Her rapier wit confused and amazed me; her sudden revelation of our kinship confounded me. "Good God," said I, "why have you never told me this, Penelope?" She shook her yellow head defiantly: "A would na," quoth she, her chin hanging down, but the brown eyes of her watching me. "And it was a servant-maid you asked to wife you, and none other either.... D'ye ken that, you Stormont lad? It was me--me!--who may wear the _Beadlaidh_, too!--me who can cry '_Lonach! Lonach! Creag Ealachaidh!_' with as stout a heart and clean a pride as you, Ian Drogue, Laird o' Northesk!--laird o' my soul and heart--my lord--my dear, dear lord----" She flung her arms across her face and burst into a fit of weeping; and as I caught her in my arms she leaned so on my breast, sobbing out her happiness and fears and pride and love, and her gratitude to God that I should have loved her for herself in the body of a maid-servant, and that I had bespoken her fairly where in all the land no man had offered more than that which she might take from him out of his left hand. So, for a long while, we stood there together, clasped breast to breast, dumb with tenderness and mazed in the spell of first young love. I stammered my vows, and she now opposed me nothing, only clinging to me the closer, confident, submissive, acquiescent in all I wished and asked and said. There were ink, paper, a quill, and sand in her chamber. We went thither, and I wrote out drafts upon Schenectady, and composed letters of assurance and recognition, which would be useful to her in case of necessity. I got Jimmy Burke out o' bed and shewed him all I had writ, and made him witness our signatures and engaged him to appear if necessary. These papers and money drafts, together with Penelope's papers and letters she had of Douw Fonda and of the Patroon, were sufficient to establish her with the new will I made and had witnessed at the fort a week before. And so, at midnight, in her little chamber at Burke's Inn, I parted from Penelope Grant,--dropped to my knee and kissed her feet, who had been servant to the county gentry and courted by the county quality, but had been mistress of none in all the world excepting only of herself. * * * * * When I was ready she handed me my rifle, buckled up my shoulder sack, smoothed my fringed cape with steady hands, walked with me to her chamber door. Her face rested an instant against mine, but there were no tears, no trembling, only the swift passion of her lips; and then--"God be with you, John Drogue!" And so, with gay courage, closed her chamber door. I turned and stumbled out along the corridor, carrying my rifle and feeling my way to the hand-rail, down the creaking stairway, and out into the starry night. CHAPTER XXVII FIRE-FLIES