"I can never be in anger with you, Bryde," said she. "I wish it were not so."
"Are you wishing to be angry with me now?" said he in a deep voice, with one great arm round her shoulder, and his face bent to her. And as she looked at him a sort of fierceness came over Helen. She flung her arms round the man, and stood on tiptoe to be reaching up to him.
"Some day I will be forgetting my convent teaching," said she, "and then I will make you love me, and you will be mine altogether."
"There will be something in that," said Bryde, and laughed a loud ringing laugh, as the drollness of the business came on him. And when he looked down, there was the lass all humbled, and tears standing in her eyes, and a pitiful little mouth on her.
"You are laughing at me, Bryde," said she in a little voice, shakily.
"No, dear, no," said he, "I would be thinking of the Laird of Scaurdale if he kent, and me with a name to be making. Do not be greetin'," said he, "there will be nothing at all to be greeting for," and he set her on her horse gently, and they rode on by the burnside, and watched the brown trout flash in below the boulders, and darting across the amber pools, just as they do to-day.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE HALFLIN'S MESSAGE.
I mind that there was a good back-end that year, as we say, with plenty of keep for the beasts, and the stacks under thatch of sprits by the end of September, and I would be standing in the stackyard as a man will, just pleased to be seeing things as they were, and swithering if I should be taking a step to the Quay Inn, when the halflin lad from Bryde's place came up to me.
"He is not yonder," said he, in a daft-like way. "He will not be in his own place any more."