Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/169

Rh "But there is no sour without its sweet: all this had been witnessed by a farmer's daughter, whom the pursuit of many lovers had not rendered capricious, and who thought she perceived in the patience with which I endured all this musical persecution the materials for making a quiet and tractable husband. She trod on my foot returning from a hill-preaching, and apologized with so much grace that I thought her the fairest maiden of the whole valley; and after touching on the sermon, and quoting the Song of Solomon, we parted with a mutual promise of meeting in her father's barn at midnight. I was punctual to my tryste, and so accurate was the devout maiden that the clock struck twelve as she turned the key in the granary-door. She opened a little wicket, and let in the summer moonlight; and seating ourselves on two inverted bushels, we sat in collateral splendour, side by side, amid the silent light of the luminary.

"I looked at the maiden, who kept looking on the opposite wall with an aspect of demure but arch composure, and seemed to count the stones of which it was built. Had I been afflicted with the cureless evil of verse-making, I had now a matchless opportunity of displaying my gift. The silence of the place—the glow of the moon—the beauty of the maiden, Mary Anderson by name—her white hands, clasped over a whiter bosom—her locks, a glistering and a golden brown, escaping from the comb, descending in ringlets down her left cheek and shoulder, and taking a silvery or a golden hue as they moved to her breath amid the pure moonlight! This was my first attempt at courtship. I trembled much, and the words of love, too, trembled on my tongue. Let no man sit many minutes silent in the presence of his mistress; he will be forgiven for folly, for more serious offences, but never for silence. Had I made my débût in darkness, I think I should have spoken, and spoken, too, with much tenderness and true love. But the fault lay with the moon—plague on the capricious planet! I never see her fickle light glimmering through the chink of a barn wall but I think on the time when I lost my first love through her influence. We sat mute for the space of a quarter of an hour; and I had nearly vanquished my aversion to the moon's presence, when an owl rested from her flight on the roof above us for a moment, and, just as the words had assembled on my lips, uttered a long and melancholy