M'Arthur looked confused and incredulous. "Nay, I'm in earnest, Mr M'Arthur," continued Mr M'Donald. "You have won her, and have the best right to wear her; and, to tell you both a truth, I've long thought, and not with much displeasure, that you were not indifferent to each other; and therefore I anticipate no very serious objections on this occasion on either side. What say you, Flora? Have you any objection to take Mr M'Arthur for your husband? Come now, be honest, be candid." Flora looked to the ground, blushed, but made no reply. "Answer me, Flora," said her father, "have you any objection to receive your deliverer as your husband?" "I have always considered it one of my first duties to obey my father," replied Flora, in gentle accents. "Enough, my dearest girl--enough," said her father, embracing her tenderly. "Now, Mr M'Arthur," he continued, smiling as he spoke, "will you have the goodness to state your objections to accepting the hand of my daughter?" "I would, sir, very readily, if I had any," replied Mr M'Arthur, smiling in his turn, but almost entirely deprived of his presence of mind by the great and unexpected happiness and good fortune with which he found himself thus so suddenly blessed. "But--but----" and he stammered out something about felicity, eternal gratitude, choice of his heart; which Mr M'Donald, as he could not make out, though he perceived and appreciated the feeling from which his confusion proceeded, suddenly arrested by saying-- "That'll do, Mac--that'll do. You would make a speech if you could, but it's not necessary. I know all you would say. But, Flora," he continued, now in a bantering humour--"Mac tells me that he had rescued you before he knew who you was; thus plainly intimating that it was no partiality towards you in particular that induced him to do what he did. What do you think of that?" "Why, papa, I think the more of him for it," said Flora, blushing as she spoke. "His gallantry was the more generous, the more disinterested. It was a deed of true knight-errantry--the rescuing of a distressed damsel, without regard to who or what she was. She was in jeopardy, and that was enough for him." "Excellent, Flora--very ingenious defence!" exclaimed her father, laughing, and rubbing his hands with glee. "Commend me to a woman for ready apology, for prompt excuse, for defending what is indefensible." We need not prolong the scene. In a fortnight afterwards, Miss Flora M'Donald was married to Duncan M'Arthur, Esq. of Rose Vale; and the latter became an equal partner in the concerns of his father-in-law, by which, in the course of a few years, he realised a handsome fortune, which was further increased on the death of his patron, who left him, for behoof of his wife and children, the whole of his immense wealth. Such is the story--and a true tale it is--of the little barelegged and bareheaded Highland boy whom we saw running wild on the banks of Loch Awe.