"It was about four of the clock, and the east little more than greying, as we four stood in front of the manse of Kirkchrist. Had any been abroad to see us we had seemed a curious company. The curate in his white gown and black bands, his shambling nightgear peeping out above and under—a red peaked nightcap on his head, the tassel of which nodded continually over his right eye in a most ludicrous manner (only that none thought of mirth that night). Beside him, a dripping candle in her hand, stood his sister, a buxom quean, blowsed with health and ruddy as the cherry.
"Before these two I stood, 'a black towering hulk with one arm in a sling' (Rachel's words), and beside me, my sweet bride, dainty and light as a butterfly at poise on a flower's lip.
"Overhead among the trees the wind began to move, blowing thin and chill before the dawn. And even as the curate thumbed and mumbled beneath the flicker of the candle, I saw the light break behind the Black Craig of Dee, and wondered if ever Rae and I should dwell in peace and content in the lee of it.
"And because neither Rachel nor I knew that form of words, Jean Bain kept us right, prompting us how to kneel here, and what to answer there, here to say our names over, and there promise to love each other—the last not necessary, for if we had not done that already, we had hardly been at the manse of Kirkchrist at four of the August morning in order to be wed by an alien and uncovenanted priest.
"But scarcely had the blessing of Donald Bain made us man and wife, when we heard the roysterers' chorus again abroad on the hills, and Jean Bain came rushing upon us wild with alarm. She guessed well enough who we were. For the searchers had been at the manse the night before swearing to have my life.
"'Flee,' she said; 'take to the heather for your lives. They have sworn to kill your husband!'
"This I knew well enough; but the perversity of fate which at that time clung to me, made me ready to faint.
"'I cannot go—I am dizzy with my wound!' I said, and would have fallen but that Rachel and the young Highland woman held me up in their arms.
"All this time the shouting and hallooing like the crying of hunters on the hills came nearer, and the day was breaking fast.
"Rachel and I were, indeed, in a strait place. I bethought me on the Little Fair Man, and almost repented that his counsels had brought me to this. But even then, and in the house of the Philistine, help came.