'Haco, I cannot. I would be missed, and they would write my mother, and my father would come for me and it would be known.'

'But there's no use in our having got married, then.'

'It will be very nice to know that we are married, when people all round about us think we are nothing to each other.'

'Oh, that's nothing.'

While they conversed, the Sheriff who had united them looked closely into their names, saw who Haco was, and dashed off a little letter to an old friend of his own. It was:

'MY DEAR SIR THOMAS SPENS,- It has just occurred to me that I have allowed a boy and a girl to register themselves as man and wife, whom I ought to have delayed for further inquiries. Not that they are not legally married. They are, and so indisputably man and wife, that no man can

put them asunder. I think it right, however, to say that the man is Haco Spens, your son, aged nineteen, and the wife-her hand shook so much I cannot make out the first word-something Baxter, daughter of Alexander Baxter, in your neighbourhood. Had I been more alert, I might have postponed this; under the circumstances, I can do nothing better than apprise you of what has occurred.

Haco and Tibbie parted on the Bridge.

CHAPTER XVI

THE PENNY GAFF

HACO felt exceedingly triumphant after he had got married. It was a secret, and would remain so from his father for years, it might be. In the meantime, Sir Thomas would go on treating him as a boy, whereas he was a man—a man of the world, who might become an experienced, aged parent, perhaps, in the course of time. Well, his father, he reflected, had no business treating him with the contempt he had poured upon him. He had liberated him, his son, from all feeling of personal re

sponsibility towards him. Not that he would not cultivate such feelings of affection as a son ought to entertain towards a father. He could do that; but he could not forgive him his nasty language, and this decisive exercise of private judgment consoled him. It was a great deal more to him than passing high would have been at a degree examination. He carried himself with the air of a very superior person, indeed, as he sauntered across the Bridge after bidding his wife goodbye. His wife! What a sound it had! To be able to say to himself, 'My wife!' He paused, and allowed himself to be elbowed to right and left by people busier, or pretending to be busier, than himself, who passed backwards and forwards, while he repeated the words, 'My wife! my wife.'

When he went back to Queen Street, Mrs Ramsay came into his room, shut the door behind her and said,

Mr Spens, sir, when will you bring the lady home?'

'Very soon now, Mrs Ramsay; but there is a little diplomacy required. It may be a day or two, even a week or two; but, of course, I can't always go on away from my wife. I am married, you understand. Look at that.'

'Deary, deary, Mr Spens! and had you not a minister of the gospel to make the ceremony sacred?'

'No.'

That was a pity. I could, for the price of a new hat, get a clergyman to come up and marry you according to the gospel.'

'He couldn't marry me any better than the Sheriff, could he? Look at that slip of paper.'

'Deary, deary!' said the landlady, going out in a state of deep mental anxiety about the girl who was to come and share her lucrative lodger's

rooms.