companions. She had been used to lonely hours and single-handed games. Her most intimate friend in later times had been her ardent admirer the laird, whom she was now forbidden to see or speak to. He had been with her on this knowe when the dew lay on the grass and the corn-craik was ‘chirming,’ as it was at the present moment. He had made a posy for her of what Peggy merely called ‘bonnie floors,’ but which were in detail the dead white grass of Parnassus that grew among the rushes, together with the crimson and pink fumitory and the yellow avens which he had gathered idly as they came along, leaving hedge-row and dyke-side behind them. He had shown the greatest kindness and patience in helping her to draw out the pith of the rushes and plait it--no longer into a mock crown and sceptre, but into a real