h a daughter,
although she might have been successful with a helpless and submissive
girl. With that look in her eyes, which are as cold as steel and have
its glitter, one could not augur success for any wooer. It was a
tribute not so much to the appearance of Pollock as to the soul of the
man shining through his face in most persuasive purity and sincerity,
that when they met and turned aside into that window space and stood
in the spring sunlight, her face softened towards him. The pride of
her carriage seemed to relax, and the offence went out of her eyes,
and she gave him a gracious greeting, and no woman, if she had a mind,
could be more ingratiating. Then, still standing, which suited her
best, and looking at him with not unfriendly gravity, she waited for
what he had to say.

"Lady Jean," he began, "your honorable mother has told you for what
end I desired speech with you this day, and I ask you to give me a
fair hearing of your kindness, for though I have been called of God to
declare His word before many people, I have no skill in the business
to which I now address myself. In this matter of love between a man
and a maid I have never before spoken, and if I succeed not to-day,
shall never speak again. Bear with me when I explain for your better
understanding of my case, that I began my life in the faith of my
family, and that I came into the Covenant after I was a man. I was
called, as I trust of God, unto the ministry of the Evangel, and I
have exercised it not in quiet places, but in the service of God's
people who are scattered and peeled among the hills. It seemed
therefore of my calling that I should live as a Nazarite and die
alone, having known neither wife nor child, and indeed this may be my
lot." Having said so much, as he looked not at the girl but out of
the window, he now turned his face upon her, which, always pale, began
now to be ashen white, through rising emotion and intensity of heart.

"Two years ago I first came to this castle and saw you; from time to
time upon the errands of my master or sheltering from my pursuers I
have lived here, and before I knew it I found my heart go out to you,
Lady Jean, so that on the moors I heard your voice in the singing of
the mountain birds, and saw your face with your burning hair in the
glory of the setting sun. The thought of you was never far from me,
and the turn of your head and your step as you have walked before me
came ever to my sight. Was not t