“Bah,” said she, “lads are like the pebbles in the brook. They are run smooth with many experiences, courting here and flattering there. What care I whether or no this one or that comes chapping at my door? There are plenty more in the brook. Besides, are there not the hills and the winds and the clear stars over all, better and more enduring than a thousand sweethearts?” “But,” said I, “the day will come, Jonita, when you may be glad of the friend’s voice, the kindly eye, the helping hand, the arm beneath the head----” “I did not say that I desired to have no friends,” she said, as it seemed in the darkness, a little shyly. “Will you let me be your friend?” I said, impulsively, taking her hand. “I do not know,” said Alexander-Jonita; “I will tell you in the morning. It is over-dark to-night to see your eyes.” “Can you not believe?” said I. “Have you ever heard that I thus offered friendship to any other maid in all the parish?” “You might have offered it to twenty and they taken it every one for aught I care. But Alexander-Jonita Gemmell accepts no man’s friendship till she has tried him as a fighter tries a sword.” “Then try me, Jonita!” I cried, eagerly. “I will,” said she, promptly; “rise this instant from the place where ye sit, look not upon me, touch me not, say neither good e’en nor yet good-day, but take the straight road and the ready to the manse of Balmaghie.” The words were scarce out of her mouth when with a leap so quick that the collies had not even time to rise, I was over the dyke and striding across the moss and whinstone-crag towards the house by the waterside, where my brother’s light had long been burning over his books. I did not so much as look about me till I was on the crest of the hill. Then for a single moment I stood looking back into the clear grey bath of night behind me, where the lass I loved was keeping her watch in the lonely sheepfold. Yet I was pleased with myself too. For though my dismissal had been so swift and unexpected, I felt that I had not done by any means badly for myself. At least I could call Alexander-Jonita my friend. And there was never a lad upon all the hills of heather that could do so much. CHAPTER XX. MUTTERINGS OF STORM. (_The Narrative of Quintin MacClellan resumed._) It was a day of high summer when the anger of mine enemies drew finally to a head, and that within mine own land of Balmaghie. The Presbytery were in the habit of meeting at a place a little way from the centre of the parish, called Cullenoch--or, as one would say in English, “The Woodlands.” In twos or threes they came, riding side by side on their ponies, or appearing singly out of some pass among the hills. So, as I say, the Presbytery assembled at Cullenoch, and the master of it, Andrew Cameron of Kirkcudbright, was there, with his orders from wily Carstaires, the pope of the restored Kirk of Scotland.