"'Katie!' cries the hoarse voice of Willie Morison, breaking the strange fascination in which she stood, 'come down and speak to me ae word, if ye wouldna break my heart. Man—if ye are a man—let me bide a minute; let me say a word to her. I'll maybe never see her in this world again.' "The miller stood at the open door—the mother within was wiping the tears from her cheeks. 'Oh Katie, bairn, that ye had been sleeping!' But Katie rushed past them, and crossed the burn. "What can they say?—only convulsively grasp each other's hands—wofully look into each other's faces, ghastly in the moonlight; till Willie—Willie, who could have carried her like a child, in his strength of manhood—bowed down his head into those little hands of hers which are lost in his own vehement grasp, and hides with them his passionate tears. "'Willie, I'll never forget ye,' says aloud the instinctive impulse of little Katie's heart, forgetting for the moment that there is any grief in the world but to see his. 'Night and day I'll mind ye, think of ye. If ye were twenty years away, I would be blither to wait for ye, than to be a queen. Willie, if ye must go, go with a stout heart—for I'll never forget ye, if it should be twenty years!' "Twenty years! Only eighteen have you been in the world yet, brave little Katie Stewart; and you know not the years, how they drag their drooping skirts over the hills when hearts long for their ending, or how it is only day by day, hour by hour, that they wear out at length, and fade into the past. "'Now, my man, let's have no more of this,' said the leader of the gang. 'I'm not here to wait your leisure; come on.' "And now they are away—truly away—and the darkness settles down where this moment Katie saw her bridegroom's head bowing over the hands which still are wet with his tears. Twenty years! Her own words ring into her heart like a knell, a prophecy of evil—if he should be twenty years away!"