nd before parting they
arranged to meet again the next day.

On his way back to "Highlands" the conversation which took place
between himself and his companions came back to him. He remembered
what he had read in the old Encyclopaedia about Scotch marriages, and
it possessed him strongly. He believed himself to be in love with this
peasant girl. To him she was a creature apart from all the rest of the
world--young, romantic, beautiful with a kind of beauty he had never
seen in any other. He felt he could not live his life apart from her.
He wanted to take her away from this barren farm among the hills and
make her life happy. And yet the madness of his thought appealed to
him too. How could he make her his wife? How could he introduce her
to his friends? Beautiful she might be, but was it not the beauty of a
savage? The Poles lay between her and the women into whose society he
would be cast in coming days. He was very ambitious for his own
future. He dreamed of becoming a popular barrister, of winning fame
and renown, of gaining a name throughout the country as a brilliant
lawyer and a pleader of eloquence and power. Like every other young
law student he had read of famous lawyers who had risen from obscurity
to renown, from poverty to wealth. His career at the University had
assured him that he had more than average abilities, while his speeches
at the Oxford Union had been received with so much applause that he
knew he had the gift of public speech in no ordinary degree. What then
should hinder him from attaining to high position in the world he had
chosen as his sphere? But all this seemed as nothing in comparison
with the mad passion which had been aroused in his heart by this
beauteous being of the moors. What was law, what was fame, what were
riches in comparison with the joy which her presence gave him?
Besides, it did not seem to him that the marriage he had in his mind
was the same as that in the English churches. It might be legal, but
there was something unreal, unstable about it, and who need know? A
Scotch marriage! It appealed to him almost as a joke, while at the
same time he knew it would satisfy this young girl's conscience. It
would make her his wife. And so, although he had many doubts, he made
his plans.

All through the night he lay thinking. He wished he had some of his
law books with him, so that he could study the matter carefully, for he
was strangely ignorant. No minist