 with a hateful smile. »Coward!« said she.
    »The word in your throat and in your father's!« I cried. »I have dared him
this day already in your interest. I will dare him again, the nasty pole-cat;
little I care which of us should fall! Come,« said I, »back to the house with
us; let us be done with it, let me be done with the whole Hieland crew of you!
You will see what you think when I am dead.«
    She shook her head at me with that same smile I could have struck her for.
    »O, smile away!« I cried. »I have seen your bonny father smile on the wrong
side this day. Not that I mean he was afraid, of course,« I added hastily, »but
he preferred the other way of it.«
    »What is this?« she asked.
    »When I offered to draw with him,« said I.
    »You offered to draw upon James More?« she cried.
    »And I did so,« said I, »and found him backward enough, or how would we be
here?«
    »There is a meaning upon this,« said she. »What is it you are meaning?«
    »He was to make you take me,« I replied, »and I would not have it. I said
you should be free, and I must speak with you alone; little I supposed it would
be such a speaking! And what if I refuse? says he. - Then it must come to the
throat-cutting, says I, for I will no more have a husband forced on that young
lady than what I would have a wife forced upon myself. These were my words, they
were a friend's words; bonnily have I been paid for them! Now you have refused
me of your own clear free will, and there lives no father in the Highlands, or
out of them, that can force on this marriage. I will see that your wishes are
respected; I will make the same my business, as I have all through. But I think
you might have that decency as to affect some gratitude. 'Deed, and I thought
you knew me better! I have not behaved quite well to you, but that was weakness.
And to think me a coward, and such a coward as that - O my lass, there was a
stab for the last of it!«
    »Davie, how would
