"That was all, God helping me, that was all."
"And you have heard nothing from him since?"
"Never a word since the morning he bid me good-bye at the station, and told me to go back to my father, saying he would write to me at once, and come to me soon. No, I have never seen nor heard of him since."
The eyes of the youth became red with anger. His hands clenched and unclenched themselves passionately, but he did not speak. It seemed as if he could not. Then an oath escaped him, and his voice was hoarse.
"But, mother," he cried presently, "tell me more. There must be more than this. What about this marriage? Were there no witnesses? Have you no marriage lines?"
"Things are different in Scotland, my boy," was her answer. "There many people just take each other as man and wife, and that is all, and the marriage is legal. Do you know"—and her voice trembled with passion—"that on the afternoon when he took me as his wife we knelt down by the roadside, and he prayed with me that God would help us to be true man and wife to each other?"
"But, but——" he cried, and he was trembling with emotion, "and he treated you like that?"
The woman did not reply, but looked away across the moors with a hard, stony stare.
"My mother, my poor, poor mother!" He seemed incapable of saying more, and for two or three minutes there was a silence between them.
"And then, mother?" he went on presently.