She joined her hands in supplication to him as she knelt, and the tears chased each other like rain down her cheeks.  The solemnity with which she insisted on gaining her point staggered Lamh Laudher not a little.

“There must be something undher this,” he replied, “that makes you set your heart on it so much.  Ellen, tell me the truth; what is it?”

“If I loved you less, John, an’ my brother too, I wouldn’t care so much about it.  Remember that I’m a woman, an’ on my knees before you.  A blow from you would make him take your life or mine, sooner than that I should become your wife.  You ought to know his temper.”

“You know, Ellen, I can’t at heart refuse you any thing.  I will not strike your brother.”

“You promise, before God, that no provocation will make you strike him.”

“That’s hard, Ellen; but—­well, I do; before God, I won’t—­an’ it’s for your sake I say it.  Now, get up, dear, get up.  You have got me to do what no mortal livin’ could bring me to but yourself.  I suppose that’s what made you send Nanse M’Collum for my staff?”

“Nancy M’Collum!  When?”

“Why, a while ago.  She tould me a quare enough story, or rather no story at all, only that you couldn’t come, an’ you could come, an’ I was to give up my staff to her by your ordhers.”

“She tould you false, John.  I know nothing about what you say.”

“Well, Ellen,” replied Lamh Laudher, with a firm seriousness of manner, “you have brought me into danger.  I doubt, without knowin’ it.  For my own part, I don’t care so much.  Her unlucky aunt met me comin’ here this evenin’, and threatened both our family and yours.  I know she would sink us into the earth if she could.  Either she or your brother is at the bottom of this business, whatever it is.  Your brother I don’t fear; but she is to be dreaded, if, all’s true that’s said about her.”

“No, John—­she surely couldn’t have the heart to harm, you an’ me.  Oh, but I’m light now, since you did what I wanted you.  No harm can come between you and Meehaul; for I often heard him say, when speakin’ about his faction fights, that no one but a coward would, strike an unresistin’ man.  Now come and see me pass the Pedlar’s Cairn, an’ remember that you’ll thank me for what I made you do this night.  Come quickly—­I’ll be missed.”

They then passed on by a circuitous and retired path that led round the orchard, until he had conducted her in safety beyond the Pedlar’s Cairn, which was so called from a heap of stones that had been loosely piled together, to mark the spot as the scene of a murder, whose history, thus perpetuated by the custom of every passenger casting a stone upon the place, constituted one of the local traditions of the neighborhood.