Audrey

Truelove caught her breath. "Thee will be lonely in those forests."

"I am used to loneliness."

"There be Indians on the frontier. They burn houses and carry away

prisoners. And there are wolves and dangerous beasts"-"I am used to danger."

Truelove's voice trembled more and more. "And thee must dwell among

negroes and rude men, with none to comfort thy soul, none to whom thee can

speak in thy dark hours?"

"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.