er consulted my own
safety or sought after private ends, I believe ye would have been the
first to cry shame upon me. Surely ye have been a true soldier's wife,
and ye are the same this morning, and braver even than on our wedding
day.

"Do not make little of yourself, Jean, because your heart is sore and
ye canna keep back the tears. It is not given to a man to understand
what a woman feels in your place but I am trying to imagine, and my
love is suffering with you, sweetheart. I do pity you, and I could
weep with you, but tears are strange to my eyes--God made me soft
without and hard within--and I have a better medicine to help you than
pity." Still he was caressing her, but she felt his body straightening
within the armor.

"When ye prophesy that the fanatics of the west will be at me in
Edinburgh, I suspect ye are right, but I pray you not to trouble
yourself overmuch. They have shot at me before with leaden bullets and
with silver, trying me first as a man and next as a devil, but no
bullet touched me, and now if they fall back upon the steel there are
two or three trusty lads with me who can use the sword fairly well,
and though your husband be not a large man, Jean, none has had the
better of him when it came to sword-play. So cheer up, lass, for I may
fall some day, but it will not be at the hands of a skulking
Covenanter in a street brawl.

"But if this should come to pass, Jean--and the future is known only
to God--then I beseech you that ye be worthy of yourself, and show
them that ye are my Lady Dundee. If I fall, then ye must live, and
take good care that the unborn child shall live, too, and if he be a
boy--as I am sure he will be--then ye have your life-work. Train him
up in the good faith and in loyalty to the king; tell him how Montrose
fought for the good cause and died for it, and how his own father
followed in the steps of the Marquis. Train him for the best life a
man can live and make him a soldier, and lay upon him from his youth
that ye will not die till he has avenged his father's murder. That
will be worthy of your blood and your rank, aye, and the love which
has been between us, Jean Cochrane and John Graham."

She held him in her arms till the very breastplate was warm, and she
kissed him twice upon the lips. Then she raised herself to her full
height--and she was as tall as Graham--and looking proudly at him, she
said:

"Ye have put strength into me, as if the iron which covers your