“Mary,” I said, solemnly, “I love you more than life--more, perchance, than I love God. But I cannot lay aside, nor yet shut out the doing of my duty.” She thrust her hand out suddenly, passionately, from her, as if casting me out of her sight for ever. She set her kerchief to her eyes. “You have chosen!” she cried. “Go, then!” “Mary,” I said, turning to follow her. All suddenly she turned upon me and stamped her foot. “I dare you to speak with me!” she cried, her eyes flashing with anger. “I thought you were a man, and you are no better than a machine. _You_ love! You know not the A B C of it. You have never passed the hornbook. I doubt not that you broke that poor lassie’s heart down there in the farm by the water-side. She loved a stone and she died. Now you tell me that you love me, and the first thing I ask of you you refuse, though it is for my own father, and I entreat you with tears!” “Mary,” I began to say quietly, “you do me great wrong. Let me tell you----” But she turned away down the path. I followed after, and at the parting of the ways to house and stable she turned on me again like a lioness. “Oh, _go_, I tell you! _Go!_” she cried. “Do your precious duty. But from this day forth never, never dare to utter word to Mary Gordon again!” CHAPTER XXXIII. THE DEMONIAC IN THE GARRET. As all may understand, it was with bowed head and crushed heart that I bent my steps towards the grey tower, sitting so stilly among the leafage of the wood above the water. Duty is doubtless noble, and virtue its own reward. But when there is a lass in the case--why, it is somewhat harder to go against her will than to counter all the law and the prophets. I went up the bank towards the tower of Earlstoun, and as I came near methought there was a strange and impressive silence over everything--like a Sabbath-day that was yet no common or canny Sabbath. At the angle of the outer wall one Hugh Halliday, an old servant of the Gordons, came running toward me. “Minister, minister,” he cried, “ye mauna come here. The maister has gotten the possession by evil spirits. He swears that if ever a minister come near him he will brain him, and he has taken his sword and pistols up into the garret under the roof, and he cries out constantly that if any man stirs him, he shall surely die the death.” “But,” I answered, “he will not kill me, who have had no hand in the matter--me who have also been persecuted by the Presbytery and by them deposed.” “Ah, laddie,” said the old man, shaking his palsied hand warningly at me, “ye little ken the laird, if ye think that when the power o’ evil comes ower him, he bides to think. He lets drive richt and left, and a’ that remains to be done is but to sinder the dead frae the leevin’, or to gather up the fragments that remain in baskets and corn-bags and sic-like.