sank into a more continuous slumber where no thought survived, it was to
wake again at the accustomed hour, when the hands of the clock are laid
together and the first beam of the morning shoots into the east, with a
smile that surprised her attendant.

“Are ye no well, Mem?” asked the little lass.

“Troth, and I am extraordinar’ weel,” said Kirstie.

She sprang from bed, as if to embrace and inhabit her day of glory, and
then, recollecting custom and the terrible eye of Mrs. Hob – who was
already afoot, an incredible timekeeper, “the earliest bird in Tantallon,”
and had heard Kirstie’s descent, and was now posting to inquire the cause
of it – repented, and fell back in the meanwhile on that symbolic dressing
of hair, studied indifference of attire, and steadfast aim (peculiar to her
age and sex) at once to publish and conceal her state of mind.

Downstairs, her secret went abroad and was the cause of kindness, of
mirth, of envy and emulation; it became the business of all these young
people in love to push and to assist the love affair of one. The toast of the
breakfast-table, Kirstie blushed, bridled, walked in a vain show, and
looked upon life with the brave uncertainty of morning. Incorporate maiden
modesty, incarnate girl, she trod the rough world underfoot – herself fleet,
impenetrable, a foot above it: Angel of the morning she was; harbinger of
day – carrying it in her bosom.

The morning passed in vain duties; the mid-day meal; the sauntering
walk among the kale-yard alleys and between the clipped yew trees; and
then, with cambric needlework in hand – a humble pretext – she took her
chosen place where a green alley opened on the tableland above Hermiston
and the glen of the Cauldstaneslap. Thence she had a peep of a few roofs of
the mains, and the smoke of fireplaces; and on the other side the dell lay
open, and she might feast her eyes on the Slap, the Praying Weaver’s
stone, and the path between the heather. There she waited the miracle of
his re-arising. He had come yesterday; by heavenly guidance he might
come again to-day. He did: and he looked up and saw her, and waved his
hat, and toiled up the steep path to her side, spent at the top, and pleased,
and ready to spend his best breath on any follies she might ask of him.