These feelings were hot and strong in his mind as he set out; but a walk of four miles against a cold wind, and with the snow threatening to come down every moment, is a very good thing for dispersing troublous thoughts: they gradually blew away as he went on, and the bridegroom’s state of triumph and rapture came back, dimly at first, and as if he dared not indulge it, but gaining strength every moment, until, before he reached Dalrugas, from the first moment when he saw his love’s light in her window shining far over the moor, it came back in full force, driving every thing else away. He saw, first, the little star of light hanging midway between earth and sky, and then the shape of the window, and then Lily’s figure or shadow coming from time to time to look out; and no lover’s heart could have risen higher or beat more warmly. He entirely forgot how he had wronged her in the glory of having her, of knowing her to be there waiting for him, and that she would be his wife to-morrow. She came to the top of the stairs to meet him, while he rushed up three steps at a time, rubbing against the narrow spiral of the stair with such passion and force of feeling as the best man in the world could not have surpassed. One does not require, it is evident, to be the best man in the world, or even a true man at all, to love truly and fervently, and with all the force of one’s being. One might say that it was selfishness on Ronald’s part to appropriate at any cost the girl he loved; but the fact remained, a fact far deeper than any explanation, that he did love her as deeply, as warmly, as sincerely as any man could. Their meeting was a moment of joy to both, like a poem, like a song; their hearts beat as high as if it had been a first meeting after years of absence, and yet it would have been less complete had they been parted for more than the two or three hours which was its real period. I need not go any further into this record. It did not matter what they said; words are of little account at such moments. It is only to note that a man who had just told a disgraceful lie, and put upon his bride a stigma of the most false and cruel kind, and whose mind was already shaping thoughts which were destined to work her woe, was at the moment when he met her with the news that their marriage was to take place next day as much, as tenderly in love with her as heart could desire. The problem is one which I have no power to explain. Next day being still one of the daft days, bright with the reflection of the New Year, and the day of the weekly market in Kinloch-Rugas, Katrin announced early her intention of going in to the toun in the course of the day, an expedition which Beenie, with much modesty and reference to Miss Lily, proposed to share. “I havena been in the toun, no to say in the toun, ither than at the kirk, which is a different thing, since I came to Dalrugas. I’ll maybe get ye a fairing, laddie, for the sake of the New Year----”