"Love, they say, is warm," replied Mary, "and I would rather be in it, or in my master's kitchen, or in my bed, or anywhere else, than out in this cauld night; so, if you do not walk faster, I shall be forced to run away and leave you."
"My dear Mary," said he of the Drycraig, mending his pace a little, though it was evident he did so with great reluctance—"my dear Mary, I could gang at the gallop, or I could gang like a snail, or I could gang owre a linn and drown mysel, or owre a craig and brak my neck, or speak, or haud my tongue, or do ony other thing on earth, for your sake, if ye would only allow me to love ye, and say ye loved me again."
"Weel, I must confess you would do a great deal for me," said Mary, beginning to enjoy his extravagance—teasing as he had become—and scarcely able to refrain from laughing at him; "you would really do a great deal; but take my advice for the present: keep your head above water, and your neck hale as lang as ye can; neither gang owre the linn nor the craig, but the neist time you are in a company, let fewer linns gang owre your ain craig; and, in the meantime, neither speak of love, nor haud your tongue a'thegither, but gang at the gallop!—that will please me best; for my mistress must be angry at me for staying out sae late. Or, stop! I might run a race with you for a penny—the loser to pay the stake—and then, I can tell you some other time whether you are to love me or not. Maidens, they say, should aye be mealy-mouthed at first."
As she uttered these words, she secretly determined, if possible, never to give him another opportunity of making such a proposition. She also resolved to bear with him for the present, and leave him to learn her real sentiments from her future conduct. A crisis, however, was approaching which she had not foreseen, and for which she was wholly unprepared. Her protector, who had drank rather too liberally at the Gazling Inn, was now beginning to be in such a state that he would have almost required a protector himself. The moment he heard Mary's light-hearted declaration, his emotion seemed to overcome him, he made a dead stand, and exclaimed, in the most piteous accents—
"I canna gang anither fit!"
"Foul fa' you and your feet baith," said Mary, forgetting the resolution which she had formed only a minute ago, and nearly losing her good-humour at the same time. "I tell ye," she continued, "that I should been hame lang syne, and d'ye think that I can bide here the hale night to hear you haver nonsense."
"O Mary, Mary!" rejoined the man of exclamations, "this sets the crown on a' my misfortunes, and I'll never do mair guid. Twice owre this same night I saw you looking at Jamie Duff: ye love him, and no me. O Mary, Mary, Mary!" and therewith he threw himself down upon the earth, or rather in a puddle of dirty water by the road-side, at full length, and began to weep and groan, in great tribulation. When his inarticulate wailings would permit, he again muttered half sentences about walking over the linn or the craig, and he even threw out hints of an intention to leave the world in that most ungentlemanly manner in which the law sometimes disposes of very dissolute characters. As the liquor with which he had been drenching his system had no doubt heightened the effects of his sensibility, his sensibility now heightened the effects of the liquor; and between them he was soon in a sad state of mental as well as bodily distemperature.
Mary, who had little experience in these matters, would have readily given all the worlds which all the Alexanders and Cæsars on earth ever conquered, had she been mistress of them, for some one to assist her in conducting him to any house where he might find shelter for the night, or perhaps, as she thought, a bed on which he might breathe his last. Fortunately for her, she soon heard the noise of footsteps approaching; and, in a few minutes more, she had the satisfaction of seeing, or rather hearing, James Duff, with his convoy, which was not a merchantman, but a marriageable woman, bear down upon her.
James had been left in quiet possession of Jenny Jackson, in consequence of Andrew—who was certainly the most enamoured lover—having got rather fuddled; from which circumstance he had been left at the inn to sleep off his debauch; and, though the hands of the former were already full, he did not appear offended, nor even greatly distressed, at the accident which gave him an opportunity of again meeting Mary. He immediately lifted the fallen man from the ground, on which he was still lying in a half-senseless state, and, with the assistance of the two maidens, who, in this instance, lent their aid, "nothing loth," conducted him to the nearest house, where they left him to recover from his drench.
Mary was now for running home as fast as possible, but the gallantry of her new acquaintance would not permit him to think of allowing her to go alone; he therefore proposed that she should go with them to Heatherinch, which was but a short way out of her road, and, after seeing Jenny safely lodged, he would accompany her at least a part of her journey. To this proposal Jenny was far from giving a hearty sanction, but the other seemed determined for once to take his own way. She had her own reasons for wishing not to thwart him openly, and, after some trifling demurs, she acquiesced. James, accordingly, escorted Mary as far as her master's barn-yard, which was certainly the most considerable part of her journey; and here, notwithstanding the lateness, or rather earliness of the hour, and her previous hurry to get home, they spent they knew not how long on the leeward side of a strae stack, conversing on various subjects, which to them, and to the whole world, might have been deemed of very little importance; and, though neither of them spoke one word of love, or made the slightest allusion to that interesting subject, it was almost morning before they thought of separating.