ithin was so intense that it just burnt a hole through your
own precious body, and left a place for all the lassies to peer in at,
to see what the combustible material was worth."

"Ye'll have your own way, Major Duncan; and your father and mother would
have theirs before ye, even if the enemy were in the camp. I see
nothing so extraordinar' in young people following the bent of their
inclinations and wishes."

"But you've followed yours so often, Davy, that I should think by this
time it had lost the edge of novelty. Including that informal affair in
Scotland, when you were a lad, you've been married four times already."

"Only three, Major, as I hope to get another wife. I've not yet had my
number: no, no; only three."

"I'm thinking, Davy, you don't include the first affair I mentioned;
that in which there was no parson."

"And why should I Major? The courts decided that it was no marriage; and
what more could a man want? The woman took advantage of a slight amorous
propensity that may be a weakness in my disposition, perhaps, and
inveigled me into a contract which was found to be illegal."

"If I remember right, Muir, there were thought to be two sides to that
question, in the time of it?"

"It would be but an indifferent question, my dear Major, that hadn't two
sides to it; and I've known many that had three. But the poor woman's
dead, and there was no issue; so nothing came of it after all. Then, I
was particularly unfortunate with my second wife; I say second, Major,
out of deference to you, and on the mere supposition that the first was
a marriage at all; but first or second, I was particularly unfortunate
with Jeannie Graham, who died in the first lustrum, leaving neither
chick nor chiel behind her. I do think, if Jeannie had survived, I never
should have turned my thoughts towards another wife."

"But as she did not, you married twice after her death; and are desirous
of doing so a third time."

"The truth can never justly be gainsaid, Major Duncan, and I am always
ready to avow it. I'm thinking, Lundie, you are melancholar this fine
evening?"

"No, Muir, not melancholy absolutely; but a little thoughtful, I
confess. I was looking back to my boyish days, when I, the laird's son,
and you, the parson's, roamed about our native hills, happy and careless
boys, taking little heed to the future; and then have followed some
thoughts, that may be a little painful, concerning that future as it has
turned ou