“He’s gane indeed, dear Mary,” said he as he gently assisted her to rise; “let’s be thankful that we’re safe on dry land, and let me help you hame to your ain house as fast as I can, and may the Lord be aboot us!”
Adjusting his plaid over her, and placing his arm around her slender waist to support her tottering steps, he guided her homewards by the light of the moon through the rugged moor by a short path. Often as they went did each of them secretly remember how auspiciously the morning sun had shone upon them as they had danced lightly together over the blooming heather! But they were both too much sunk by the unfortunate issue of their day’s adventures, believing as they, poor things, foolishly did, that the powers of evil themselves had combined to thwart them; they were too much sunk, I say, to be able to utter much more than monosyllables to each other, or such words at least as were expressive of gratitude to Heaven for having permitted them to yescape with life, whilst an indefinite dread of the fate that awaited them hung secretly lowering over each of their minds.
Lights blazed within the white-washed windows of Donald Rose’s cottage as it appeared on a knoll before Mary’s dizzy eyes. Whether these might indicate her father’s presence or not, she could not daur to guess. The poor lassie was so feared, that she hesitated to approach the door herself; yet she felt that there was still greater danger there for Robin, and, with a delicate pressure of the young lad’s hand, she bade him tenderly farewell.
“Robin, haste ye hame to the Limekilns,” said she. “Ye maunna face my father. Leave me to face him mysell.”
“No!” said Robin boldly and with peculiar emphasis, “I ha’e noo faced mair than your father, Mary; and sae I’m no ga’in’ to flee your father himsell, though he does wear a durk. Gif he be comed hame, ye may the mair want my help to meet him.”
Fearfully alarmed for the consequences, and still more apprehensive for her father’s wrath against him than against herself, she endeavoured to argue with him on the folly of his rashness; and whilst they were both engaged in an animated and somewhat imprudently loud discussion on this subject, they were startled by the voice of Mysie Morrison, who came suddenly upon them from the cottage.
“Bless ye, my bairns, is that you?” exclaimed this good domestic. “What i’ the warld has keepit ye sae lang oot daffin’? An’ is that the end o’ a’ your courtin’ after a’, that you’re to come hame an’ end it that gate wi’ a colly-shangy?”
“Has my father come back frae the market yet, Mysie?” tremblingly demanded Mary.
“Na, he’s no come hame yet,” replied the old woman, “and I’m thinkin’ that he’ll no be comin’ hame the night noo. I ‘se warrant he’s been weel set wi’ some drouthy customer, an’ he’ll hae staid whar he wuz. But come ye’re ways in, my bairns, an’ get some meat; I trow ye maun be clean starvin’.”
With Robin’s recollection of the spectre which he had beheld riding by the loch-side he had little heart, at that hour, to cross the wide muir that lay between Donald Rose’s house, where he then was, and his father’s cottage on the hill of the Limekilns. He much preferred the risk of meeting Donald’s substantial body of flesh and blood, dirk and fury and all, within the four walls of a well lighted up room, to having his moonlight path crossed upon the heath by the terrific simulacrum or wraith which had already blasted his sight. In addition, therefore, to the seducing attractions which Mary’s society held out to him, coupled with those urgent admonitions which he was receiving at that moment from hunger and thirst, he had thus some vurra strong and powerful secret reasons for preferring to remain, to which he did not choose to give utterance. Mary, for her part, was sorely buffeted between her wishes and her fears. She had every desire to do that hospitality to her lover which her own faintness began to remind her must now be so highly necessary to him. On the other hand, she had the strongest apprehension that her father might suddenly return, in spite of all that Mysie had said to the contrary, and she thus hung for a moment in dootful equilibrio, as a body may say, between the two opposing forces which were thus operating on her. But Mysie, who was much less timorous, having done all she could to assure her that there was no danger of a surprise, she at length hushed her fears and tacitly yielded to her wishes. She and Robin, therefore, were soon seated over some comfortable viands by a blazing hearth, whilst Mysie, with a judgment and prudence that might have well befitted an attendant of Queen Dido herself when she took refuge from the storm with the Trojan king in the cave, retired to make security doubly sure, by setting herself to watch at the window of the neighbouring apartment, where, by the light of the moon, she might see her master return, so that she might give timeous notice to Robin Stuart to yescape by the back-door, whilst old Rose was occupied in putting his horse into the stable.