“Tak’ your time, Neil, and you won’t lose your judgment.  How was he to ken that Katherine was your sweetheart?  You made little o’ the lassie, vera little, I may say.  Lawyer-like you may be, but nane could call you lover-like.  And while he and his are my guests, and in my house, I’ll no hae you fighting him.  Tak’ a word o’ advice now,—­I’ll gie it without a fee,—­you are fond enough to plead for others, go and plead an hour for yoursel’.  Certie!  When I was your age, I was aye noted for my persuading way.  Your father, sir, never left a spare corner for a rival.  And I can tell you this:  a woman isna to be counted your ain, until you hae her inside a wedding-ring.”

“What did the councillor say?”

“To tell the truth, he said ‘no,’ a vera plain ‘no,’ too.  You ken Van Heemskirk’s ‘no’ isn’t a shilly-shallying kind o’ a negative; but for a’ that, if I hae any skill in judging men, Richard Hyde isna one o’ the kind that tak’s ‘no’ from either man or woman.”

Neil was intensely angry, and his dark eyes glowed beneath their dropped lids with a passionate hate.  But he left his father with an assumed coldness and calmness which made him mutter as he watched Neil down the road, “I needna hae fashed mysel’ to warn him against fighting.  He’s a prudent lad.  It’s no right to fight, and it would be a matter for a kirk session likewise; but Bruce and Wallace! was there ever a Semple, before Neil, that keepit his hand off his weapon when his love or his right was touched?  And there’s his mother out the night, of all the nights in the year, and me wanting a word o’ advice sae bad; not that Janet has o’er much good sense, but whiles she can make an obsarve that sets my ain wisdom in a right line o’ thought.  I wish to patience she’d bide at home.  She never kens when I may be needing her.  And, now I came to think o’ things, it will be the warst o’ all bad hours for Neil to seek Katherine the night.  She’ll be fretting, and the mother pouting, and the councillor in ane o’ his particular Dutch touch-me-not tempers.  I do hope the lad will hae the uncommon sense to let folks cool, and come to theirsel’s a wee.”

For the elder, judging his son by the impetuosity of his own youthful temper, expected him to go directly to Van Heemskirk’s house.  But there were qualities in Neil which his father forgot to take into consideration, and their influence was to suggest to the young man how inappropriate a visit to Katherine would be at that time.  Indeed, he did not much desire it.  He was very angry with Katherine.  He was sure that she understood his entire devotion to her.  He could not see any necessity to set it forth as particularly as a legal contract, in certain set phrases and with conventional ceremonies.

[Illustration:  On the steps of the houses]

But his father’s sarcastic advice annoyed him, and he wanted time to fully consider his ways.  He was no physical coward; he was a fine swordsman, and he felt that it would be a real joy to stand with a drawn rapier between himself and his rival.  But what if revenge cost him too much?  What if he slew Hyde, and had to leave his love and his home, and his fine business prospects?  To win Katherine and to marry her, in the face of the man whom he felt that he detested, would not that be the best of all “satisfactions”?