"Alas, my Lillias!" said the fisherman, "we have not been born for happiness and each other. We must part—each of us to struggle with our respective evils. Call up all your strength of mind—the much in your character that has as yet lain unemployed—and so despicable a thing as Simpson will not dare to annoy you. You may yet meet with a man worthy of you; some one who will love you as well as—as one who can at least appreciate your value, and who will deserve you better." As he spoke, and his mistress listened in silence and in tears, William Stewart burst in upon them through the bushes; and with a countenance flushed, and a frame tremulous with passion, assailed the fisherman with a torrent of threats and reproaches. He even raised his hand. The prudence of Thomson gave way under the provocation. Ere the blow had descended, he had locked the farmer in his grasp, and with an exertion of strength which scarcely a giant would be capable of in a moment of less excitement, he raised him from the earth, and forced him against the grassy side of the ravine, where he held him despite of his efforts. A shriek from Lillias recalled him to the command of himself. "William Stewart," he said, quitting his hold and stepping back, "you are an old man, and the father of Lillias." The farmer rose slowly and collectedly, with a flushed cheek but a quiet eye, as if all his anger had evaporated in the struggle, and, turning to his daughter—
"Come, Lillias, my lassie," he said, laying hold of her arm, "I have been too hasty—I have been in the wrong." And so they parted.
Winter came on, and Thomson was again left to the solitude of his cottage, with only his books and his own thoughts to employ him. He found little amusement or comfort in either; he could think of only Lillias—that she loved and was yet lost to him.
"Generous, and affectionate, and confiding," he has said, when thinking of her, "I know she would willingly share with me in my poverty; but ill would I repay her kindness in demanding of her such a sacrifice. Besides, how could I endure to see her subjected to the privations of a destiny so humble as mine? The same heaven that seems to have ordained me to labour and to be unsuccessful, has given me a mind not to be broken by either toil or disappointment; but keenly and bitterly would I feel the evils of both, were she to be equally exposed. I must strive to forget her, or think of her only as my friend." And, indulging in such thoughts as these, and repeating and re-repeating similar resolutions—only, however, to find them unavailing—winter, with its long, dreary nights, and its days of languor and inactivity, passed heavily away. But it passed.
He was sitting beside his fire, one evening late in February, when a gentle knock was heard at the door. He started up, and, drawing back the bar, William Stewart entered the apartment.
"Allan," said the old man, "I have come to have some conversation with you, and would have come sooner, but pride and shame kept me back. I fear I have been much to blame."
Thomson motioned him to a seat, and sat down beside him.
"Farmer," he said, "since we cannot recall the past, we had, perhaps, better forget it."
The old man bent forward his head till it rested almost on his knee, and for a few moments remained silent.
"I fear, Allan, I have been much to blame," he at length reiterated. "Ye maun come an' see Lillias. She is ill, very ill—an' I fear no very like to get better." Thomson was stunned by the intelligence, and answered he scarcely knew what. "She has never been richt hersel," continued the old man, "sin' the unlucky day when you an' I met in the burn here; but for the last month she has been little out o' her bed. Since mornin there has been a great change on her, an' she wishes to see you. I fear we havena meikle time to spare, an' had better gang." Thomson followed him in silence.