folks were thrown together.  They were seldom out of each other’s company.  Suffering is love’s opportunity, and Templeton had to plead for him not only his misfortune, but a tongue rendered subtle and winning by love’s action in the heart.  As the days passed, Annie saw some new qualities in the martyr prisoner which she had not seen before; nay, the pretty little domestic attentions had the usual reflex effect upon the heart which administered them, and all that the recurring image of Menelaws could do to fight against these rising predilections was so far unavailing, that that very image waxed dimmer and dimmer, while the present object was always working through the magic of sensation.  Yes, Annie Yellowlees grew day by day fonder of her protege, until at length she got, as the saying goes, “over head and ears.”  Nay, was she not, in the long nights, busy working a pair of red slippers for the object of her new affections, and were not these so very suitable to one who, like Hercules, was reduced almost to the distaff, and who, unlike that woman-tamed hero, did not need them to be applied anywhere but to the feet?

In the midst of all this secluded domesticity, there was all that comfort which is said to come from stolen waters.  Then was there not the prospect of the proscription being taken off, and the two would be made happy?  Even in the meantime they made small escapades into free space.  When the moon was just so far up as not to be a tell-tale, Templeton would, either with or without Annie, step out into the garden with these very red slippers on his feet.  That bower by the loch, too, was favourable to the fondlings of a secret love; nor was it sometimes less to the prisoner a refuge from the eeriness which comes of ennui—­if it is not the same thing—­under the pressure of which strange feeling he would creep out at times when Annie could not be with him; nay, sometimes when the family had gone to bed.

And now we come to a very wonderful turn in our strange story.  One morning Templeton did not make his appearance in the breakfast parlour, but of course he would when he got up and got his red slippers on.  Yet he was so punctual; and Annie, who knew that her father had to go to the council chamber, would see what was the cause of the young man’s delay.  She went to his bedroom door.  It was open; but where was Templeton?  He was not there.  He could not be out in the city; he could not be even in the garden with the full light of a bright morning sun shining on it.  He was not in the house; he was not in the garden, as they could see from the windows.  He was nowhere to be found; and, what added to the wonder, he had taken with him his red slippers, wherever he had gone.  The inmates were in wonderment and consternation, and, conduplicated evil! they could make no inquiry for one who lay under the ban of a bloody proscription.