“Well,” said Sandy, “that is your bed made, my lassie. You have both said it before witnesses. You must take him now, whether ye will or not! “Hugh,” he cried, with a sudden roar towards the servants’ quarters. And from the haymow in the barn where he had been making a pretence of work a retainer appeared with a scared expression on his face. “Run over to the cot-house at the road-end and tell the minister lad that the Dumfries Presbytery deposed to come to the Earlstoun and that smartly, else I will come down and fetch him myself!” The man was already on his way ere the sentence was ended, and when the Laird roared the last words after him he fairly seemed to jump. He was out of sight among the trees a moment after. “Now,” said Alexander Gordon, “Mary and you have proclaimed yourselves man and wife. Ye shall be soundly married by a minister, and then ye shall go your ways forth. Think not that I will give you the worth of a boddle either in gear or land. Ye have asked me no permission. Ye have defied me. I say not that I will disown ye. But, at least, I owe you nothing.” “Father,” said Mary, “did I ask you for aught, or did Quintin?” “Nay,” said he, grimly, “not even for my daughter.” “Then,” said she, “do not refuse that for which you have not been asked!” “And how may you propose to live?” her father went on triumphantly. “Ye would not look at him when he had kirk and glebe, manse and stipend. And now ye take him by force when he is no better than a beggar at the dykeback. That it is to be a woman!” She kindled at the words. “And what a thing to be a man! Ye think that a woman’s love consists in goods and gear, comfortable beds and fine apparelling!” “Comfortable beds are not to be lightlied,” said her father; “as ye will find, my lass, or a’ be done.” She did not heed him, but flashed on with her defiance. “You, and those like you, think that the way to win a woman is to bide till ye have made all smooth, so that there be not a curl on the rose-leaves, nor yet a bitter drop in the cup. Even Quintin there thought thus, till he learned better.” She did not so much as pause to smile, though I think her father did--but covertly. “No!” she cried, “I love, and because I love I will (as you say floutingly) be ready to lie at a dykeback like a tinkler’s wench. I will follow my man through the world because he is my man--yes, all the more because he is injured, despised, one who has had little happiness and no satisfaction in life. And now I will give him these things. I--I only will make it all up to him. With my love I can do it, and I will!” Her father nodded menacingly. “Ye shall try the dykebacks this very nicht, my lass! And ye shall e’en see how ye like them, after the fine linen sheets and panelled chambers of the Earlstoun.” But her mother broke out at last. “No, my bairn!” she cried. “Married or single ye shall not go forth from us thus!”