Bessy suddenly cast a basilisk look at me. Huh! what lightnings flashed in those sea-like eyes!

"Then how are we to get over that?" inquired the bridegroom of me, with childlike helplessness.

"Why, by your becoming a Calvinist, I suppose."

"A Calvi ..." he was already outside the door when he said the ... "nist!" He caught up his helmet and bolted without saying good-bye to any one. Clerk Coloman told me afterwards he had never seen a dragoon in such a hurry.

Bessy he left behind on my hands.

The young lady was in a terrible rage.

"It was pure malice on your part," cried she, "to do me out of my bridegroom like that! What do you mean by it? To serve me such a nasty trick as that!"

I justified myself as best I could.

"He would have had to know it sooner or later. The priest would have refused to unite you."

"You should have left that to me. If once I had paid his debts, his honour as a gentleman would have bound him to make this sacrifice for me; he could not have got out of it then."