’A bold man!’ said the doctor. ’Well, rather you than me to meddle with the mistress of The Mains! As to the laird, it goes against the grain with me to give his death-warrant. Many’s the bottle I’ve cracked with him, honest man, sitting in the parlour at The Mains yonder—the mistress brought to bed upstairs—and waiting for they lasses of his to come into the world. But we must all die!’ He paused, and then went on gravely, ’I cannot tell you how long you may have to wait. It might be a month, it might be a year, it might be ten. Some, in paralysis, die soon. Some linger in a death in life like his for half a lifetime. The Graham stock is tough, uncommonly so; but my old friend is in a bad case—the Lord send him rest!—and I do not think he’ll live the year.’ The speaker eyed Herries curiously. ’Does that content you?’ he asked, with a twinkling eye. ’God forgive me for a cold-blooded questioner in this!’ said Herries, really vexed and sorely ashamed. ’But I am clean distraught, I think! This young lady and I were contracted eight years since, but mischief came between us and we parted. And now we meet only to part again, this feeble life of a man almost dead between us. Am I excused in your eyes, sir?’ ’Oh, I think so, I think so!’ said the good-natured man of medicine with his husky laugh. ’But I’ll not tell on you (’twould hardly do, you know) in after days!’ He fetched another tumbler from his cupboard and would have Herries taste with him before he went. And so the aristocratic and reserved lawyer of George Street found himself sitting in the stuffy parlour of an unknown country doctor, with a singular tumult in his blood, a new and tender anticipation at his heart, drinking to happier days. The laird of The Mains, however, falsified the prediction of his medical attendant and lingered for nearly two years, then dying in his chair. He was gathered to his fathers in the family vault, and friends and neighbours, gathered to his funeral, noted one stranger sharing in his obsequies—a stranger to all but Alison and the old doctor. The same man, in the dusk of the evening, spoke with Alison at the little gate under the lime tree—Alison, tall and pale and sad, in a black gown. It was no moment to speak of love, but, nevertheless, these two did then, in an enforced secrecy, arrange their future. A second time would Alison leave her home, and leave it in secret. For Mrs. Graham was set upon a perverse and obstinate opposition to any marriage for her last remaining daughter, rightly estimating the loss, to her, as one of a superior and most hard-working servant. Alison, who had battled so long, had no more strength and no more courage for the fight. In a month she and Archibald Herries fled to Edinburgh town, and were married by license.