“Then upon this day of days why are you not by her side, that her love may ease the smart of your bitter outcasting?” “In yonder kirk mine enemies work my doom,” said I, pointing over the water, “and ere another sun rise I shall be no more minister of Balmaghie, but a homeless man, without either a rooftree or a reeking ingle. I have nothing to offer any woman. Why should I claim this day any woman’s love?” “Ah,” she said, giving me the strangest look, “it is her hour. For if she loves you, she would fly to-day to share your dry crust, your sapless bite. See,” she cried, stretching out her hand with a large action, “if Mary Gordon loved a man, she would follow him in her sark to the world’s end. If so be his eyes had looked the deathless love into hers, his tongue told of love, love, only of love. Ah, that alone is worth calling love which feeds full on the scorns of life and grows lusty on black misfortune!” “Lady Mary----” I began. But she interrupted me, dashing her hand furtively to her face. She pointed up towards the house of Drumglass. “Yonder lies your way, Quintin MacClellan! Go to the woman you love--who loves you.” She lifted the reins from the horse’s neck and would have started forward, but again I had gotten her hand. Yet I only bent and kissed it without word, reverently and sadly as one kisses the brow of the dead. She moved away without anger and with her eyes downcast. But on the summit of a little hill she half turned about in her saddle and spoke a strange word. “Quintin,” she said, “wherefore could ye not have waited? Wherefore kenned ye no better than to take a woman at her first word?” And with that she set the spurs to her beast and went up the road toward the ford at the gallop, till almost I feared to watch her. For a long time I stood sadly enough looking after her. And I grant that my heart was like lead within me. My spirit had no power in it. I cried out to God to let me die. For it was scarce a fair thing that she should have spoken that word now when it was too late. CHAPTER XXV. BEHIND THE BROOM. But this 30th of December had yet more in store for me. The minting die was yet to be dinted deeper into my heart. For, as I turned me about to go back the way I came, there by the copse side, where the broom grew highest, stood Jean Gemmell, with a face suddenly drawn thin, grey-white and wan like the melting snow. “Jean!” I cried, “what do ye there?” She tried to smile, but her eyes had a fixed and glassy look, and she seemed to be mastering herself so that she might speak. I think that she had a speech prepared in her heart, for several times she strove to begin, and the words were always the same. But at last all that she could say was no more than this, “You love her?” And with a little hand she pointed to where the Lady Mary had disappeared. I could see it shaking like a willow leaf as she held it out.