Blair Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 2

I 8 WEST HIGHLAND TALES.
and when I told him of the promise we had made, he
brought me here himself and left me.'
" ' Sit thou there,' said the man ; ' art thou not mar-
ried?' So he took the horse, and he rode to the priest,
and he brought him to the house, and before the priest \
he loosed the woman from the pledge she had given,
and he gave her a line of writing that she was free,
and he set her on the horse, and said, ' Now return to
thy husband.'
" So the bride rode away in the darkness in her
wedding dress. She had not gone far when she came
to a thick wood where three robbers stopped and
seized her. ' Aha ! ' said one, ' we have waited long,
and we have got nothing, but now we have got the
bride herself.' ' Oh,' said she, ' let me go : let me go
to my husband ; the man that I was pledged to has let
me go. Here are ten pounds in gold — take them, and let
me go on my journey.' And so she begged and prayed
for a long time, and told what had happened to her.
At last one of the robbers, who was of a better nature
than the rest, said, ' Come, as the others have done
tliis, I will take you home myself.' 'Take thou the
money,' said she. ' I will not take a penny,' said the
robber ; but the other two said, ' Give us the money,'
and they took the ten pounds. The woman rode home,
and the robber left her at her husband's door, and she
went in, and showed him the line — the Avriting that
the other had given her before the priest, and they
were well pleased."
" Now," said the old man, " wliich of all these do
you think did best Ì So the eldest son said, " I think
the man that sent the woman to him to whom she was
pledged, was the honest, generous man : he did well."
The second said, " Yes, but the man to whom she was
pledged did still better, when he sent her to her hus-