It was almost midnight when Dingwall might be seen toiling across the moorland, through the snow, in the direction of Kirsty's cottage. The old woman and he were fast friends now, and he wanted to ask her advice on the startling proposal concerning the little girl who was so precious to them both.
He found Kirsty sitting quietly reading her Bible beside the dying peat embers. Taking off her spectacles, she listened placidly to the story, and presently she replied in low, emphatic tones, "Dinna hinner the bairn, keeper. Lat her gang, by a' means. 'Deed, I'm near awears o' gaen mysel'. The bonnie lambie—an' sae He's til tak' her hame til Himsel? Weel, weel, I thocht as muckle, whiles, when she was comin' aboot us wi' a' her winsome ways. May she hae been early seekin' the face she will maybe see gin lang!"
So Morag gained her point. Her travelling preparations were not long in being made; and, though she had not many hours of sleep that night, she was all ready to go down the hill with her father in the morning.
Just before she started, Kenneth came running up to the shieling in breathless haste. He carried with him the old tartan plaid which had done such sad duty in the fir-wood. Wrapping it carefully round Morag, he stood watching her wistfully, as she started in the grey dawn of a December morning on this first journey into the world beyond the mountains!
It was Christmas Eve. A fresh fall of snow lay spotless and shining on the ground. The moon was giving a clear, plentiful light, and as it shimmered on the snow-covered streets and squares, it seemed suddenly to transform them into groups of stately marble palaces.
A pleasant crimson glow came from the close-curtained windows of Mr. Clifford's London mansion, shedding a warm, rosy light on the white crisp pavement in front, where stood a group of German lads singing a fine rolling Christmas carol.
Little did they guess how dreary and tenantless those rooms were to-night, which seemed to them to enclose such a paradise of delights as they kept gazing up to the windows, in the hope of an appreciative audience from within the crimson glow.