Never was there a poorer-spirited wooer! No, never one. The very pour of words stunned me. Had it not been for the coming and going of Dutch-girthed brother-farmers, dumping bags of "samples" on the table, and hauling at purses tied with leathern strings out of tight breeches pockets, the "What's your will, sir?" of Tom the drawer, and the clink of cannikins, I must have been found out even then. But the part of the trouble which was to be mine personally was coming to an end. After all, his daughter's future was only an item in Birkenbog's programme of the day. "Well, then, lad"--he clapped me again on the shoulder (I sitting there with the soul of an oyster)--"we have arranged everything comfortable--eh? Now you can go and tell Lottie. Aye, and ye can say to Miss--what's her name--Thimbolina, the old dowager with the corkscrews--with my compliments, that there's a sweet-milk cheese ripening on the dairy shelves for her at Birkenbog. Hear ye that, lad?" I took my leave as best I could. I felt I had hopelessly committed myself. For though I had not said a word, I had not dared to reveal to this fierce father, that being in love with another, I had been using his daughter as a stalking horse. "And, look here, Duncan lad," he said, "I'll just step up and have a word with your father. The clearer understanding there is between families on such like arrangements, the less trouble there will be in the future!" And he strode away out into the yard, halting, however, at the door to call out in a voice that could be heard all over the neighbourhood, "Come thy ways up to Birkenbog on Sunday and take a bit o' dinner wi' us! Then thou canst see our Lottie and tell her how many times sweeter she is than a sugar-plum! Ho, ho!" He was gone at last and I fairly blushed myself down the street, pushing my way between the ranks of the market stalls and the elbowing farmers. "Are ye blind or only daft?" one apple wife called out, as I shook her rickety erection of trestles and boards. She was as red in the face as Birkenbog himself, for a cur with a kettle tied to its tail had taken refuge under her stall, and she had been serving a writ of ejectment with the same old umbrella with which she whacked thievish boys and sheltered her goods on rainy days. But I heeded not. I was seeking solitude. I felt that I wanted nothing from the entire clan of human beings. I had lost all that I should ever really love. Irma--Irma! And here was I, settled for life with one for whom I cared not a penny! By the time I had reached this stage, I had come out upon the bare woods that mount the path by the riverside. I came to the great holly, a cave of green shade in summer, and now a warm shelter in these tall solitudes of wattled branches standing purple and black against the winter sky. Ah, there was some one there already. I stepped out again quickly, but not too fast to see that it was Charlotte Anderson herself I had stumbled upon--_and that she was crying_!