“That’s no answerin my question, Maron, but speerin ither twa instead o’t—I axt ye gin Kate hadna been out o’ her bed for some nights bygane.” “How sude I ken ony thing about that, gudeman?—ye may gang an’ speer at her—Out o’ her bed, quotha!—Na—there’ll nae young skempy amang them wile her out o’ her bed i’the night–time.—Dear gudeman, what has put it i’your head that our bairn stravaigs i’the night–time?” “Na, na, Maron, there’s nae mortal soul will ever gar ye answer to the point.” “Dear gudeman, wha heard ever tell o’ a _mortal_ soul?—the soul’s no mortal at a’—Didna ye hear our ain worthy curate–clerk say”—— “O, Maron! Maron! ye’ll aye be the auld woman, if the warld sude turn upside–down!—Canna ye answer my question simply, ay or no, as far as ye ken, whether our daughter has been out o’ her bed at midnight for some nights bygane or no?—If ye ken that she has, canna ye tell me sae at aince, without ganging about the bush? it’s a thing that deeply concerns us baith.” “Troth, gudeman, gin she hae been out o’ her bed, mony a honest man’s bairn has been out o’ her bed at midnight afore her, an’ nae ill in her mind nouther—the thing’s as common as the rising o’ the se’en sterns.” Walter turned round towards his meal, after casting a look of pity and despair upon his yokefellow, who went on at great length defending the equivocal practice of young women who might deem it meet and convenient to leave their beds occasionally by night; for that, without some mode of private wooing, it was well known that no man in the country could possibly procure a wife, for that darkness rendered a promise serious, which passed in open day for a mere joke, or words of course; and at length Maron Linton, with more sagacity than usual, concluded her arguments with the following home remark:—“Ye ken fu’ weel, gudeman, ye courtit me i’the howe o’ the night yoursel; an’ Him that kens the heart kens weel that I hae never had cause to rue our bits o’ trysts i’the dark—Na, na! mony’s the time an’ aft that I hae blest them, an’ thought o’ them wi’ pleasure! We had ae kind o’ happiness then, Watie, we hae another now, an’ we’ll hae another yet.” There was something in this appeal that it would have been unnatural to have resisted. There is a tenderness in the recollection of early scenes of mutual joy and love, that invariably softens the asperity of our nature, and draws the heart by an invisible bond toward the sharer of these; but when they are at one view connected with the present and the future, the delight receives a tinge of sublimity. In short, the appeal was one of the most happy that ever fell from the lips of a simple and ignorant, though a well–meaning woman. It was not lost upon Walter; who, though of a rough exterior and impatient humour, was a good man. He took his wife’s hand and squeezed it, while the pupil of his eye expanded like that of a huge mountain ram, when he turns it away from the last ray of the setting sun.