sed, "but here I am, and God bless her for
bringing me to it! Will you--will you take my white heather now?" And he
stood, something of a lout, with nervous hands upon his hips.

"It looks very pretty where it is," she answered playfully. "And for
what should I be decking myself in the wilderness?"

She wanted the obvious compliment, but this was a stock from a kail
garden, and "Oh, John Hielan'man!" she cried aloud for the first time.

"You promised, you know," he said lamely.

"That was yesterday, and this is to-day, and----" she could not finish
for thinking of Young Islay.

"Must I be taking it to you?" he went on, making to move to the door of
the hut where lay the symbol of his love and the token of her surrender.

"Wait! wait!" she cried, standing to her feet and approaching him. "Is
that all there is in the bargain? Are there no luck-pennies at this sort
of market?"

He understood her and kissed her with a heart furious within but in his
movement hesitating, shy and awkward.

For her life she could not but recall the other--the more confident and
practised one she had fled from. She drew off, red, to give her no more
than her due, for the treachery of her mind.

"Leave it," she said to him. "I will get it myself. Does anyone besides
Miss Mary know we are here?"

"No."

"Then she will tell nobody our secret. You will go down now. We could
scarcely go together. You will go down now, and tell her I will follow
in the dusk."

"You have given me no answer, Nan," he pleaded; "the heather!"

"The heather will be at my heart!" she cried hurriedly.

It was a promise that sang in his head as he went on his way, the herald
of joy, the fool of illusion.

CHAPTER XXXIV--CHASE

When he had gone and was no farther than the shoulder of the brae lying
between the hut and Little Fox, and there was no longer any chance of
his turning to repeat his wild adieux, Nan went into the old hut and put
the sprig of white heather at her bosom, and gave way to a torrent of
tears. She could not have done so in the sunshine outside, but in that
poor interior, even with the day spying through the roof, she had the
sense of seclusion. She cried for grief and bitterness. No folly she
had ever committed seemed so great as this her latest, that she should
blindly have fled from a danger unmeasured into a situation that
abounded with difficulties. She blamed herself, she blamed her father,
she blamed Gilian for his inabilit