Richard; Mary must have parents, of course, and one would make them talk in Scottish.  Probably she already had a lover; how should she behave to that lover?  There is plenty of room for speculation in that problem.  As to Dick, is he to be a Lothario, or a lover pour le bon motif?  What are his distinguished family to think of the love affair, which would certainly ensue in fiction, though in real life nobody thought of it at all?  Are we to end happily, with a marriage or marriages, or are we to wind all up in the pleasant, pessimistic, realistic, fashionable modern way?  Is Mary to drown the baby in the Muckle Pool?  Is she to suffer the penalty of her crime at Inverness?  Or, happy thought, shall we not make her discarded rival lover meet Dick in the hills on a sunny day and then—­are they not (taking a hint from facts) to fight a duel with rifles?  I see Dick lying, with a bullet in his brow, on the side of a corrie; his blood crimsons the snow, an eagle stoops from the sky.  That makes a pretty picturesque conclusion to the unwritten romance of the strath.

Another anecdote occurs to me; good, I think, for a short story, but capable, also, of being dumped down in the middle of a long novel.  It was in the old coaching days.  A Border squire was going north, in the coach, alone.  At a village he was joined by a man and a young lady:  their purpose was manifest, they were a runaway couple, bound for Gretna Green.  They had not travelled long together before the young lady, turning to the squire, said, “Vous parlez francais, Monsieur?” He did speak French—­it was plain that the bridegroom did not—­and, to the end of the journey, that remarkable lady conducted a lively and affectionate conversation with the squire in French!  Manifestly, he had only to ask and receive, but, alas! he was an unadventurous, plain gentleman; he alighted at his own village; he drove home in his own dogcart; the fugitive pair went forward, and the Gretna blacksmith united them in holy matrimony.  The rest is silence.

I would give much to know what that young person’s previous history and adventures had been, to learn what befell her after her wedding, to understand, in brief, her conduct and her motives.  Were I a novelist, a Maupassant, or a Meredith, the Muse, “from whatsoever quarter she chose,” would enlighten me about all, and I would enlighten you.  But I can only marvel, only throw out the hint, only deposit the grain of sand, the nucleus of romance, in some more fertile brain.  Indeed the topic is much more puzzling than the right conclusion for my Highland romance.  In that case fancy could find certain obvious channels, into one or other of which it must flow.  But I see no channels for the lives of these three queerly met people in the coach.