get it."

"He has forgotten and forgiven it already," I cried "At least, let us
hope he has not forgotten it (for you said no more than was perhaps
deserved), but at least it's forgiven. If you said to-morrow that you
were sorry for your temper----"

"Said ten thousand fiends in Hell!" cried M'Iver. "I may be vexed I
angered the man; but I'll never let him know it by my words, if he
cannot make it out from my acts."

CHAPTER XXXI.--MISTRESS BETTY.

I dressed myself up in the morning with scrupulous care, put my hair in
a queue, shaved cheek and chin, and put at my shoulder the old heirloom
brooch of the house, which, with some other property, the invaders had
not found below the _bruach_ where we had hid it on the day we had left
Elngmore to their mercy. I was all in a tremor of expectation, hot
and cold by turns in hope and apprehension, but always with a singular
uplifting at the heart, because for good or ill I was sure to meet in
the next hour or two the one person whose presence in Inneraora made
it the finest town in the world. Some men tell me they have felt the
experience more than once; light o' loves they, errant gallants, I'll
swear (my dear) the tingle of it came to me but at the thought of
meeting one woman. Had she been absent from Inneraora that morning
I would have avoided it like a leper-house because of its gloomy
memorials; but the very reek of its repairing tenements as I saw them
from the upper windows of my home floating in a haze against the blue
over the shoulder of Dun Torvil seemed to call me on. I went about the
empty chambers carolling like the bird. Aumrie and clothes-press were
burst and vacant, the rooms in all details were bereft and cheerless
because of the plenishing stolen, and my father sat among his losses and
mourned, but I made light of our spoiling.

As if to heighten the rapture of my mood, the day was full of sunshine,
and though the woods crowding the upper glen were leafless and
slumbering, they were touched to something like autumn's gold. Some
people love the country but in the time of leafage! And laden with
delights in every season of the year, and the end of winter as cheery
a period as any, for I know that the buds are pressing at the bark,
and that the boughs in rumours of wind stretch out like the arms of the
sleeper who will soon be full awake.

Down I went stepping to a merry lilt, banishing every fear from my
thoughts, and the first call I made was on t