“There’s a man waiting for the answer,” she said, “but he can easy bide a while if it is not ready.”

Winsome, seeing it was the handwriting she knew so well, that of the note-book and the poem, went into her own room to read her first love-letter.  It seemed very natural that he should write to her, and her heart beat within her quickly and strongly as she opened it.  As she unfolded it her eye seemed to take in the whole of the writing at once as if it were a picture.  She knew, before she had read a word, that “beloved” occurred twice and “Winsome dear” twice, nor had she any fault to find, unless it were that they did not occur oftener.

So, without a moment’s hesitation, she sat down and wrote only a line, knowing that it would be all-sufficient.  It was her first love-tryst.  Yet if it had been her twentieth she could not have been readier.

“I shall be at the gate of the hill pasture,” so she wrote, “at ten o’clock to-night.”

It was with a very tumultuous heart that she closed this missive, and went out quickly to give it to Jess lest she should repent.  A day before, even, it had never entered her mind that by any possibility she could write such a note to a young man whom she had only known so short a time.  But then she reflected that certainly Ralph Peden was not like any other young man; so that in this case it was not only right but also commendable.  He was so kind and good, and so fond of her grandmother, that she could not let him go so far away without a word.  She ought at least to go and tell him that he must never do the like again.  But she would forgive him this time, after being severe with him for breaking his word, of course.  She sighed when she thought of what it is to be young and foolish.  Once the letter in Jess’s hands, these doubts and fears came oftener to her.  After a few minutes of remorse, she ran out in order to reclaim her letter, but Jess was nowhere to be seen.  She was, in fact, at her mother’s cottage up on the green, where she was that moment employed in coercing her brother Andra to run on a message for her.  “When she went out of the kitchen with Winsome’s reply in her pocket she made it her first duty to read it.  This there was no difficulty in doing, for opening letters was one of Jess’s simplest accomplishments.  Then Jess knitted her black brows, and thought dark and Pictish thoughts.  In a few moments she had made her dispositions.  She was not going to let Winsome have Ralph without a struggle.  She felt that she had the rude primogeniture of first sight.  Besides, since she had no one to scheme for her, she resolved that she would scheme for herself.  Shut in her mother’s room she achieved a fair imitation of Winsome’s letter, guiding herself by the genuine document spread out before her.  She had thought of sending only a verbal message, but reflecting that Ralph Peden had probably never seen Winsome’s handwriting, she considered it safer, choosing between two dangers, to send a written line.