“Before now I have spoken to the tobacco I have planted, the trees I have felled, the swords and muskets I have sold.”

“But at last thee came and spoke to me!”

“Ay,” he answered.  “There have been times when you saved my soul alive.  Now, in the forest, in my house of logs, when the day’s work is done, and I sit upon my doorstep and begin to hear the voices of the past crying to me like the spirits in the valley of Glensyte, I will think of you instead.”

“Oh!” cried Truelove.  “Speak to me instead, and I will speak to thee ... sitting upon the doorstep of our house, when our day’s work is done!”

Her hood falling back showed her face, clear pink, with dewy eyes.  The carnation deepening from brow to throat, and the tears trembling upon her long lashes, she suddenly hid her countenance in her gray cloak.  MacLean, on his knees beside her, drew away the folds.  “Truelove, Truelove! do you know what you have said?”

Truelove put her hand upon her heart.  “Oh, I fear,” she whispered, “I fear that I have asked thee, Angus MacLean, to let me be—­to let me be—­thy wife.”

The water shone, and the holly berries were gay, and a robin redbreast sang a cheerful song.  Beneath the rustling oak-tree there was ardent speech on the part of MacLean, who found in his mistress a listener sweet and shy, and not garrulous of love.  But her eyes dwelt upon him and her hand rested at ease within his clasp, and she liked to hear him speak of the home they were to make in the wilderness.  It was to be thus, and thus, and thus!  With impassioned eloquence the Gael adorned the shrine and advanced the merit of the divinity, and the divinity listened with a smile, a blush, a tear, and now and then a meek rebuke.

When an hour had passed, the sun went under a cloud and the air grew colder.  The bird had flown away, but in the rising wind the dead leaves rustled loudly.  MacLean and Truelove, leaving their future of honorable toil, peace of mind, and enduring affection, came back to the present.

“I must away,” said the Highlander.  “Haward waits for me at Williamsburgh.  To-morrow, dearer to me than Deirdre to Naos!  I will come again.”

Hand in hand the two walked slowly toward that haunt of peace, Truelove’s quiet home.  “And Marmaduke Haward awaits thee at Williamsburgh?” said the Quakeress.  “Last third day he met my father and me on the Fair View road, and checked his horse and spoke to us.  He is changed.”

“Changed indeed!” quoth the Highlander.  “A fire burns him, a wind drives him; and yet to the world, last night”—­He paused.

“Last night?” said Truelove.

“He had a large company at Marot’s ordinary,” went on the other.  “There were the Governor and his fellow Councilors, with others of condition or fashion.  He was the very fine gentleman, the perfect host, free, smiling, full of wit.  But I had been with him before they came.  I knew the fires beneath.”