“Well,” said Sandy, “that is your bed made, my lassie. You have both said it before witnesses. You must take him now, whether ye will or not!
“Hugh,” he cried, with a sudden roar towards the servants’ quarters. And from the haymow in the barn where he had been making a pretence of work a retainer appeared with a scared expression on his face.
“Run over to the cot-house at the road-end and tell the minister lad that the Dumfries Presbytery deposed to come to the Earlstoun and that smartly, else I will come down and fetch him myself!”
The man was already on his way ere the sentence was ended, and when the Laird roared the last words after him he fairly seemed to jump.
He was out of sight among the trees a moment after.
“Now,” said Alexander Gordon, “Mary and you have proclaimed yourselves man and wife. Ye shall be soundly married by a minister, and then ye shall go your ways forth. Think not that I will give you the worth of a boddle either in gear or land. Ye have asked me no permission. Ye have defied me. I say not that I will disown ye. But, at least, I owe you nothing.”
“Father,” said Mary, “did I ask you for aught, or did Quintin?”
“Nay,” said he, grimly, “not even for my daughter.”
“Then,” said she, “do not refuse that for which you have not been asked!”
“And how may you propose to live?” her father went on triumphantly. “Ye would not look at him when he had kirk and glebe, manse and stipend. And now ye take him by force when he is no better than a beggar at the dykeback. That it is to be a woman!”