, I swore to do. He bade
me further efface for ever from my mind all thought or hope of union
with their cousin, and though I made him no answer at the time, yet in
my heart I promised to obey him in that, too. But I was young--scarce
twenty. A week without sight of my mistress and I grew sick with
despair. Then at length I came upon her, pale and tearful, one evening,
and in an agony of passion and hopelessness I flung myself at her feet,
and implored her to keep true to me and wait, and she, poor maid, to her
undoing swore that she would. You are yourself a lover, Kenneth, and you
may guess something of the impatience that anon beset me. How could I
wait? I asked her this.

"Some fifty miles from the castle there was a little farm, in the very
heart of the country, which had been left me by a sister of my mother's.
Thither I now implored her to repair with me. I would find a priest to
wed us, and there we should live a while in happiness, in solitude, and
in love. An alluring picture did I draw with all a lover's cunning, and
to the charms of it she fell a victim. We fled three days later.

"We were wed in the village that pays allegiance to the castle,
and thereafter we travelled swiftly and undisturbed to that little
homestead. There in solitude, with but two servants--a man and a maid
whom I could trust--we lived and loved, and for a season, brief as all
happiness is doomed to be, we were happy. Her cousins had no knowledge
of that farm of mine, and though they searched the country for many
a mile around, they searched in vain. My father knew--as I learned
afterwards--but deeming that what was done might not be undone, he held
his peace. In the following spring a babe was born to us, and our bliss
made heaven of that cottage.

"Twas a month or so after the birth of our child that the blow
descended. I was away, enjoying alone the pleasures of the chase; my man
was gone a journey to the nearest town, whence he would not return until
the morrow. Oft have I cursed the folly that led me to take my gun and
go forth into the woods, leaving no protector for my wife but one weak
woman.

"I returned earlier than I had thought to do, led mayhap by some angel
that sought to have me back in time. But I came too late. At my gate
I found two freshly ridden horses tethered, and it was with a dull
foreboding in my heart that I sprang through the open door. Within--O
God, the anguish of it!--stretched on the floor I beheld my l