at I"--and here she
straightened herself--"would be afraid of any danger, or any suffering
either, for myself or you. I should bid it welcome, and if I saw you
laid dead for the cause ye love, I should take you in my arms and kiss
you on the mouth, though you were red with blood, as I never kissed
you living on our marriage day." And she carried her head as a queen
at the moment of her coronation.

"No," she went on, while the glow faded and her voice grew gentle; "it
is for two reasons, but one of them I tell you only to yourself, in
the secrecy of your honor. I admire and I--reverence you as one lifted
above me like a saint, but this is not the feeling of a woman for the
man that is to be her husband. I do not love you as I know I shall in
an instant love the man who is to be my man when I first see him, and
for whom I shall forsake without any pang my father's house, or else,
if he appear not, I shall never wed. That mayhap is reason enough, but
I am dealing with you as a friend this day. Though my name be in the
Covenant, I am not sure--oh, those are dark times--whether I would
write it to-day with my own hand. I might be able to do so when I was
your wife, but that I may not be. Yet it is left to me, Mr. Henry, to
have your name in my prayers, that God may keep you in the hard road
ye have chosen, and give you in the end a glorious crown. And I will
ask of you to mention at a time Jean Cochrane before the throne of
grace. For surely ye will be heard, and blessed shall she be for whom
ye pray."

For an instant there was silence, and then, before she left, Lady
Jean, as Pollock stood with head sunk on his breast and lips moving in
prayer, bent forward and kissed him on the forehead. When an hour
later the minister descended to Lady Cochrane's room, he told her that
his suit was hopeless, but that he was thankful unto God that he had
spoken with Lady Jean.

CHAPTER II

THE COMING OF THE AMALEKITE

It would have been hard to find within the civilized world a more
miserable and distracted country than Scotland at the date of our
history, and the West Country was worst of all. The Covenanters, who
were never averse to fighting, had turned upon Claverhouse and his
dragoons when they came to disperse a field-meeting at Drumclog, and
had soundly beaten the King's Horse. Then, gathering themselves to a
head and meeting the royal forces under the Duke of Monmouth at
Bothwell Bridge, they had in turn been hopele