means in my power by which ye can escape, it shall not
be lang that ye will remain a prisoner."

"Thank ye!--doubly thank ye!" cried Simon; "ye are a good and a kind
creature; and though my maister refuses to marry your mistress, yet, had
I been single, I would hae married you. But, oh, when ye go wi' the
letter to his mother, my honoured lady, will ye just go away down to a
bit white house which lies by the river side, about a mile and a half
aboon Selkirk, and there ye will find my poor wife and bairns--or
rather, I should say, my unhappy widow and my orphans--and tell
them--oh, tell my wife--that I never kenned how dear she was to me till
now; but that, if she marries again, my ghost will haunt her night and
day; and tell also the bairns that, above everything, I charge them to
be good to their mother."

The young laird sat down, and, writing a letter to his mother, intrusted
it to the hands of the stranger girl. He raised her hand to his lips as
she withdrew, and a tear trickled down his cheeks as he thanked her.

It was early on the following morning that Meikle-mouthed Meg, as
she was called, requested an interview with her father, which being
granted, after respectfully rendering obeisance before him, she
said--"So, faither, I understand that it is your pleasure that I shall
this day become the wife o' young Scott o' Harden. I think, sir, that
it is due to the daughter o' a Murray o' Elibank, that she should be
courted before she gies her hand. The young man has never seen me; he
kens naething concerning me; an' never will yer dochter disgrace ye by
gieing her hand to a man who only accepted it to save his neck from a
hempen cord. Faither, if it be your command that I am to marry him, I
will an' must marry him; but, before I just make a venture upon him for
better for worse, an' for life, I wad like to hae some sma' acquaintance
wi' him, to see what sort o' a lad he is, and what kind o' temper he
has; and therefore, faither, I humbly crave that ye will put off the
death or the marriage for a week at least, that I may hae an opportunity
o' judging for mysel' how far it would be prudent or becoming in me to
consent to be his wife."

"Gie me your hand, Meg," cried the old knight; "I didna think ye had as
muckle spirit and gumption in ye as to say what ye hae said. But your
request is useless; for he has already, point blank, refused to hae ye;
an' there is naething left for him, but, before sunset, to strike his