The ship lay at a single anchor, well outside the pier of Leith, so that all we passengers must come to it by the means of skiffs. This was very little troublesome, for the reason that the day was a flat calm, very frosty and cloudy, and with a low shifting fog upon the water. The body of the vessel was thus quite hid as I drew near, but the tall spars of her stood high and bright in a sunshine like the flickering of a fire. She proved to be a very roomy, commodious merchant, but somewhat blunt in the bows, and loaden extraordinary deep with salt, salted salmon, and fine white linen stockings for the Dutch. Upon my coming on board, the captain welcomed me—one Sang (out of Lesmahago, I believe), a very hearty, friendly tarpaulin of a man, but at the moment in rather of a bustle. There had no other of the passengers yet appeared, so that I was left to walk about upon the deck, viewing the prospect and wondering a good deal what these farewells should be which I was promised.

All Edinburgh and the Pentland Hills glinted above me in a kind of smuisty brightness, now and again overcome with blots of cloud; of Leith there was no more than the tops of chimneys visible, and on the face of the water, where the haar [24] lay, nothing at all. Out of this I was presently aware of a sound of oars pulling, and a little after (as if out of the smoke of a fire) a boat issued. There sat a grave man in the stern sheets, well muffled from the cold, and by his side a tall, pretty, tender figure of a maid that brought my heart to a stand. I had scarce the time to catch my breath in, and be ready to meet her, as she stepped upon the deck, smiling, and making my best bow, which was now vastly finer than some months before, when first I made it to her ladyship. No doubt we were both a good deal changed: she seemed to have shot up like a young, comely tree. She had now a kind of pretty backwardness that became her well as of one that regarded herself more highly and was fairly woman; and for another thing, the hand of the same magician had been at work upon the pair of us, and Miss Grant had made us both braw, if she could make but the one bonny.

The same cry, in words not very different, came from both of us, that the other was come in compliment to say farewell, and then we perceived in a flash we were to ship together.

“O, why will not Baby have been telling me!” she cried; and then remembered a letter she had been given, on the condition of not opening it till she was well on board. Within was an enclosure for myself, and ran thus:

“Dear Davie,—What do you think of my farewell? and what do you say to your fellow passenger? Did you kiss, or did you ask? I was about to have signed here, but that would leave the purport of my question doubtful, and in my own case I ken the answer. So fill up here with good advice. Do not be too blate, [25] and for God’s sake do not try to be too forward; nothing acts you worse. I am

“Your affectionate friend and governess,
“Barbara Grant.”

I wrote a word of answer and compliment on a leaf out of my pocketbook, put it in with another scratch from Catriona, sealed the whole with my new signet of the Balfour arms, and despatched it by the hand of Prestongrange’s servant that still waited in my boat.

Then we had time to look upon each other more at leisure, which we had not done for a piece of a minute before (upon a common impulse) we shook hands again.

“Catriona?” said I. It seemed that was the first and last word of my eloquence.

“You will be glad to see me again?” says she.

“And I think that is an idle word,” said I. “We are too deep friends to make speech upon such trifles.”

“Is she not the girl of all the world?” she cried again. “I was never knowing such a girl so honest and so beautiful.”

“And yet she cared no more for Alpin than what she did for a kale-stock,” said I.

“Ah, she will say so indeed!” cries Catriona. “Yet it was for the name and the gentle kind blood that she took me up and was so good to me.”

“Well, I will tell you why it was,” said I. “There are all sorts of people’s faces in this world. There is Barbara’s face, that everyone must look at and admire, and think her a fine, brave, merry girl. And then there is your face, which is quite different—I never knew how different till to-day. You cannot see yourself, and that is why you do not understand; but it was for the love of your face that she took you up and was so good to you. And everybody in the world would do the same.”

“Everybody?” says she.

“Every living soul!” said I.

“Ah, then, that will be why the soldiers at the castle took me up!” she cried.

“Barbara has been teaching you to catch me,” said I.

“She will have taught me more than that at all events. She will have taught me a great deal about Mr. David—all the ill of him, and a little that was not so ill either, now and then,” she said, smiling. “She will have told me all there was of Mr. David, only just that he would sail upon this very same ship. And why it is you go?”

I told her.

“Ah, well,” said she, “we will be some days in company and then (I suppose) good-bye for altogether! I go to meet my father at a place of the name of Helvoetsluys, and from there to France, to be exiles by the side of our chieftain.”

I could say no more than just “O!” the name of James More always drying up my very voice.

She was quick to perceive it, and to guess some portion of my thought.

“There is one thing I must be saying first of all, Mr. David,” said she. “I think two of my kinsfolk have not behaved to you altogether very well. And the one of them two is James More, my father, and the other is the Laird of Prestongrange. Prestongrange will have spoken by himself, or his daughter in the place of him. But for James More, my father, I have this much to say: he lay shackled in a prison; he is a plain honest soldier and a plain Highland gentleman; what they would be after he would never be guessing; but if he had understood it was to be some prejudice to a young gentleman like yourself, he would have died first. And for the sake of all your friendships, I will be asking you to pardon my father and family for that same mistake.”

“Catriona,” said I, “what that mistake was I do not care to know. I know but the one thing—that you went to Prestongrange and begged my life upon your knees. O, I ken well enough it was for your father that you went, but when you were there you pleaded for me also. It is a thing I cannot speak of. There are two things I cannot think of into myself: and the one is your good words when you called yourself my little friend, and the other that you pleaded for my life. Let us never speak more, we two, of pardon or offence.”

We stood after that silent, Catriona looking on the deck and I on her; and before there was more speech, a little wind having sprung up in the nor’-west, they began to shake out the sails and heave in upon the anchor.

There were six passengers besides our two selves, which made of it a full cabin. Three were solid merchants out of Leith, Kirkcaldy, and Dundee, all engaged in the same adventure into High Germany. One was a Hollander returning; the rest worthy merchants’ wives, to the charge of one of whom Catriona was recommended. Mrs. Gebbie (for that was her name) was by great good fortune heavily incommoded by the sea, and lay day and night on the broad of her back. We were besides the only creatures at all young on board the Rose, except a white-faced boy that did my old duty to attend upon the table; and it came about that Catriona and I were left almost entirely to ourselves. We had the next seats together at the table, where I waited on her with extraordinary pleasure. On deck, I made her a soft place with my cloak; and the weather being singularly fine for that season, with bright frosty days and nights, a steady, gentle wind, and scarce a sheet started all the way through the North Sea, we sat there (only now and again walking to and fro for warmth) from the first blink of the sun till eight or nine at night under the clear stars. The merchants or Captain Sang would sometimes glance and smile upon us, or pass a merry word or two and give us the go-by again; but the most part of the time they were deep in herring and chintzes and linen, or in computations of the slowness of the passage, and left us to our own concerns, which were very little important to any but ourselves.

At the first, we had a great deal to say, and thought ourselves pretty witty; and I was at a little pains to be the beau, and she (I believe) to play the young lady of experience. But soon we grew plainer with each other. I laid aside my high, clipped English (what little there was left of it) and forgot to make my Edinburgh bows and scrapes; she, upon her side, fell into a sort of kind familiarity; and we dwelt together like those of the same household, only (upon my side) with a more deep emotion. About the same time the bottom seemed to fall out of our conversation, and neither one of us the less pleased. Whiles she would tell me old wives’ tales, of which she had a wonderful variety, many of them from my friend red-headed Niel. She told them very pretty, and they were pretty enough childish tales; but the pleasure to myself was in the sound of her voice, and the thought that she was telling and I listening. Whiles, again, we would sit entirely silent, not communicating even with a look, and tasting pleasure enough in the sweetness of that neighbourhood. I speak here only for myself. Of what was in the maid’s mind, I am not very sure that ever I asked myself; and what was in my own, I was afraid to consider. I need make no secret of it now, either to myself or to the reader; I was fallen totally in love. She came between me and the sun. She had grown suddenly taller, as I say, but with a wholesome growth; she seemed all health, and lightness, and brave spirits; and I thought she walked like a young deer, and stood like a birch upon the mountains. It was enough for me to sit near by her on the deck; and I declare I scarce spent two thoughts upon the future, and was so well content with what I then enjoyed that I was never at the pains to imagine any further step; unless perhaps that I would be sometimes tempted to take her hand in mine and hold it there. But I was too like a miser of what joys I had, and would venture nothing on a hazard.

What we spoke was usually of ourselves or of each other, so that if anyone had been at so much pains as overhear us, he must have supposed us the most egotistical persons in the world. It befell one day when we were at this practice, that we came on a discourse of friends and friendship, and I think now that we were sailing near the wind. We said what a fine thing friendship was, and how little we had guessed of it, and how it made life a new thing, and a thousand covered things of the same kind that will have been said, since the foundation of the world, by young folk in the same predicament. Then we remarked upon the strangeness of that circumstance, that friends came together in the beginning as if they were there for the first time, and yet each had been alive a good while, losing time with other people.

“It is not much that I have done,” said she, “and I could be telling you the five-fifths of it in two-three words. It is only a girl I am, and what can befall a girl, at all events? But I went with the clan in the year ’45. The men marched with swords and fire-locks, and some of them in brigades in the same set of tartan; they were not backward at the marching, I can tell you. And there were gentlemen from the Low Country, with their tenants mounted and trumpets to sound, and there was a grand skirling of war-pipes. I rode on a little Highland horse on the right hand of my father, James More, and of Glengyle himself. And here is one fine thing that I remember, that Glengyle kissed me in the face, because (says he) ‘my kinswoman, you are the only lady of the clan that has come out,’ and me a little maid of maybe twelve years old! I saw Prince Charlie too, and the blue eyes of him; he was pretty indeed! I had his hand to kiss in front of the army. O, well, these were the good days, but it is all like a dream that I have seen and then awakened. It went what way you very well know; and these were the worst days of all, when the red-coat soldiers were out, and my father and uncles lay in the hill, and I was to be carrying them their meat in the middle night, or at the short sight of day when the cocks crow. Yes, I have walked in the night, many’s the time, and my heart great in me for terror of the darkness. It is a strange thing I will never have been meddled with by a bogle; but they say a maid goes safe. Next there was my uncle’s marriage, and that was a dreadful affair beyond all. Jean Kay was that woman’s name; and she had me in the room with her that night at Inversnaid, the night we took her from her friends in the old, ancient manner. She would and she wouldn’t; she was for marrying Rob the one minute, and the next she would be for none of him. I will never have seen such a feckless creature of a woman; surely all there was of her would tell her ay or no. Well, she was a widow; and I can never be thinking a widow a good woman.”

“Catriona!” says I, “how do you make out that?”

“I do not know,” said she; “I am only telling you the seeming in my heart. And then to marry a new man! Fy! But that was her; and she was married again upon my Uncle Robin, and went with him awhile to kirk and market; and then wearied, or else her friends got claught of her and talked her round, or maybe she turned ashamed; at the least of it, she ran away, and went back to her own folk, and said we had held her in the lake, and I will never tell you all what. I have never thought much of any females since that day. And so in the end my father, James More, came to be cast in prison, and you know the rest of it an well as me.”

“And through all you had no friends?” said I.

“No,” said she; “I have been pretty chief with two-three lasses on the braes, but not to call it friends.”

“Well, mine is a plain tale,” said I. “I never had a friend to my name till I met in with you.”

“And that brave Mr. Stewart?” she asked.

“O, yes, I was forgetting him,” I said. “But he is a man, and that in very different.”

“I would think so,” said she. “O, yes, it is quite different.”

“And then there was one other,” said I. “I once thought I had a friend, but it proved a disappointment.”

She asked me who she was?

“It was a he, then,” said I. “We were the two best lads at my father’s school, and we thought we loved each other dearly. Well, the time came when he went to Glasgow to a merchant’s house, that was his second cousin once removed; and wrote me two-three times by the carrier; and then he found new friends, and I might write till I was tired, he took no notice. Eh, Catriona, it took me a long while to forgive the world. There is not anything more bitter than to lose a fancied friend.”

Then she began to question me close upon his looks and character, for we were each a great deal concerned in all that touched the other; till at last, in a very evil hour, I minded of his letters and went and fetched the bundle from the cabin.

“Here are his letters,” said I, “and all the letters that ever I got. That will be the last I’ll can tell of myself; ye know the lave [26] as well as I do.”

“Will you let me read them, then?” says she.

I told her, if she would be at the pains; and she bade me go away and she would read them from the one end to the other. Now, in this bundle that I gave her, there were packed together not only all the letters of my false friend, but one or two of Mr. Campbell’s when he was in town at the Assembly, and to make a complete roll of all that ever was written to me, Catriona’s little word, and the two I had received from Miss Grant, one when I was on the Bass and one on board that ship. But of these last I had no particular mind at the moment.

I was in that state of subjection to the thought of my friend that it mattered not what I did, nor scarce whether I was in her presence or out of it; I had caught her like some kind of a noble fever that lived continually in my bosom, by night and by day, and whether I was waking or asleep. So it befell that after I was come into the fore-part of the ship where the broad bows splashed into the billows, I was in no such hurry to return as you might fancy; rather prolonged my absence like a variety in pleasure. I do not think I am by nature much of an Epicurean: and there had come till then so small a share of pleasure in my way that I might be excused perhaps to dwell on it unduly.

When I returned to her again, I had a faint, painful impression as of a buckle slipped, so coldly she returned the packet.

“You have read them?” said I; and I thought my voice sounded not wholly natural, for I was turning in my mind for what could ail her.

“Did you mean me to read all?” she asked.

I told her “Yes,” with a drooping voice.

“The last of them as well?” said she.

I knew where we were now; yet I would not lie to her either. “I gave them all without afterthought,” I said, “as I supposed that you would read them. I see no harm in any.”

“I will be differently made,” said she. “I thank God I am differently made. It was not a fit letter to be shown me. It was not fit to be written.”

“I think you are speaking of your own friend, Barbara Grant?” said I.

“There will not be anything as bitter as to lose a fancied friend,” said she, quoting my own expression.

“I think it is sometimes the friendship that was fancied!” I cried. “What kind of justice do you call this, to blame me for some words that a tomfool of a madcap lass has written down upon a piece of paper? You know yourself with what respect I have behaved—and would do always.”

“Yet you would show me that same letter!” says she. “I want no such friends. I can be doing very well, Mr. Balfour, without her—or you.”

“This is your fine gratitude!” says I.

“I am very much obliged to you,” said she. “I will be asking you to take away your—letters.” She seemed to choke upon the word, so that it sounded like an oath.

“You shall never ask twice,” said I; picked up that bundle, walked a little way forward and cast them as far as possible into the sea. For a very little more I could have cast myself after them.

The rest of the day I walked up and down raging. There were few names so ill but what I gave her them in my own mind before the sun went down. All that I had ever heard of Highland pride seemed quite outdone; that a girl (scarce grown) should resent so trifling an allusion, and that from her next friend, that she had near wearied me with praising of! I had bitter, sharp, hard thoughts of her, like an angry boy’s. If I had kissed her indeed (I thought), perhaps she would have taken it pretty well; and only because it had been written down, and with a spice of jocularity, up she must fuff in this ridiculous passion. It seemed to me there was a want of penetration in the female sex, to make angels weep over the case of the poor men.

We were side by side again at supper, and what a change was there! She was like curdled milk to me; her face was like a wooden doll’s; I could have indifferently smitten her or grovelled at her feet, but she gave me not the least occasion to do either. No sooner the meal done than she betook herself to attend on Mrs. Gebbie, which I think she had a little neglected heretofore. But she was to make up for lost time, and in what remained of the passage was extraordinary assiduous with the old lady, and on deck began to make a great deal more than I thought wise of Captain Sang. Not but what the Captain seemed a worthy, fatherly man; but I hated to behold her in the least familiarity with anyone except myself.

Altogether, she was so quick to avoid me, and so constant to keep herself surrounded with others, that I must watch a long while before I could find my opportunity; and after it was found, I made not much of it, as you are now to hear.

“I have no guess how I have offended,” said I; “it should scarce be beyond pardon, then. O, try if you can pardon me.”

“I have no pardon to give,” said she; and the words seemed to come out of her throat like marbles. “I will be very much obliged for all your friendships.” And she made me an eighth part of a curtsey.

But I had schooled myself beforehand to say more, and I was going to say it too.

“There is one thing,” said I. “If I have shocked your particularity by the showing of that letter, it cannot touch Miss Grant. She wrote not to you, but to a poor, common, ordinary lad, who might have had more sense than show it. If you are to blame me—”

“I will advise you to say no more about that girl, at all events!” said Catriona. “It is her I will never look the road of, not if she lay dying.” She turned away from me, and suddenly back. “Will you swear you will have no more to deal with her?” she cried.

“Indeed, and I will never be so unjust then,” said I; “nor yet so ungrateful.”

And now it was I that turned away.

CHAPTER XXII—HELVOETSLUYS

The weather in the end considerably worsened; the wind sang in the shrouds, the sea swelled higher, and the ship began to labour and cry out among the billows. The song of the leadsman in the chains was now scarce ceasing, for we thrid all the way among shoals. About nine in the morning, in a burst of wintry sun between two squalls of hail, I had my first look of Holland—a line of windmills birling in the breeze. It was besides my first knowledge of these daft-like contrivances, which gave me a near sense of foreign travel and a new world and life. We came to an anchor about half-past eleven, outside the harbour of Helvoetsluys, in a place where the sea sometimes broke and the ship pitched outrageously. You may be sure we were all on deck save Mrs. Gebbie, some of us in cloaks, others mantled in the ship’s tarpaulins, all clinging on by ropes, and jesting the most like old sailor-folk that we could imitate.

Presently a boat, that was backed like a partancrab, came gingerly alongside, and the skipper of it hailed our master in the Dutch. Thence Captain Sang turned, very troubled-like, to Catriona; and the rest of us crowding about, the nature of the difficulty was made plain to all. The Rose was bound to the port of Rotterdam, whither the other passengers were in a great impatience to arrive, in view of a conveyance due to leave that very evening in the direction of the Upper Germany. This, with the present half-gale of wind, the captain (if no time were lost) declared himself still capable to save. Now James More had trysted in Helvoet with his daughter, and the captain had engaged to call before the port and place her (according to the custom) in a shore boat. There was the boat, to be sure, and here was Catriona ready: but both our master and the patroon of the boat scrupled at the risk, and the first was in no humour to delay.

“Your father,” said he, “would be gey an little pleased if we was to break a leg to ye, Miss Drummond, let-a-be drowning of you. Take my way of it,” says he, “and come on-by with the rest of us here to Rotterdam. Ye can get a passage down the Maes in a sailing scoot as far as to the Brill, and thence on again, by a place in a rattel-waggon, back to Helvoet.”

But Catriona would hear of no change. She looked white-like as she beheld the bursting of the sprays, the green seas that sometimes poured upon the fore-castle, and the perpetual bounding and swooping of the boat among the billows; but she stood firmly by her father’s orders. “My father, James More, will have arranged it so,” was her first word and her last. I thought it very idle and indeed wanton in the girl to be so literal and stand opposite to so much kind advice; but the fact is she had a very good reason, if she would have told us. Sailing scoots and rattel-waggons are excellent things; only the use of them must first be paid for, and all she was possessed of in the world was just two shillings and a penny halfpenny sterling. So it fell out that captain and passengers, not knowing of her destitution—and she being too proud to tell them—spoke in vain.

“But you ken nae French and nae Dutch neither,” said one.

“It is very true,” says she, “but since the year ’46 there are so many of the honest Scotch abroad that I will be doing very well. I thank you.”

There was a pretty country simplicity in this that made some laugh, others looked the more sorry, and Mr. Gebbie fall outright in a passion. I believe he knew it was his duty (his wife having accepted charge of the girl) to have gone ashore with her and seen her safe: nothing would have induced him to have done so, since it must have involved the lose of his conveyance; and I think he made it up to his conscience by the loudness of his voice. At least he broke out upon Captain Sang, raging and saying the thing was a disgrace; that it was mere death to try to leave the ship, and at any event we could not cast down an innocent maid in a boatful of nasty Holland fishers, and leave her to her fate. I was thinking something of the same; took the mate upon one side, arranged with him to send on my chests by track-scoot to an address I had in Leyden, and stood up and signalled to the fishers.

“I will go ashore with the young lady, Captain Sang,” said I. “It is all one what way I go to Leyden;” and leaped at the same time into the boat, which I managed not so elegantly but what I fell with two of the fishers in the bilge.

From the boat the business appeared yet more precarious than from the ship, she stood so high over us, swung down so swift, and menaced us so perpetually with her plunging and passaging upon the anchor cable. I began to think I had made a fool’s bargain, that it was merely impossible Catriona should be got on board to me, and that I stood to be set ashore at Helvoet all by myself and with no hope of any reward but the pleasure of embracing James More, if I should want to. But this was to reckon without the lass’s courage. She had seen me leap with very little appearance (however much reality) of hesitation; to be sure, she was not to be beat by her discarded friend. Up she stood on the bulwarks and held by a stay, the wind blowing in her petticoats, which made the enterprise more dangerous, and gave us rather more of a view of her stockings than would be thought genteel in cities. There was no minute lost, and scarce time given for any to interfere if they had wished the same. I stood up on the other side and spread my arms; the ship swung down on us, the patroon humoured his boat nearer in than was perhaps wholly safe, and Catriona leaped into the air. I was so happy as to catch her, and the fishers readily supporting us, escaped a fall. She held to me a moment very tight, breathing quick and deep; thence (she still clinging to me with both hands) we were passed aft to our places by the steersman; and Captain Sang and all the crew and passengers cheering and crying farewell, the boat was put about for shore.

As soon as Catriona came a little to herself she unhanded me suddenly, but said no word. No more did I; and indeed the whistling of the wind and the breaching of the sprays made it no time for speech; and our crew not only toiled excessively but made extremely little way, so that the Rose had got her anchor and was off again before we had approached the harbour mouth.

We were no sooner in smooth water than the patroon, according to their beastly Hollands custom, stopped his boat and required of us our fares. Two guilders was the man’s demand—between three and four shillings English money—for each passenger. But at this Catriona began to cry out with a vast deal of agitation. She had asked of Captain Sang, she said, and the fare was but an English shilling. “Do you think I will have come on board and not ask first?” cries she. The patroon scolded back upon her in a lingo where the oaths were English and the rest right Hollands; till at last (seeing her near tears) I privately slipped in the rogue’s hand six shillings, whereupon he was obliging enough to receive from her the other shilling without more complaint. No doubt I was a good deal nettled and ashamed. I like to see folk thrifty, but not with so much passion; and I daresay it would be rather coldly that I asked her, as the boat moved on again for shore, where it was that she was trysted with her father.

“He is to be inquired of at the house of one Sprott, an honest Scotch merchant,” says she; and then with the same breath, “I am wishing to thank you very much—you are a brave friend to me.”

“It will be time enough when I get you to your father,” said I, little thinking that I spoke so true. “I can tell him a fine tale of a loyal daughter.”

“O, I do not think I will be a loyal girl, at all events,” she cried, with a great deal of painfulness in the expression. “I do not think my heart is true.”

“Yet there are very few that would have made that leap, and all to obey a father’s orders,” I observed.

“I cannot have you to be thinking of me so,” she cried again. “When you had done that same, how would I stop behind? And at all events that was not all the reasons.” Whereupon, with a burning face, she told me the plain truth upon her poverty.

“Good guide us!” cried I, “what kind of daft-like proceeding is this, to let yourself be launched on the continent of Europe with an empty purse—I count it hardly decent—scant decent!” I cried.

“You forget James More, my father, is a poor gentleman,” said she. “He is a hunted exile.”

“But I think not all your friends are hunted exiles,” I exclaimed. “And was this fair to them that care for you? Was it fair to me? was it fair to Miss Grant that counselled you to go, and would be driven fair horn-mad if she could hear of it? Was it even fair to these Gregory folk that you were living with, and used you lovingly? It’s a blessing you have fallen in my hands! Suppose your father hindered by an accident, what would become of you here, and you your lee-lone in a strange place? The thought of the thing frightens me,” I said.

“I will have lied to all of them,” she replied. “I will have told them all that I had plenty. I told her too. I could not be lowering James More to them.”

I found out later on that she must have lowered him in the very dust, for the lie was originally the father’s, not the daughter’s, and she thus obliged to persevere in it for the man’s reputation. But at the time I was ignorant of this, and the mere thought of her destitution and the perils in which see must have fallen, had ruffled me almost beyond reason.

“Well, well, well,” said I, “you will have to learn more sense.”

I left her mails for the moment in an inn upon the shore, where I got a direction for Sprott’s house in my new French, and we walked there—it was some little way—beholding the place with wonder as we went. Indeed, there was much for Scots folk to admire: canals and trees being intermingled with the houses; the houses, each within itself, of a brave red brick, the colour of a rose, with steps and benches of blue marble at the cheek of every door, and the whole town so clean you might have dined upon the causeway. Sprott was within, upon his ledgers, in a low parlour, very neat and clean, and set out with china and pictures, and a globe of the earth in a brass frame. He was a big-chafted, ruddy, lusty man, with a crooked hard look to him; and he made us not that much civility as offer us a seat.

“Is James More Macgregor now in Helvoet, sir?” says I.

“I ken nobody by such a name,” says he, impatient-like.

“Since you are so particular,” says I, “I will amend my question, and ask you where we are to find in Helvoet one James Drummond, alias Macgregor, alias James More, late tenant in Inveronachile?”

“Sir,” says he, “he may be in Hell for what I ken, and for my part I wish he was.”

“The young lady is that gentleman’s daughter, sir,” said I, “before whom, I think you will agree with me, it is not very becoming to discuss his character.”

“I have nothing to make either with him, or her, or you!” cries he in his gross voice.

“Under your favour, Mr. Sprott,” said I, “this young lady is come from Scotland seeking him, and by whatever mistake, was given the name of your house for a direction. An error it seems to have been, but I think this places both you and me—who am but her fellow-traveller by accident—under a strong obligation to help our countrywoman.”

“Will you ding me daft?” he cries. “I tell ye I ken naething and care less either for him or his breed. I tell ye the man owes me money.”

“That may very well be, sir,” said I, who was now rather more angry than himself. “At least, I owe you nothing; the young lady is under my protection; and I am neither at all used with these manners, nor in the least content with them.”

As I said this, and without particularly thinking what I did, I drew a step or two nearer to his table; thus striking, by mere good fortune, on the only argument that could at all affect the man. The blood left his lusty countenance.

“For the Lord’s sake dinna be hasty, sir!” he cried. “I am truly wishfu’ no to be offensive. But ye ken, sir, I’m like a wheen guid-natured, honest, canty auld fellows—my bark is waur nor my bite. To hear me, ye micht whiles fancy I was a wee thing dour; but na, na! it’s a kind auld fallow at heart, Sandie Sprott! And ye could never imagine the fyke and fash this man has been to me.”

“Very good, sir,” said I. “Then I will make that much freedom with your kindness as trouble you for your last news of Mr. Drummond.”

“You’re welcome, sir!” said he. “As for the young leddy (my respects to her!), he’ll just have clean forgotten her. I ken the man, ye see; I have lost siller by him ere now. He thinks of naebody but just himsel’; clan, king, or dauchter, if he can get his wameful, he would give them a’ the go-by! ay, or his correspondent either. For there is a sense in whilk I may be nearly almost said to be his correspondent. The fact is, we are employed thegether in a business affair, and I think it’s like to turn out a dear affair for Sandie Sprott. The man’s as guid’s my pairtner, and I give ye my mere word I ken naething by where he is. He micht be coming here to Helvoet; he micht come here the morn, he michtnae come for a twalmouth; I would wonder at naething—or just at the ae thing, and that’s if he was to pay me my siller. Ye see what way I stand with it; and it’s clear I’m no very likely to meddle up with the young leddy, as ye ca’ her. She cannae stop here, that’s ae thing certain sure. Dod, sir, I’m a lone man! If I was to tak her in, its highly possible the hellicat would try and gar me marry her when he turned up.”

“Enough of this talk,” said I. “I will take the young leddy among better friends. Give me, pen, ink, and paper, and I will leave here for James More the address of my correspondent in Leyden. He can inquire from me where he is to seek his daughter.”

This word I wrote and sealed; which while I was doing, Sprott of his own motion made a welcome offer, to charge himself with Miss Drummond’s mails, and even send a porter for them to the inn. I advanced him to that effect a dollar or two to be a cover, and he gave me an acknowledgment in writing of the sum.

Whereupon (I giving my arm to Catriona) we left the house of this unpalatable rascal. She had said no word throughout, leaving me to judge and speak in her place; I, upon my side, had been careful not to embarrass her by a glance; and even now, although my heart still glowed inside of me with shame and anger, I made it my affair to seem quite easy.

“Now,” said I, “let us get back to yon same inn where they can speak the French, have a piece of dinner, and inquire for conveyances to Rotterdam. I will never be easy till I have you safe again in the hands of Mrs. Gebbie.”

“I suppose it will have to be,” said Catriona, “though whoever will be pleased, I do not think it will be her. And I will remind you this once again that I have but one shilling, and three baubees.”

“And just this once again,” said I, “I will remind you it was a blessing that I came alongst with you.”

“What else would I be thinking all this time?” says she, and I thought weighed a little on my arm. “It is you that are the good friend to me.”

The rattel-waggon, which is a kind of a long waggon set with benches, carried us in four hours of travel to the great city of Rotterdam. It was long past dark by then, but the streets were pretty brightly lighted and thronged with wild-like, outlandish characters—bearded Hebrews, black men, and the hordes of courtesans, most indecently adorned with finery and stopping seamen by their very sleeves; the clash of talk about us made our heads to whirl; and what was the most unexpected of all, we appeared to be no more struck with all these foreigners than they with us. I made the best face I could, for the lass’s sake and my own credit; but the truth is I felt like a lost sheep, and my heart beat in my bosom with anxiety. Once or twice I inquired after the harbour or the berth of the ship Rose: but either fell on some who spoke only Hollands, or my own French failed me. Trying a street at a venture, I came upon a lane of lighted houses, the doors and windows thronged with wauf-like painted women; these jostled and mocked upon us as we passed, and I was thankful we had nothing of their language. A little after we issued forth upon an open place along the harbour.

“We shall be doing now,” cries I, as soon as I spied masts. “Let us walk here by the harbour. We are sure to meet some that has the English, and at the best of it we may light upon that very ship.”

We did the next best, as happened; for, about nine of the evening, whom should we walk into the arms of but Captain Sang? He told us they had made their run in the most incredible brief time, the wind holding strong till they reached port; by which means his passengers were all gone already on their further travels. It was impossible to chase after the Gebbies into the High Germany, and we had no other acquaintance to fall back upon but Captain Sang himself. It was the more gratifying to find the man friendly and wishful to assist. He made it a small affair to find some good plain family of merchants, where Catriona might harbour till the Rose was loaden; declared he would then blithely carry her back to Leith for nothing and see her safe in the hands of Mr. Gregory; and in the meanwhile carried us to a late ordinary for the meal we stood in need of. He seemed extremely friendly, as I say, but what surprised me a good deal, rather boisterous in the bargain; and the cause of this was soon to appear. For at the ordinary, calling for Rhenish wine and drinking of it deep, he soon became unutterably tipsy. In this case, as too common with all men, but especially with those of his rough trade, what little sense or manners he possessed deserted him; and he behaved himself so scandalous to the young lady, jesting most ill-favouredly at the figure she had made on the ship’s rail, that I had no resource but carry her suddenly away.

She came out of the ordinary clinging to me close. “Take me away, David,” she said. “You keep me. I am not afraid with you.”

“And have no cause, my little friend!” cried I, and could have found it in my heart to weep.

“Where will you be taking me?” she said again. “Don’t leave me at all events—never leave me.”

“Where am I taking you to?” says I stopping, for I had been staving on ahead in mere blindness. “I must stop and think. But I’ll not leave you, Catriona; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if I should fail or fash you.”

She crept close into me by way of a reply.

“Here,” I said, “is the stillest place we have hit on yet in this busy byke of a city. Let us sit down here under yon tree and consider of our course.”

That tree (which I am little like to forget) stood hard by the harbour side. It was like a black night, but lights were in the houses, and nearer hand in the quiet ships; there was a shining of the city on the one hand, and a buzz hung over it of many thousands walking and talking; on the other, it was dark and the water bubbled on the sides. I spread my cloak upon a builder’s stone, and made her sit there; she would have kept her hold upon me, for she still shook with the late affronts; but I wanted to think clear, disengaged myself, and paced to and fro before her, in the manner of what we call a smuggler’s walk, belabouring my brains for any remedy. By the course of these scattering thoughts I was brought suddenly face to face with a remembrance that, in the heat and haste of our departure, I had left Captain Sang to pay the ordinary. At this I began to laugh out loud, for I thought the man well served; and at the same time, by an instinctive movement, carried my hand to the pocket where my money was. I suppose it was in the lane where the women jostled us; but there is only the one thing certain, that my purse was gone.

“You will have thought of something good,” said she, observing me to pause.

At the pinch we were in, my mind became suddenly clear as a perspective glass, and I saw there was no choice of methods. I had not one doit of coin, but in my pocket-book I had still my letter on the Leyden merchant; and there was now but the one way to get to Leyden, and that was to walk on our two feet.

“Catriona,” said I, “I know you’re brave and I believe you’re strong—do you think you could walk thirty miles on a plain road?” We found it, I believe, scarce the two-thirds of that, but such was my notion of the distance.

“David,” she said, “if you will just keep near, I will go anywhere and do anything. The courage of my heart, it is all broken. Do not be leaving me in this horrible country by myself, and I will do all else.”

“Can you start now and march all night?” said I.

“I will do all that you can ask of me,” she said, “and never ask you why. I have been a bad ungrateful girl to you; and do what you please with me now! And I think Miss Barbara Grant is the best lady in the world,” she added, “and I do not see what she would deny you for at all events.”

This was Greek and Hebrew to me; but I had other matters to consider, and the first of these was to get clear of that city on the Leyden road. It proved a cruel problem; and it may have been one or two at night ere we had solved it. Once beyond the houses, there was neither moon nor stars to guide us; only the whiteness of the way in the midst and a blackness of an alley on both hands. The walking was besides made most extraordinary difficult by a plain black frost that fell suddenly in the small hours and turned that highway into one long slide.

“Well, Catriona,” said I, “here we are like the king’s sons and the old wives’ daughters in your daft-like Highland tales. Soon we’ll be going over the ‘seven Bens, the seven glens and the seven mountain moors’.” Which was a common byword or overcome in those tales of hers that had stuck in my memory.

“Ah,” says she, “but here are no glens or mountains! Though I will never be denying but what the trees and some of the plain places hereabouts are very pretty. But our country is the best yet.”

“I wish we could say as much for our own folk,” says I, recalling Sprott and Sang, and perhaps James More himself.

“I will never complain of the country of my friend,” said she, and spoke it out with an accent so particular that I seemed to see the look upon her face.

I caught in my breath sharp and came near falling (for my pains) on the black ice.

“I do not know what you think, Catriona,” said I, when I was a little recovered, “but this has been the best day yet! I think shame to say it, when you have met in with such misfortunes and disfavours; but for me, it has been the best day yet.”

“It was a good day when you showed me so much love,” said she.

“And yet I think shame to be happy too,” I went on, “and you here on the road in the black night.”

“Where in the great world would I be else?” she cried. “I am thinking I am safest where I am with you.”

“I am quite forgiven, then?” I asked.

“Will you not forgive me that time so much as not to take it in your mouth again?” she cried. “There is nothing in this heart to you but thanks. But I will be honest too,” she added, with a kind of suddenness, “and I’ll never can forgive that girl.”

“Is this Miss Grant again?” said I. “You said yourself she was the best lady in the world.”

“So she will be, indeed!” says Catriona. “But I will never forgive her for all that. I will never, never forgive her, and let me hear tell of her no more.”

“Well,” said I, “this beats all that ever came to my knowledge; and I wonder that you can indulge yourself in such bairnly whims. Here is a young lady that was the best friend in the world to the both of us, that learned us how to dress ourselves, and in a great manner how to behave, as anyone can see that knew us both before and after.”

But Catriona stopped square in the midst of the highway.

“It is this way of it,” said she. “Either you will go on to speak of her, and I will go back to yon town, and let come of it what God pleases! Or else you will do me that politeness to talk of other things.”

I was the most nonplussed person in this world; but I bethought me that she depended altogether on my help, that she was of the frail sex and not so much beyond a child, and it was for me to be wise for the pair of us.

“My dear girl,” said I, “I can make neither head nor tails of this; but God forbid that I should do anything to set you on the jee. As for talking of Miss Grant, I have no such a mind to it, and I believe it was yourself began it. My only design (if I took you up at all) was for your own improvement, for I hate the very look of injustice. Not that I do not wish you to have a good pride and a nice female delicacy; they become you well; but here you show them to excess.”

“Well, then, have you done?” said she.

“I have done,” said I.

“A very good thing,” said she, and we went on again, but now in silence.

It was an eerie employment to walk in the gross night, beholding only shadows and hearing nought but our own steps. At first, I believe our hearts burned against each other with a deal of enmity; but the darkness and the cold, and the silence, which only the cocks sometimes interrupted, or sometimes the farmyard dogs, had pretty soon brought down our pride to the dust; and for my own particular, I would have jumped at any decent opening for speech.

Before the day peeped, came on a warmish rain, and the frost was all wiped away from among our feet. I took my cloak to her and sought to hap her in the same; she bade me, rather impatiently, to keep it.

“Indeed and I will do no such thing,” said I. “Here am I, a great, ugly lad that has seen all kinds of weather, and here are you a tender, pretty maid! My dear, you would not put me to a shame?”

Without more words she let me cover her; which as I was doing in the darkness, I let my hand rest a moment on her shoulder, almost like an embrace.

“You must try to be more patient of your friend,” said I.

I thought she seemed to lean the least thing in the world against my bosom, or perhaps it was but fancy.

“There will be no end to your goodness,” said she.

And we went on again in silence; but now all was changed; and the happiness that was in my heart was like a fire in a great chimney.

The rain passed ere day; it was but a sloppy morning as we came into the town of Delft. The red gabled houses made a handsome show on either hand of a canal; the servant lassies were out slestering and scrubbing at the very stones upon the public highway; smoke rose from a hundred kitchens; and it came in upon me strongly it was time to break our fasts.

“Catriona,” said I, “I believe you have yet a shilling and three baubees?”

“Are you wanting it?” said she, and passed me her purse. “I am wishing it was five pounds! What will you want it for?”

“And what have we been walking for all night, like a pair of waif Egyptians!” says I. “Just because I was robbed of my purse and all I possessed in that unchancy town of Rotterdam. I will tell you of it now, because I think the worst is over, but we have still a good tramp before us till we get to where my money is, and if you would not buy me a piece of bread, I were like to go fasting.”

She looked at me with open eyes. By the light of the new day she was all black and pale for weariness, so that my heart smote me for her. But as for her, she broke out laughing.

“My torture! are we beggars then!” she cried. “You too? O, I could have wished for this same thing! And I am glad to buy your breakfast to you. But it would be pleisand if I would have had to dance to get a meal to you! For I believe they are not very well acquainted with our manner of dancing over here, and might be paying for the curiosity of that sight.”

I could have kissed her for that word, not with a lover’s mind, but in a heat of admiration. For it always warms a man to see a woman brave.

We got a drink of milk from a country wife but new come to the town, and in a baker’s, a piece of excellent, hot, sweet-smelling bread, which we ate upon the road as we went on. That road from Delft to the Hague is just five miles of a fine avenue shaded with trees, a canal on the one hand, on the other excellent pastures of cattle. It was pleasant here indeed.

“And now, Davie,” said she, “what will you do with me at all events?”

“It is what we have to speak of,” said I, “and the sooner yet the better. I can come by money in Leyden; that will be all well. But the trouble is how to dispose of you until your father come. I thought last night you seemed a little sweir to part from me?”

“It will be more than seeming then,” said she.

“You are a very young maid,” said I, “and I am but a very young callant. This is a great piece of difficulty. What way are we to manage? Unless indeed, you could pass to be my sister?”

“And what for no?” said she, “if you would let me!”

“I wish you were so, indeed,” I cried. “I would be a fine man if I had such a sister. But the rub is that you are Catriona Drummond.”

“And now I will be Catriona Balfour,” she said. “And who is to ken? They are all strange folk here.”

“If you think that it would do,” says I. “I own it troubles me. I would like it very ill, if I advised you at all wrong.”

“David, I have no friend here but you,” she said.

“The mere truth is, I am too young to be your friend,” said I. “I am too young to advise you, or you to be advised. I see not what else we are to do, and yet I ought to warn you.”

“I will have no choice left,” said she. “My father James More has not used me very well, and it is not the first time, I am cast upon your hands like a sack of barley meal, and have nothing else to think of but your pleasure. If you will have me, good and well. If you will not”—she turned and touched her hand upon my arm—“David, I am afraid,” said she.

“No, but I ought to warn you,” I began; and then bethought me I was the bearer of the purse, and it would never do to seem too churlish. “Catriona,” said I, “don’t misunderstand me: I am just trying to do my duty by you, girl! Here am I going alone to this strange city, to be a solitary student there; and here is this chance arisen that you might dwell with me a bit, and be like my sister; you can surely understand this much, my dear, that I would just love to have you?”

“Well, and here I am,” said she. “So that’s soon settled.”

I know I was in duty bounden to have spoke more plain. I know this was a great blot on my character, for which I was lucky that I did not pay more dear. But I minded how easy her delicacy had been startled with a word of kissing her in Barbara’s letter; now that she depended on me, how was I to be more bold? Besides, the truth is, I could see no other feasible method to dispose of her. And I daresay inclination pulled me very strong.

A little beyond the Hague she fell very lame and made the rest of the distance heavily enough. Twice she must rest by the wayside, which she did with pretty apologies, calling herself a shame to the Highlands and the race she came of, and nothing but a hindrance to myself. It was her excuse, she said, that she was not much used with walking shod. I would have had her strip off her shoes and stockings and go barefoot. But she pointed out to me that the women of that country, even in the landward roads, appeared to be all shod.

“I must not be disgracing my brother,” said she, and was very merry with it all, although her face told tales of her.

There is a garden in that city we were bound to, sanded below with clean sand, the trees meeting overhead, some of them trimmed, some preached, and the whole place beautified with alleys and arbours. Here I left Catriona, and went forward by myself to find my correspondent. There I drew on my credit, and asked to be recommended to some decent, retired lodging. My baggage being not yet arrived, I told him I supposed I should require his caution with the people of the house; and explained that, my sister being come for a while to keep house with me, I should be wanting two chambers. This was all very well; but the trouble was that Mr. Balfour in his letter of recommendation had condescended on a great deal of particulars, and never a word of any sister in the case. I could see my Dutchman was extremely suspicious; and viewing me over the rims of a great pair of spectacles—he was a poor, frail body, and reminded me of an infirm rabbit—he began to question me close.

Here I fell in a panic. Suppose he accept my tale (thinks I), suppose he invite my sister to his house, and that I bring her. I shall have a fine ravelled pirn to unwind, and may end by disgracing both the lassie and myself. Thereupon I began hastily to expound to him my sister’s character. She was of a bashful disposition, it appeared, and be extremely fearful of meeting strangers that I had left her at that moment sitting in a public place alone. And then, being launched upon the stream of falsehood, I must do like all the rest of the world in the same circumstance, and plunge in deeper than was any service; adding some altogether needless particulars of Miss Balfour’s ill-health and retirement during childhood. In the midst of which I awoke to a sense of my behaviour, and was turned to one blush.

The old gentleman was not so much deceived but what he discovered a willingness to be quit of me. But he was first of all a man of business; and knowing that my money was good enough, however it might be with my conduct, he was so far obliging as to send his son to be my guide and caution in the matter of a lodging. This implied my presenting of the young man to Catriona. The poor, pretty child was much recovered with resting, looked and behaved to perfection, and took my arm and gave me the name of brother more easily than I could answer her. But there was one misfortune: thinking to help, she was rather towardly than otherwise to my Dutchman. And I could not but reflect that Miss Balfour had rather suddenly outgrown her bashfulness. And there was another thing, the difference of our speech. I had the Low Country tongue and dwelled upon my words; she had a hill voice, spoke with something of an English accent, only far more delightful, and was scarce quite fit to be called a deacon in the craft of talking English grammar; so that, for a brother and sister, we made a most uneven pair. But the young Hollander was a heavy dog, without so much spirit in his belly as to remark her prettiness, for which I scorned him. And as soon as he had found a cover to our heads, he left us alone, which was the greater service of the two.

CHAPTER XXIV—FULL STORY OF A COPY OF HEINECCIUS

The place found was in the upper part of a house backed on a canal. We had two rooms, the second entering from the first; each had a chimney built out into the floor in the Dutch manner; and being alongside, each had the same prospect from the window of the top of a tree below us in a little court, of a piece of the canal, and of houses in the Hollands architecture and a church spire upon the further side. A full set of bells hung in that spire and made delightful music; and when there was any sun at all, it shone direct in our two chambers. From a tavern hard by we had good meals sent in.

The first night we were both pretty weary, and she extremely so. There was little talk between us, and I packed her off to her bed as soon as she had eaten. The first thing in the morning I wrote word to Sprott to have her mails sent on, together with a line to Alan at his chief’s; and had the same despatched, and her breakfast ready, ere I waked her. I was a little abashed when she came forth in her one habit, and the mud of the way upon her stockings. By what inquiries I had made, it seemed a good few days must pass before her mails could come to hand in Leyden, and it was plainly needful she must have a shift of things. She was unwilling at first that I should go to that expense; but I reminded her she was now a rich man’s sister and must appear suitably in the part, and we had not got to the second merchant’s before she was entirely charmed into the spirit of the thing, and her eyes shining. It pleased me to see her so innocent and thorough in this pleasure. What was more extraordinary was the passion into which I fell on it myself; being never satisfied that I had bought her enough or fine enough, and never weary of beholding her in different attires. Indeed, I began to understand some little of Miss Grant’s immersion in the interest of clothes; for the truth is, when you have the ground of a beautiful person to adorn, the whole business becomes beautiful. The Dutch chintzes I should say were extraordinary cheap and fine; but I would be ashamed to set down what I paid for stockings to her. Altogether I spent so great a sum upon this pleasuring (as I may call it) that I was ashamed for a great while to spend more; and by way of a set-off, I left our chambers pretty bare. If we had beds, if Catriona was a little braw, and I had light to see her by, we were richly enough lodged for me.

By the end of this merchandising I was glad to leave her at the door with all our purchases, and go for a long walk alone in which to read myself a lecture. Here had I taken under my roof, and as good as to my bosom, a young lass extremely beautiful, and whose innocence was her peril. My talk with the old Dutchman, and the lies to which I was constrained, had already given me a sense of how my conduct must appear to others; and now, after the strong admiration I had just experienced and the immoderacy with which I had continued my vain purchases, I began to think of it myself as very hazarded. I bethought me, if I had a sister indeed, whether I would so expose her; then, judging the case too problematical, I varied my question into this, whether I would so trust Catriona in the hands of any other Christian being; the answer to which made my face to burn. The more cause, since I had been entrapped and had entrapped the girl into an undue situation, that I should behave in it with scrupulous nicety. She depended on me wholly for her bread and shelter; in case I should alarm her delicacy, she had no retreat. Besides I was her host and her protector; and the more irregularly I had fallen in these positions, the less excuse for me if I should profit by the same to forward even the most honest suit; for with the opportunities that I enjoyed, and which no wise parent would have suffered for a moment, even the most honest suit would be unfair. I saw I must be extremely hold-off in my relations; and yet not too much so neither; for if I had no right to appear at all in the character of a suitor, I must yet appear continually, and if possible agreeably, in that of host. It was plain I should require a great deal of tact and conduct, perhaps more than my years afforded. But I had rushed in where angels might have feared to tread, and there was no way out of that position save by behaving right while I was in it. I made a set of rules for my guidance; prayed for strength to be enabled to observe them, and as a more human aid to the same end purchased a study-book in law. This being all that I could think of, I relaxed from these grave considerations; whereupon my mind bubbled at once into an effervescency of pleasing spirits, and it was like one treading on air that I turned homeward. As I thought that name of home, and recalled the image of that figure awaiting me between four walls, my heart beat upon my bosom.

My troubles began with my return. She ran to greet me with an obvious and affecting pleasure. She was clad, besides, entirely in the new clothes that I had bought for her; looked in them beyond expression well; and must walk about and drop me curtseys to display them and to be admired. I am sure I did it with an ill grace, for I thought to have choked upon the words.

“Well,” she said, “if you will not be caring for my pretty clothes, see what I have done with our two chambers.” And she showed me the place all very finely swept, and the fires glowing in the two chimneys.

I was glad of a chance to seem a little more severe than I quite felt. “Catriona,” said I, “I am very much displeased with you, and you must never again lay a hand upon my room. One of us two must have the rule while we are here together; it is most fit it should be I who am both the man and the elder; and I give you that for my command.”

She dropped me one of her curtseys; which were extraordinary taking. “If you will be cross,” said she, “I must be making pretty manners at you, Davie. I will be very obedient, as I should be when every stitch upon all there is of me belongs to you. But you will not be very cross either, because now I have not anyone else.”

This struck me hard, and I made haste, in a kind of penitence, to blot out all the good effect of my last speech. In this direction progress was more easy, being down hill; she led me forward, smiling; at the sight of her, in the brightness of the fire and with her pretty becks and looks, my heart was altogether melted. We made our meal with infinite mirth and tenderness; and the two seemed to be commingled into one, so that our very laughter sounded like a kindness.

In the midst of which I awoke to better recollections, made a lame word of excuse, and set myself boorishly to my studies. It was a substantial, instructive book that I had bought, by the late Dr. Heineccius, in which I was to do a great deal reading these next few days, and often very glad that I had no one to question me of what I read. Methought she bit her lip at me a little, and that cut me. Indeed it left her wholly solitary, the more as she was very little of a reader, and had never a book. But what was I to do?

So the rest of the evening flowed by almost without speech.

I could have beat myself. I could not lie in my bed that night for rage and repentance, but walked to and fro on my bare feet till I was nearly perished, for the chimney was gone out and the frost keen. The thought of her in the next room, the thought that she might even hear me as I walked, the remembrance of my churlishness and that I must continue to practise the same ungrateful course or be dishonoured, put me beside my reason. I stood like a man between Scylla and Charybdis: What must she think of me? was my one thought that softened me continually into weakness. What is to become of us? the other which steeled me again to resolution. This was my first night of wakefulness and divided counsels, of which I was now to pass many, pacing like a madman, sometimes weeping like a childish boy, sometimes praying (I fain would hope) like a Christian.

But prayer is not very difficult, and the hitch comes in practice. In her presence, and above all if I allowed any beginning of familiarity, I found I had very little command of what should follow. But to sit all day in the same room with her, and feign to be engaged upon Heineccius, surpassed my strength. So that I fell instead upon the expedient of absenting myself so much as I was able; taking out classes and sitting there regularly, often with small attention, the test of which I found the other day in a note-book of that period, where I had left off to follow an edifying lecture and actually scribbled in my book some very ill verses, though the Latinity is rather better than I thought that I could ever have compassed. The evil of this course was unhappily near as great as its advantage. I had the less time of trial, but I believe, while the time lasted, I was tried the more extremely. For she being so much left to solitude, she came to greet my return with an increasing fervour that came nigh to overmaster me. These friendly offers I must barbarously cast back; and my rejection sometimes wounded her so cruelly that I must unbend and seek to make it up to her in kindness. So that our time passed in ups and downs, tiffs and disappointments, upon the which I could almost say (if it may be said with reverence) that I was crucified.

The base of my trouble was Catriona’s extraordinary innocence, at which I was not so much surprised as filled with pity and admiration. She seemed to have no thought of our position, no sense of my struggles; welcomed any mark of my weakness with responsive joy; and when I was drove again to my retrenchments, did not always dissemble her chagrin. There were times when I have thought to myself, “If she were over head in love, and set her cap to catch me, she would scarce behave much otherwise;” and then I would fall again into wonder at the simplicity of woman, from whom I felt (in these moments) that I was not worthy to be descended.

There was one point in particular on which our warfare turned, and of all things, this was the question of her clothes. My baggage had soon followed me from Rotterdam, and hers from Helvoet. She had now, as it were, two wardrobes; and it grew to be understood between us (I could never tell how) that when she was friendly she would wear my clothes, and when otherwise her own. It was meant for a buffet, and (as it were) the renunciation of her gratitude; and I felt it so in my bosom, but was generally more wise than to appear to have observed the circumstance.

Once, indeed, I was betrayed into a childishness greater than her own; it fell in this way. On my return from classes, thinking upon her devoutly with a great deal of love and a good deal of annoyance in the bargain, the annoyance began to fade away out of my mind; and spying in a window one of those forced flowers, of which the Hollanders are so skilled in the artifice, I gave way to an impulse and bought it for Catriona. I do not know the name of that flower, but it was of the pink colour, and I thought she would admire the same, and carried it home to her with a wonderful soft heart. I had left her in my clothes, and when I returned to find her all changed and a face to match, I cast but the one look at her from head to foot, ground my teeth together, flung the window open, and my flower into the court, and then (between rage and prudence) myself out of that room again, of which I slammed she door as I went out.

On the steep stair I came near falling, and this brought me to myself, so that I began at once to see the folly of my conduct. I went, not into the street as I had purposed, but to the house court, which was always a solitary place, and where I saw my flower (that had cost me vastly more than it was worth) hanging in the leafless tree. I stood by the side of the canal, and looked upon the ice. Country people went by on their skates, and I envied them. I could see no way out of the pickle I was in no way so much as to return to the room I had just left. No doubt was in my mind but I had now betrayed the secret of my feelings; and to make things worse, I had shown at the same time (and that with wretched boyishness) incivility to my helpless guest.

I suppose she must have seen me from the open window. It did not seem to me that I had stood there very long before I heard the crunching of footsteps on the frozen snow, and turning somewhat angrily (for I was in no spirit to be interrupted) saw Catriona drawing near. She was all changed again, to the clocked stockings.

“Are we not to have our walk to-day?” said she.

I was looking at her in a maze. “Where is your brooch?” says I.

She carried her hand to her bosom and coloured high. “I will have forgotten it,” said she. “I will run upstairs for it quick, and then surely we’ll can have our walk?”

There was a note of pleading in that last that staggered me; I had neither words nor voice to utter them; I could do no more than nod by way of answer; and the moment she had left me, climbed into the tree and recovered my flower, which on her return I offered her.

“I bought it for you, Catriona,” said I.

She fixed it in the midst of her bosom with the brooch, I could have thought tenderly.

“It is none the better of my handling,” said I again, and blushed.

“I will be liking it none the worse, you may be sure of that,” said she.

We did not speak so much that day; she seemed a thought on the reserve, though not unkindly. As for me, all the time of our walking, and after we came home, and I had seen her put my flower into a pot of water, I was thinking to myself what puzzles women were. I was thinking, the one moment, it was the most stupid thing on earth she should not have perceived my love; and the next, that she had certainly perceived it long ago, and (being a wise girl with the fine female instinct of propriety) concealed her knowledge.

We had our walk daily. Out in the streets I felt more safe; I relaxed a little in my guardedness; and for one thing, there was no Heineccius. This made these periods not only a relief to myself, but a particular pleasure to my poor child. When I came back about the hour appointed, I would generally find her ready dressed, and glowing with anticipation. She would prolong their duration to the extreme, seeming to dread (as I did myself) the hour of the return; and there is scarce a field or waterside near Leyden, scarce a street or lane there, where we have not lingered. Outside of these, I bade her confine herself entirely to our lodgings; this in the fear of her encountering any acquaintance, which would have rendered our position very difficult. From the same apprehension I would never suffer her to attend church, nor even go myself; but made some kind of shift to hold worship privately in our own chamber—I hope with an honest, but I am quite sure with a very much divided mind. Indeed, there was scarce anything that more affected me, than thus to kneel down alone with her before God like man and wife.

One day it was snowing downright hard. I had thought it not possible that we should venture forth, and was surprised to find her waiting for me ready dressed.

“I will not be doing without my walk,” she cried. “You are never a good boy, Davie, in the house; I will never be caring for you only in the open air. I think we two will better turn Egyptian and dwell by the roadside.”

That was the best walk yet of all of them; she clung near to me in the falling snow; it beat about and melted on us, and the drops stood upon her bright cheeks like tears and ran into her smiling mouth. Strength seemed to come upon me with the sight like a giant’s; I thought I could have caught her up and run with her into the uttermost places in the earth; and we spoke together all that time beyond belief for freedom and sweetness.

It was the dark night when we came to the house door. She pressed my arm upon her bosom. “Thank you kindly for these same good hours,” said she, on a deep note of her voice.

The concern in which I fell instantly on this address, put me with the same swiftness on my guard; and we were no sooner in the chamber, and the light made, than she beheld the old, dour, stubborn countenance of the student of Heineccius. Doubtless she was more than usually hurt; and I know for myself, I found it more than usually difficult to maintain any strangeness. Even at the meal, I durst scarce unbuckle and scarce lift my eyes to her; and it was no sooner over than I fell again to my civilian, with more seeming abstraction and less understanding than before. Methought, as I read, I could hear my heart strike like an eight-day clock. Hard as I feigned to study, there was still some of my eyesight that spilled beyond the book upon Catriona. She sat on the floor by the side of my great mail, and the chimney lighted her up, and shone and blinked upon her, and made her glow and darken through a wonder of fine hues. Now she would be gazing in the fire, and then again at me; and at that I would be plunged in a terror of myself, and turn the pages of Heineccius like a man looking for the text in church.

Suddenly she called out aloud. “O, why does not my father come?” she cried, and fell at once into a storm of tears.

I leaped up, flung Heineccius fairly in the fire, ran to her side, and cast an arm around her sobbing body.

She put me from her sharply, “You do not love your friend,” says she. “I could be so happy too, if you would let me!” And then, “O, what will I have done that you should hate me so?”

“Hate you!” cries I, and held her firm. “You blind less, can you not see a little in my wretched heart? Do you not think when I sit there, reading in that fool-book that I have just burned and be damned to it, I take ever the least thought of any stricken thing but just yourself? Night after night I could have grat to see you sitting there your lone. And what was I to do? You are here under my honour; would you punish me for that? Is it for that that you would spurn a loving servant?”

At the word, with a small, sudden motion, she clung near to me. I raised her face to mine, I kissed it, and she bowed her brow upon my bosom, clasping me tight. I saw in a mere whirl like a man drunken. Then I heard her voice sound very small and muffled in my clothes.

“Did you kiss her truly?” she asked.

There went through me so great a heave of surprise that I was all shook with it.

“Miss Grant?” I cried, all in a disorder. “Yes, I asked her to kiss me good-bye, the which she did.”

“Ah, well!” said she, “you have kissed me too, at all events.”

At the strangeness and sweetness of that word, I saw where we had fallen; rose, and set her on her feet.

“This will never do,” said I. “This will never, never do. O Catrine, Catrine!” Then there came a pause in which I was debarred from any speaking. And then, “Go away to your bed,” said I. “Go away to your bed and leave me.”

She turned to obey me like a child, and the next I knew of it, had stopped in the very doorway.

“Good night, Davie!” said she.

“And O, good night, my love!” I cried, with a great outbreak of my soul, and caught her to me again, so that it seemed I must have broken her. The next moment I had thrust her from the room, shut to the door even with violence, and stood alone.

The milk was spilt now, the word was out and the truth told. I had crept like an untrusty man into the poor maid’s affections; she was in my hand like any frail, innocent thing to make or mar; and what weapon of defence was left me? It seemed like a symbol that Heineccius, my old protection, was now burned. I repented, yet could not find it in my heart to blame myself for that great failure. It seemed not possible to have resisted the boldness of her innocence or that last temptation of her weeping. And all that I had to excuse me did but make my sin appear the greater—it was upon a nature so defenceless, and with such advantages of the position, that I seemed to have practised.

What was to become of us now? It seemed we could no longer dwell in the one place. But where was I to go? or where she? Without either choice or fault of ours, life had conspired to wall us together in that narrow place. I had a wild thought of marrying out of hand; and the next moment put it from me with revolt. She was a child, she could not tell her own heart; I had surprised her weakness, I must never go on to build on that surprisal; I must keep her not only clear of reproach, but free as she had come to me.

Down I sat before the fire, and reflected, and repented, and beat my brains in vain for any means of escape. About two of the morning, there were three red embers left and the house and all the city was asleep, when I was aware of a small sound of weeping in the next room. She thought that I slept, the poor soul; she regretted her weakness—and what perhaps (God help her!) she called her forwardness—and in the dead of the night solaced herself with tears. Tender and bitter feelings, love and penitence and pity, struggled in my soul; it seemed I was under bond to heal that weeping.

“O, try to forgive me!” I cried out, “try, try to forgive me. Let us forget it all, let us try if we’ll no can forget it!”

There came no answer, but the sobbing ceased. I stood a long while with my hands still clasped as I had spoken; then the cold of the night laid hold upon me with a shudder, and I think my reason reawakened.

“You can make no hand of this, Davie,” thinks I. “To bed with you like a wise lad, and try if you can sleep. To-morrow you may see your way.”

CHAPTER XXV—THE RETURN OF JAMES MORE

I was called on the morrow out of a late and troubled slumber by a knocking on my door, ran to open it, and had almost swooned with the contrariety of my feelings, mostly painful; for on the threshold, in a rough wraprascal and an extraordinary big laced hat, there stood James More.

I ought to have been glad perhaps without admixture, for there was a sense in which the man came like an answer to prayer. I had been saying till my head was weary that Catriona and I must separate, and looking till my head ached for any possible means of separation. Here were the means come to me upon two legs, and joy was the hindmost of my thoughts. It is to be considered, however, that even if the weight of the future were lifted off me by the man’s arrival, the present heaved up the more black and menacing; so that, as I first stood before him in my shirt and breeches, I believe I took a leaping step backward like a person shot.

“Ah,” said he, “I have found you, Mr. Balfour.” And offered me his large, fine hand, the which (recovering at the same time my post in the doorway, as if with some thought of resistance) I took him by doubtfully. “It is a remarkable circumstance how our affairs appear to intermingle,” he continued. “I am owing you an apology for an unfortunate intrusion upon yours, which I suffered myself to be entrapped into by my confidence in that false-face, Prestongrange; I think shame to own to you that I was ever trusting to a lawyer.” He shrugged his shoulders with a very French air. “But indeed the man is very plausible,” says he. “And now it seems that you have busied yourself handsomely in the matter of my daughter, for whose direction I was remitted to yourself.”

“I think, sir,” said I, with a very painful air, “that it will be necessary we two should have an explanation.”

“There is nothing amiss?” he asked. “My agent, Mr. Sprott—”

“For God’s sake moderate your voice!” I cried. “She must not hear till we have had an explanation.”

“She is in this place?” cries he.

“That is her chamber door,” said I.

“You are here with her alone?” he asked.

“And who else would I have got to stay with us?” cries I.

I will do him the justice to admit that he turned pale.

“This is very unusual,” said he. “This is a very unusual circumstance. You are right, we must hold an explanation.”

So saying he passed me by, and I must own the tall old rogue appeared at that moment extraordinary dignified. He had now, for the first time, the view of my chamber, which I scanned (I may say) with his eyes. A bit of morning sun glinted in by the window pane, and showed it off; my bed, my mails, and washing dish, with some disorder of my clothes, and the unlighted chimney, made the only plenishing; no mistake but it looked bare and cold, and the most unsuitable, beggarly place conceivable to harbour a young lady. At the same time came in on my mind the recollection of the clothes that I had bought for her; and I thought this contrast of poverty and prodigality bore an ill appearance.

He looked all about the chamber for a seat, and finding nothing else to his purpose except my bed, took a place upon the side of it; where, after I had closed the door, I could not very well avoid joining him. For however this extraordinary interview might end, it must pass if possible without waking Catriona; and the one thing needful was that we should sit close and talk low. But I can scarce picture what a pair we made; he in his great coat which the coldness of my chamber made extremely suitable; I shivering in my shirt and breeks; he with very much the air of a judge; and I (whatever I looked) with very much the feelings of a man who has heard the last trumpet.

“Well?” says he.

And “Well,” I began, but found myself unable to go further.

“You tell me she is here?” said he again, but now with a spice of impatience that seemed to brace me up.

“She is in this house,” said I, “and I knew the circumstance would be called unusual. But you are to consider how very unusual the whole business was from the beginning. Here is a young lady landed on the coast of Europe with two shillings and a penny halfpenny. She is directed to yon man Sprott in Helvoet. I hear you call him your agent. All I can say is he could do nothing but damn and swear at the mere mention of your name, and I must fee him out of my own pocket even to receive the custody of her effects. You speak of unusual circumstances, Mr. Drummond, if that be the name you prefer. Here was a circumstance, if you like, to which it was barbarity to have exposed her.”

“But this is what I cannot understand the least,” said James. “My daughter was placed into the charge of some responsible persons, whose names I have forgot.”

“Gebbie was the name,” said I; “and there is no doubt that Mr. Gebbie should have gone ashore with her at Helvoet. But he did not, Mr. Drummond; and I think you might praise God that I was there to offer in his place.”

“I shall have a word to say to Mr. Gebbie before long,” said he. “As for yourself, I think it might have occurred that you were somewhat young for such a post.”

“But the choice was not between me and somebody else, it was between me and nobody,” cried I. “Nobody offered in my place, and I must say I think you show a very small degree of gratitude to me that did.”

“I shall wait until I understand my obligation a little more in the particular,” says he.

“Indeed, and I think it stares you in the face, then,” said I. “Your child was deserted, she was clean flung away in the midst of Europe, with scarce two shillings, and not two words of any language spoken there: I must say, a bonny business! I brought her to this place. I gave her the name and the tenderness due to a sister. All this has not gone without expense, but that I scarce need to hint at. They were services due to the young lady’s character which I respect; and I think it would be a bonny business too, if I was to be singing her praises to her father.”

“You are a young man,” he began.

“So I hear you tell me,” said I, with a good deal of heat.

“You are a very young man,” he repeated, “or you would have understood the significancy of the step.”

“I think you speak very much at your ease,” cried I. “What else was I to do? It is a fact I might have hired some decent, poor woman to be a third to us, and I declare I never thought of it until this moment! But where was I to find her, that am a foreigner myself? And let me point out to your observation, Mr. Drummond, that it would have cost me money out of my pocket. For here is just what it comes to, that I had to pay through the nose for your neglect; and there is only the one story to it, just that you were so unloving and so careless as to have lost your daughter.”

“He that lives in a glass house should not be casting stones,” says he; “and we will finish inquiring into the behaviour of Miss Drummond before we go on to sit in judgment on her father.”

“But I will be entrapped into no such attitude,” said I. “The character of Miss Drummond is far above inquiry, as her father ought to know. So is mine, and I am telling you that. There are but the two ways of it open. The one is to express your thanks to me as one gentleman to another, and to say no more. The other (if you are so difficult as to be still dissatisfied) is to pay me, that which I have expended and be done.”

He seemed to soothe me with a hand in the air. “There, there,” said he. “You go too fast, you go too fast, Mr. Balfour. It is a good thing that I have learned to be more patient. And I believe you forget that I have yet to see my daughter.”

I began to be a little relieved upon this speech and a change in the man’s manner that I spied in him as soon as the name of money fell between us.

“I was thinking it would be more fit—if you will excuse the plainness of my dressing in your presence—that I should go forth and leave you to encounter her alone?” said I.

“What I would have looked for at your hands!” says he; and there was no mistake but what he said it civilly.

I thought this better and better still, and as I began to pull on my hose, recalling the man’s impudent mendicancy at Prestongrange’s, I determined to pursue what seemed to be my victory.

“If you have any mind to stay some while in Leyden,” said I, “this room is very much at your disposal, and I can easy find another for myself: in which way we shall have the least amount of flitting possible, there being only one to change.”

“Why, sir,” said he, making his bosom big, “I think no shame of a poverty I have come by in the service of my king; I make no secret that my affairs are quite involved; and for the moment, it would be even impossible for me to undertake a journey.”

“Until you have occasion to communicate with your friends,” said I, “perhaps it might be convenient for you (as of course it would be honourable to myself) if you were to regard yourself in the light of my guest?”

“Sir,” said he, “when an offer is frankly made, I think I honour myself most to imitate that frankness. Your hand, Mr. David; you have the character that I respect the most; you are one of those from whom a gentleman can take a favour and no more words about it. I am an old soldier,” he went on, looking rather disgusted-like around my chamber, “and you need not fear I shall prove burthensome. I have ate too often at a dyke-side, drank of the ditch, and had no roof but the rain.”

“I should be telling you,” said I, “that our breakfasts are sent customarily in about this time of morning. I propose I should go now to the tavern, and bid them add a cover for yourself and delay the meal the matter of an hour, which will give you an interval to meet your daughter in.”

Methought his nostrils wagged at this. “O, an hour?” says he. “That is perhaps superfluous. Half an hour, Mr. David, or say twenty minutes; I shall do very well in that. And by the way,” he adds, detaining me by the coat, “what is it you drink in the morning, whether ale or wine?”

“To be frank with you, sir,” says I, “I drink nothing else but spare, cold water.”

“Tut-tut,” says he, “that is fair destruction to the stomach, take an old campaigner’s word for it. Our country spirit at home is perhaps the most entirely wholesome; but as that is not come-at-able, Rhenish or a white wine of Burgundy will be next best.”

“I shall make it my business to see you are supplied,” said I.

“Why, very good,” said he, “and we shall make a man of you yet, Mr. David.”

By this time, I can hardly say that I was minding him at all, beyond an odd thought of the kind of father-in-law that he was like to prove; and all my cares centred about the lass his daughter, to whom I determined to convey some warning of her visitor. I stepped to the door accordingly, and cried through the panels, knocking thereon at the same time: “Miss Drummond, here is your father come at last.”

With that I went forth upon my errand, having (by two words) extraordinarily damaged my affairs.

CHAPTER XXVI—THE THREESOME

Whether or not I was to be so much blamed, or rather perhaps pitied, I must leave others to judge. My shrewdness (of which I have a good deal, too) seems not so great with the ladies. No doubt, at the moment when I awaked her, I was thinking a good deal of the effect upon James More; and similarly when I returned and we were all sat down to breakfast, I continued to behave to the young lady with deference and distance; as I still think to have been most wise. Her father had cast doubts upon the innocence of my friendship; and these, it was my first business to allay. But there is a kind of an excuse for Catriona also. We had shared in a scene of some tenderness and passion, and given and received caresses: I had thrust her from me with violence; I had called aloud upon her in the night from the one room to the other; she had passed hours of wakefulness and weeping; and it is not to be supposed I had been absent from her pillow thoughts. Upon the back of this, to be awaked, with unaccustomed formality, under the name of Miss Drummond, and to be thenceforth used with a great deal of distance and respect, led her entirely in error on my private sentiments; and she was indeed so incredibly abused as to imagine me repentant and trying to draw off!

The trouble betwixt us seems to have been this: that whereas I (since I had first set eyes on his great hat) thought singly of James More, his return and suspicions, she made so little of these that I may say she scarce remarked them, and all her troubles and doings regarded what had passed between us in the night before. This is partly to be explained by the innocence and boldness of her character; and partly because James More, having sped so ill in his interview with me, or had his mouth closed by my invitation, said no word to her upon the subject. At the breakfast, accordingly, it soon appeared we were at cross purposes. I had looked to find her in clothes of her own: I found her (as if her father were forgotten) wearing some of the best that I had bought for her, and which she knew (or thought) that I admired her in. I had looked to find her imitate my affectation of distance, and be most precise and formal; instead I found her flushed and wild-like, with eyes extraordinary bright, and a painful and varying expression, calling me by name with a sort of appeal of tenderness, and referring and deferring to my thoughts and wishes like an anxious or a suspected wife.

But this was not for long. As I behold her so regardless of her own interests, which I had jeopardised and was now endeavouring to recover, I redoubled my own coldness in the manner of a lesson to the girl. The more she came forward, the farther I drew back; the more she betrayed the closeness of our intimacy, the more pointedly civil I became, until even her father (if he had not been so engrossed with eating) might have observed the opposition. In the midst of which, of a sudden, she became wholly changed, and I told myself, with a good deal of relief, that she had took the hint at last.

All day I was at my classes or in quest of my new lodging; and though the hour of our customary walk hung miserably on my hands, I cannot say but I was happy on the whole to find my way cleared, the girl again in proper keeping, the father satisfied or at least acquiescent, and myself free to prosecute my love with honour. At supper, as at all our meals, it was James More that did the talking. No doubt but he talked well if anyone could have believed him. But I will speak of him presently more at large. The meal at an end, he rose, got his great coat, and looking (as I thought) at me, observed he had affairs abroad. I took this for a hint that I was to be going also, and got up; whereupon the girl, who had scarce given me greeting at my entrance, turned her eyes upon me wide open with a look that bade me stay. I stood between them like a fish out of water, turning from one to the other; neither seemed to observe me, she gazing on the floor, he buttoning his coat: which vastly swelled my embarrassment. This appearance of indifference argued, upon her side, a good deal of anger very near to burst out. Upon his, I thought it horribly alarming; I made sure there was a tempest brewing there; and considering that to be the chief peril, turned towards him and put myself (so to speak) in the man’s hands.

“Can I do anything for you, Mr. Drummond?” says I.

He stifled a yawn, which again I thought to be duplicity. “Why, Mr. David,” said he, “since you are so obliging as to propose it, you might show me the way to a certain tavern” (of which he gave the name) “where I hope to fall in with some old companions in arms.”

There was no more to say, and I got my hat and cloak to bear him company.

“And as for you,” say he to his daughter, “you had best go to your bed. I shall be late home, and Early to bed and early to rise, gars bonny lasses have bright eyes.”

Whereupon he kissed her with a good deal of tenderness, and ushered me before him from the door. This was so done (I thought on purpose) that it was scarce possible there should be any parting salutation; but I observed she did not look at me, and set it down to terror of James More.

It was some distance to that tavern. He talked all the way of matters which did not interest me the smallest, and at the door dismissed me with empty manners. Thence I walked to my new lodging, where I had not so much as a chimney to hold me warm, and no society but my own thoughts. These were still bright enough; I did not so much as dream that Catriona was turned against me; I thought we were like folk pledged; I thought we had been too near and spoke too warmly to be severed, least of all by what were only steps in a most needful policy. And the chief of my concern was only the kind of father-in-law that I was getting, which was not at all the kind I would have chosen: and the matter of how soon I ought to speak to him, which was a delicate point on several sides. In the first place, when I thought how young I was I blushed all over, and could almost have found it in my heart to have desisted; only that if once I let them go from Leyden without explanation, I might lose her altogether. And in the second place, there was our very irregular situation to be kept in view, and the rather scant measure of satisfaction I had given James More that morning. I concluded, on the whole, that delay would not hurt anything, yet I would not delay too long neither; and got to my cold bed with a full heart.

The next day, as James More seemed a little on the complaining hand in the matter of my chamber, I offered to have in more furniture; and coming in the afternoon, with porters bringing chairs and tables, found the girl once more left to herself. She greeted me on my admission civilly, but withdrew at once to her own room, of which she shut the door. I made my disposition, and paid and dismissed the men so that she might hear them go, when I supposed she would at once come forth again to speak to me. I waited yet awhile, then knocked upon her door.

“Catriona!” said I.

The door was opened so quickly, even before I had the word out, that I thought she must have stood behind it listening. She remained there in the interval quite still; but she had a look that I cannot put a name on, as of one in a bitter trouble.

“Are we not to have our walk to-day either?” so I faltered.

“I am thanking you,” said she. “I will not be caring much to walk, now that my father is come home.”

“But I think he has gone out himself and left you here alone,” said I.

“And do you think that was very kindly said?” she asked.

“It was not unkindly meant,” I replied. “What ails you, Catriona? What have I done to you that you should turn from me like this?”

“I do not turn from you at all,” she said, speaking very carefully. “I will ever be grateful to my friend that was good to me; I will ever be his friend in all that I am able. But now that my father James More is come again, there is a difference to be made, and I think there are some things said and done that would be better to be forgotten. But I will ever be your friend in all that I am able, and if that is not all that . . . . if it is not so much . . . . Not that you will be caring! But I would not have you think of me too hard. It was true what you said to me, that I was too young to be advised, and I am hoping you will remember I was just a child. I would not like to lose your friendship, at all events.”

She began this very pale; but before she was done, the blood was in her face like scarlet, so that not her words only, but her face and the trembling of her very hands, besought me to be gentle. I saw, for the first time, how very wrong I had done to place the child in that position, where she had been entrapped into a moment’s weakness, and now stood before me like a person shamed.

“Miss Drummond,” I said, and stuck, and made the same beginning once again, “I wish you could see into my heart,” I cried. “You would read there that my respect is undiminished. If that were possible, I should say it was increased. This is but the result of the mistake we made; and had to come; and the less said of it now the better. Of all of our life here, I promise you it shall never pass my lips; I would like to promise you too that I would never think of it, but it’s a memory that will be always dear to me. And as for a friend, you have one here that would die for you.”

“I am thanking you,” said she.

We stood awhile silent, and my sorrow for myself began to get the upper hand; for here were all my dreams come to a sad tumble, and my love lost, and myself alone again in the world as at the beginning.

“Well,” said I, “we shall be friends always, that’s a certain thing. But this is a kind of farewell, too: it’s a kind of a farewell after all; I shall always ken Miss Drummond, but this is a farewell to my Catriona.”

I looked at her; I could hardly say I saw her, but she seemed to grow great and brighten in my eyes; and with that I suppose I must have lost my head, for I called out her name again and made a step at her with my hands reached forth.

She shrank back like a person struck, her face flamed; but the blood sprang no faster up into her cheeks, than what it flowed back upon my own heart, at sight of it, with penitence and concern. I found no words to excuse myself, but bowed before her very deep, and went my ways out of the house with death in my bosom.

I think it was about five days that followed without any change. I saw her scarce ever but at meals, and then of course in the company of James More. If we were alone even for a moment, I made it my devoir to behave the more distantly and to multiply respectful attentions, having always in my mind’s eye that picture of the girl shrinking and flaming in a blush, and in my heart more pity for her than I could depict in words. I was sorry enough for myself, I need not dwell on that, having fallen all my length and more than all my height in a few seconds; but, indeed, I was near as sorry for the girl, and sorry enough to be scarce angry with her save by fits and starts. Her plea was good; she had been placed in an unfair position; if she had deceived herself and me, it was no more than was to have been looked for.

And for another thing she was now very much alone. Her father, when he was by, was rather a caressing parent; but he was very easy led away by his affairs and pleasures, neglected her without compunction or remark, spent his nights in taverns when he had the money, which was more often than I could at all account for; and even in the course of these few days, failed once to come to a meal, which Catriona and I were at last compelled to partake of without him. It was the evening meal, and I left immediately that I had eaten, observing I supposed she would prefer to be alone; to which she agreed and (strange as it may seem) I quite believed her. Indeed, I thought myself but an eyesore to the girl, and a reminder of a moment’s weakness that she now abhorred to think of. So she must sit alone in that room where she and I had been so merry, and in the blink of that chimney whose light had shone upon our many difficult and tender moments. There she must sit alone, and think of herself as of a maid who had most unmaidenly proffered her affections and had the same rejected. And in the meanwhile I would be alone some other place, and reading myself (whenever I was tempted to be angry) lessons upon human frailty and female delicacy. And altogether I suppose there were never two poor fools made themselves more unhappy in a greater misconception.

As for James, he paid not so much heed to us, or to anything in nature but his pocket, and his belly, and his own prating talk. Before twelve hours were gone he had raised a small loan of me; before thirty, he had asked for a second and been refused. Money and refusal he took with the same kind of high good nature. Indeed, he had an outside air of magnanimity that was very well fitted to impose upon a daughter; and the light in which he was constantly presented in his talk, and the man’s fine presence and great ways went together pretty harmoniously. So that a man that had no business with him, and either very little penetration or a furious deal of prejudice, might almost have been taken in. To me, after my first two interviews, he was as plain as print; I saw him to be perfectly selfish, with a perfect innocency in the same; and I would hearken to his swaggering talk (of arms, and “an old soldier,” and “a poor Highland gentleman,” and “the strength of my country and my friends”) as I might to the babbling of a parrot.

The odd thing was that I fancy he believed some part of it himself, or did at times; I think he was so false all through that he scarce knew when he was lying; and for one thing, his moments of dejection must have been wholly genuine. There were times when he would be the most silent, affectionate, clinging creature possible, holding Catriona’s hand like a big baby, and begging of me not to leave if I had any love to him; of which, indeed, I had none, but all the more to his daughter. He would press and indeed beseech us to entertain him with our talk, a thing very difficult in the state of our relations; and again break forth in pitiable regrets for his own land and friends, or into Gaelic singing.

“This is one of the melancholy airs of my native land,” he would say. “You may think it strange to see a soldier weep, and indeed it is to make a near friend of you,” says he. “But the notes of this singing are in my blood, and the words come out of my heart. And when I mind upon my red mountains and the wild birds calling there, and the brave streams of water running down, I would scarce think shame to weep before my enemies.” Then he would sing again, and translate to me pieces of the song, with a great deal of boggling and much expressed contempt against the English language. “It says here,” he would say, “that the sun is gone down, and the battle is at an end, and the brave chiefs are defeated. And it tells here how the stars see them fleeing into strange countries or lying dead on the red mountain; and they will never more shout the call of battle or wash their feet in the streams of the valley. But if you had only some of this language, you would weep also because the words of it are beyond all expression, and it is mere mockery to tell you it in English.”

Well, I thought there was a good deal of mockery in the business, one way and another; and yet, there was some feeling too, for which I hated him, I think, the worst of all. And it used to cut me to the quick to see Catriona so much concerned for the old rogue, and weeping herself to see him weep, when I was sure one half of his distress flowed from his last night’s drinking in some tavern. There were times when I was tempted to lend him a round sum, and see the last of him for good; but this would have been to see the last of Catriona as well, for which I was scarcely so prepared; and besides, it went against my conscience to squander my good money on one who was so little of a husband.

I believe it was about the fifth day, and I know at least that James was in one of his fits of gloom, when I received three letters. The first was from Alan, offering to visit me in Leyden; the other two were out of Scotland and prompted by the same affair, which was the death of my uncle and my own complete accession to my rights. Rankeillor’s was, of course, wholly in the business view; Miss Grant’s was like herself, a little more witty than wise, full of blame to me for not having written (though how was I to write with such intelligence?) and of rallying talk about Catriona, which it cut me to the quick to read in her very presence.

For it was of course in my own rooms that I found them, when I came to dinner, so that I was surprised out of my news in the very first moment of reading it. This made a welcome diversion for all three of us, nor could any have foreseen the ill consequences that ensued. It was accident that brought the three letters the same day, and that gave them into my hand in the same room with James More; and of all the events that flowed from that accident, and which I might have prevented if I had held my tongue, the truth is that they were preordained before Agricola came into Scotland or Abraham set out upon his travels.

The first that I opened was naturally Alan’s; and what more natural than that I should comment on his design to visit me? but I observed James to sit up with an air of immediate attention.

“Is that not Alan Breck that was suspected of the Appin accident?” he inquired.

I told him, “Ay,” it was the same; and he withheld me some time from my other letters, asking of our acquaintance, of Alan’s manner of life in France, of which I knew very little, and further of his visit as now proposed.

“All we forfeited folk hang a little together,” he explained, “and besides I know the gentleman: and though his descent is not the thing, and indeed he has no true right to use the name of Stewart, he was very much admired in the day of Drummossie. He did there like a soldier; if some that need not be named had done as well, the upshot need not have been so melancholy to remember. There were two that did their best that day, and it makes a bond between the pair of us,” says he.

I could scarce refrain from shooting out my tongue at him, and could almost have wished that Alan had been there to have inquired a little further into that mention of his birth. Though, they tell me, the same was indeed not wholly regular.

Meanwhile, I had opened Miss Grant’s, and could not withhold an exclamation.

“Catriona,” I cried, forgetting, the first time since her father was arrived, to address her by a handle, “I am come into my kingdom fairly, I am the laird of Shaws indeed—my uncle is dead at last.”

She clapped her hands together leaping from her seat. The next moment it must have come over both of us at once what little cause of joy was left to either, and we stood opposite, staring on each other sadly.

But James showed himself a ready hypocrite. “My daughter,” says he, “is this how my cousin learned you to behave? Mr. David has lost a new friend, and we should first condole with him on his bereavement.”

“Troth, sir,” said I, turning to him in a kind of anger, “I can make no such great faces. His death is as blithe news as ever I got.”

“It’s a good soldier’s philosophy,” says James. “’Tis the way of flesh, we must all go, all go. And if the gentleman was so far from your favour, why, very well! But we may at least congratulate you on your accession to your estates.”

“Nor can I say that either,” I replied, with the same heat. “It is a good estate; what matters that to a lone man that has enough already? I had a good revenue before in my frugality; and but for the man’s death—which gratifies me, shame to me that must confess it!—I see not how anyone is to be bettered by this change.”

“Come, come,” said he, “you are more affected than you let on, or you would never make yourself out so lonely. Here are three letters; that means three that wish you well; and I could name two more, here in this very chamber. I have known you not so very long, but Catriona, when we are alone, is never done with the singing of your praises.”

She looked up at him, a little wild at that; and he slid off at once into another matter, the extent of my estate, which (during the most of the dinner time) he continued to dwell upon with interest. But it was to no purpose he dissembled; he had touched the matter with too gross a hand: and I knew what to expect. Dinner was scarce ate when he plainly discovered his designs. He reminded Catriona of an errand, and bid her attend to it. “I do not see you should be one beyond the hour,” he added, “and friend David will be good enough to bear me company till you return.” She made haste to obey him without words. I do not know if she understood, I believe not; but I was completely satisfied, and sat strengthening my mind for what should follow.

The door had scarce closed behind her departure, when the man leaned back in his chair and addressed me with a good affectation of easiness. Only the one thing betrayed him, and that was his face; which suddenly shone all over with fine points of sweat.

“I am rather glad to have a word alone with you,” says he, “because in our first interview there were some expressions you misapprehended and I have long meant to set you right upon. My daughter stands beyond doubt. So do you, and I would make that good with my sword against all gainsayers. But, my dear David, this world is a censorious place—as who should know it better than myself, who have lived ever since the days of my late departed father, God sain him! in a perfect spate of calumnies? We have to face to that; you and me have to consider of that; we have to consider of that.” And he wagged his head like a minister in a pulpit.

“To what effect, Mr. Drummond?” said I. “I would be obliged to you if you would approach your point.”

“Ay, ay,” said he, laughing, “like your character, indeed! and what I most admire in it. But the point, my worthy fellow, is sometimes in a kittle bit.” He filled a glass of wine. “Though between you and me, that are such fast friends, it need not bother us long. The point, I need scarcely tell you, is my daughter. And the first thing is that I have no thought in my mind of blaming you. In the unfortunate circumstances, what could you do else? ’Deed, and I cannot tell.”

“I thank you for that,” said I, pretty close upon my guard.

“I have besides studied your character,” he went on; “your talents are fair; you seem to have a moderate competence, which does no harm; and one thing with another, I am very happy to have to announce to you that I have decided on the latter of the two ways open.”

“I am afraid I am dull,” said I. “What ways are these?”

He bent his brows upon me formidably and uncrossed his legs. “Why, sir,” says he, “I think I need scarce describe them to a gentleman of your condition; either that I should cut your throat or that you should marry my daughter.”

“You are pleased to be quite plain at last,” said I.

“And I believe I have been plain from the beginning!” cries he robustiously. “I am a careful parent, Mr. Balfour; but I thank God, a patient and deleeborate man. There is many a father, sir, that would have hirsled you at once either to the altar or the field. My esteem for your character—”

“Mr. Drummond,” I interrupted, “if you have any esteem for me at all, I will beg of you to moderate your voice. It is quite needless to rowt at a gentleman in the same chamber with yourself and lending you his best attention.”

“Why, very true,” says he, with an immediate change. “And you must excuse the agitations of a parent.”

“I understand you then,” I continued—“for I will take no note of your other alternative, which perhaps it was a pity you let fall—I understand you rather to offer me encouragement in case I should desire to apply for your daughter’s hand?”

“It is not possible to express my meaning better,” said he, “and I see we shall do well together.”

“That remains to be yet seen,” said I. “But so much I need make no secret of, that I bear the lady you refer to the most tender affection, and I could not fancy, even in a dream, a better fortune than to get her.”

“I was sure of it, I felt certain of you, David,” he cried, and reached out his hand to me.

I put it by. “You go too fast, Mr. Drummond,” said I. “There are conditions to be made; and there is a difficulty in the path, which I see not entirely how we shall come over. I have told you that, upon my side, there is no objection to the marriage, but I have good reason to believe there will be much on the young lady’s.”

“This is all beside the mark,” says he. “I will engage for her acceptance.”

“I think you forget, Mr. Drummond,” said I, “that, even in dealing with myself, you have been betrayed into two-three unpalatable expressions. I will have none such employed to the young lady. I am here to speak and think for the two of us; and I give you to understand that I would no more let a wife be forced upon myself, than what I would let a husband be forced on the young lady.”

He sat and glowered at me like one in doubt and a good deal of temper.

“So that is to be the way of it,” I concluded. “I will marry Miss Drummond, and that blithely, if she is entirely willing. But if there be the least unwillingness, as I have reason to fear—marry her will I never.”

“Well well,” said he, “this is a small affair. As soon as she returns I will sound her a bit, and hope to reassure you—”

But I cut in again. “Not a finger of you, Mr. Drummond, or I cry off, and you can seek a husband to your daughter somewhere else,” said I. “It is I that am to be the only dealer and the only judge. I shall satisfy myself exactly; and none else shall anyways meddle—you the least of all.”

“Upon my word, sir!” he exclaimed, “and who are you to be the judge?”

“The bridegroom, I believe,” said I.

“This is to quibble,” he cried. “You turn your back upon the fact. The girl, my daughter, has no choice left to exercise. Her character is gone.”

“And I ask your pardon,” said I, “but while this matter lies between her and you and me, that is not so.”

“What security have I!” he cried. “Am I to let my daughter’s reputation depend upon a chance?”

“You should have thought of all this long ago,” said I, “before you were so misguided as to lose her; and not afterwards when it is quite too late. I refuse to regard myself as any way accountable for your neglect, and I will be browbeat by no man living. My mind is quite made up, and come what may, I will not depart from it a hair’s breadth. You and me are to sit here in company till her return: upon which, without either word or look from you, she and I are to go forth again to hold our talk. If she can satisfy me that she is willing to this step, I will then make it; and if she cannot, I will not.”

He leaped out of his chair like a man stung. “I can spy your manoeuvre,” he cried; “you would work upon her to refuse!”

“Maybe ay, and maybe no,” said I. “That is the way it is to be, whatever.”

“And if I refuse?” cries he.

“Then, Mr. Drummond, it will have to come to the throat-cutting,” said I.

What with the size of the man, his great length of arm in which he came near rivalling his father, and his reputed skill at weapons, I did not use this word without trepidation, to say nothing at all of the circumstance that he was Catriona’s father. But I might have spared myself alarms. From the poorness of my lodging—he does not seem to have remarked his daughter’s dresses, which were indeed all equally new to him—and from the fact that I had shown myself averse to lend, he had embraced a strong idea of my poverty. The sudden news of my estate convinced him of his error, and he had made but the one bound of it on this fresh venture, to which he was now so wedded, that I believe he would have suffered anything rather than fall to the alternative of fighting.

A little while longer he continued to dispute with me, until I hit upon a word that silenced him.

“If I find you so averse to let me see the lady by herself,” said I, “I must suppose you have very good grounds to think me in the right about her unwillingness.”

He gabbled some kind of an excuse.

“But all this is very exhausting to both of our tempers,” I added, “and I think we would do better to preserve a judicious silence.”

The which we did until the girl returned, and I must suppose would have cut a very ridiculous figure had there been any there to view us.

CHAPTER XXVIII—IN WHICH I AM LEFT ALONE

I opened the door to Catriona and stopped her on the threshold.

“Your father wishes us to take our walk,” said I.

She looked to James More, who nodded, and at that, like a trained soldier, she turned to go with me.

We took one of our old ways, where we had gone often together, and been more happy than I can tell of in the past. I came a half a step behind, so that I could watch her unobserved. The knocking of her little shoes upon the way sounded extraordinary pretty and sad; and I thought it a strange moment that I should be so near both ends of it at once, and walk in the midst between two destinies, and could not tell whether I was hearing these steps for the last time, or whether the sound of them was to go in and out with me till death should part us.

She avoided even to look at me, only walked before her, like one who had a guess of what was coming. I saw I must speak soon before my courage was run out, but where to begin I knew not. In this painful situation, when the girl was as good as forced into my arms and had already besought my forbearance, any excess of pressure must have seemed indecent; yet to avoid it wholly would have a very cold-like appearance. Between these extremes I stood helpless, and could have bit my fingers; so that, when at last I managed to speak at all, it may be said I spoke at random.

“Catriona,” said I, “I am in a very painful situation; or rather, so we are both; and I would be a good deal obliged to you if you would promise to let me speak through first of all, and not to interrupt me till I have done.”

She promised me that simply.

“Well,” said I, “this that I have got to say is very difficult, and I know very well I have no right to be saying it. After what passed between the two of us last Friday, I have no manner of right. We have got so ravelled up (and all by my fault) that I know very well the least I could do is just to hold my tongue, which was what I intended fully, and there was nothing further from my thoughts than to have troubled you again. But, my dear, it has become merely necessary, and no way by it. You see, this estate of mine has fallen in, which makes of me rather a better match; and the—the business would not have quite the same ridiculous-like appearance that it would before. Besides which, it’s supposed that our affairs have got so much ravelled up (as I was saying) that it would be better to let them be the way they are. In my view, this part of the thing is vastly exagerate, and if I were you I would not wear two thoughts on it. Only it’s right I should mention the same, because there’s no doubt it has some influence on James More. Then I think we were none so unhappy when we dwelt together in this town before. I think we did pretty well together. If you would look back, my dear—”

“I will look neither back nor forward,” she interrupted. “Tell me the one thing: this is my father’s doing?”

“He approves of it,” said I. “He approved I that I should ask your hand in marriage,” and was going on again with somewhat more of an appeal upon her feelings; but she marked me not, and struck into the midst.

“He told you to!” she cried. “It is no sense denying it, you said yourself that there was nothing farther from your thoughts. He told you to.”

“He spoke of it the first, if that is what you mean,” I began.

She was walking ever the faster, and looking fain in front of her; but at this she made a little noise in her head, and I thought she would have run.

“Without which,” I went on, “after what you said last Friday, I would never have been so troublesome as make the offer. But when he as good as asked me, what was I to do?”

She stopped and turned round upon me.

“Well, it is refused at all events,” she cried, “and there will be an end of that.”

And she began again to walk forward.

“I suppose I could expect no better,” said I, “but I think you might try to be a little kind to me for the last end of it. I see not why you should be harsh. I have loved you very well, Catriona—no harm that I should call you so for the last time. I have done the best that I could manage, I am trying the same still, and only vexed that I can do no better. It is a strange thing to me that you can take any pleasure to be hard to me.”

“I am not thinking of you,” she said, “I am thinking of that man, my father.”

“Well, and that way, too!” said I. “I can be of use to you that way, too; I will have to be. It is very needful, my dear, that we should consult about your father; for the way this talk has gone, an angry man will be James More.”

She stopped again. “It is because I am disgraced?” she asked.

“That is what he is thinking,” I replied, “but I have told you already to make nought of it.”

“It will be all one to me,” she cried. “I prefer to be disgraced!”

I did not know very well what to answer, and stood silent.

There seemed to be something working in her bosom after that last cry; presently she broke out, “And what is the meaning of all this? Why is all this shame loundered on my head? How could you dare it, David Balfour?”

“My dear,” said I, “what else was I to do?”

“I am not your dear,” she said, “and I defy you to be calling me these words.”

“I am not thinking of my words,” said I. “My heart bleeds for you, Miss Drummond. Whatever I may say, be sure you have my pity in your difficult position. But there is just the one thing that I wish you would bear in view, if it was only long enough to discuss it quietly; for there is going to be a collieshangie when we two get home. Take my word for it, it will need the two of us to make this matter end in peace.”

“Ay,” said she. There sprang a patch of red in either of her cheeks. “Was he for fighting you?” said she.

“Well, he was that,” said I.

She gave a dreadful kind of laugh. “At all events, it is complete!” she cried. And then turning on me. “My father and I are a fine pair,” said she, “but I am thanking the good God there will be somebody worse than what we are. I am thanking the good God that he has let me see you so. There will never be the girl made that will not scorn you.”

I had borne a good deal pretty patiently, but this was over the mark.

“You have no right to speak to me like that,” said I. “What have I done but to be good to you, or try to be? And here is my repayment! O, it is too much.”

She kept looking at me 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?’ said 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 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 I guess?” she cried. “O, this is a dreadful business! Me and mine,”—she gave a kind of a wretched cry at the word—“me and mine are not fit to speak to you. O, I could be kneeling down to you in the street, I could be kissing your hands for forgiveness!”

“I will keep the kisses I have got from you already,” cried I. “I will keep the ones I wanted and that were something worth; I will not be kissed in penitence.”

“What can you be thinking of this miserable girl?” says she.

“What I am trying to tell you all this while!” said I, “that you had best leave me alone, whom you can make no more unhappy if you tried, and turn your attention to James More, your father, with whom you are like to have a queer pirn to wind.”

“O, that I must be going out into the world alone with such a man!” she cried, and seemed to catch herself in with a great effort. “But trouble yourself no more for that,” said she. “He does not know what kind of nature is in my heart. He will pay me dear for this day of it; dear, dear, will he pay.”

She turned, and began to go home and I to accompany her. At which she stopped.

“I will be going alone,” she said. “It is alone I must be seeing him.”

Some little time I raged about the streets, and told myself I was the worst used lad in Christendom. Anger choked me; it was all very well for me to breathe deep; it seemed there was not air enough about Leyden to supply me, and I thought I would have burst like a man at the bottom of the sea. I stopped and laughed at myself at a street corner a minute together, laughing out loud, so that a passenger looked at me, which brought me to myself.

“Well,” I thought, “I have been a gull and a ninny and a soft Tommy long enough. Time it was done. Here is a good lesson to have nothing to do with that accursed sex, that was the ruin of the man in the beginning and will be so to the end. God knows I was happy enough before ever I saw her; God knows I can be happy enough again when I have seen the last of her.”

That seemed to me the chief affair: to see them go. I dwelled upon the idea fiercely; and presently slipped on, in a kind of malevolence, to consider how very poorly they were likely to fare when Davie Balfour was no longer by to be their milk-cow; at which, to my very own great surprise, the disposition of my mind turned bottom up. I was still angry; I still hated her; and yet I thought I owed it to myself that she should suffer nothing.

This carried me home again at once, where I found the mails drawn out and ready fastened by the door, and the father and daughter with every mark upon them of a recent disagreement. Catriona was like a wooden doll; James More breathed hard, his face was dotted with white spots, and his nose upon one side. As soon as I came in, the girl looked at him with a steady, clear, dark look that might have been followed by a blow. It was a hint that was more contemptuous than a command, and I was surprised to see James More accept it. It was plain he had had a master talking-to; and I could see there must be more of the devil in the girl than I had guessed, and more good humour about the man than I had given him the credit of.

He began, at least, calling me Mr. Balfour, and plainly speaking from a lesson; but he got not very far, for at the first pompous swell of his voice, Catriona cut in.

“I will tell you what James More is meaning,” said she. “He means we have come to you, beggar-folk, and have not behaved to you very well, and we are ashamed of our ingratitude and ill-behaviour. Now we are wanting to go away and be forgotten; and my father will have guided his gear so ill, that we cannot even do that unless you will give us some more alms. For that is what we are, at an events, beggar-folk and sorners.”

“By your leave, Miss Drummond,” said I, “I must speak to your father by myself.”

She went into her own room and shut the door, without a word or a look.

“You must excuse her, Mr. Balfour,” says James More. “She has no delicacy.”

“I am not here to discuss that with you,” said I, “but to be quit of you. And to that end I must talk of your position. Now, Mr. Drummond, I have kept the run of your affairs more closely than you bargained for. I know you had money of your own when you were borrowing mine. I know you have had more since you were here in Leyden, though you concealed it even from your daughter.”

“I bid you beware. I will stand no more baiting,” he broke out. “I am sick of her and you. What kind of a damned trade is this to be a parent! I have had expressions used to me—” There he broke off. “Sir, this is the heart of a soldier and a parent,” he went on again, laying his hand on his bosom, “outraged in both characters—and I bid you beware.”

“If you would have let me finish,” says I, “you would have found I spoke for your advantage.”

“My dear friend,” he cried, “I know I might have relied upon the generosity of your character.”

“Man! will you let me speak?” said I. “The fact is that I cannot win to find out if you are rich or poor. But it is my idea that your means, as they are mysterious in their source, so they are something insufficient in amount; and I do not choose your daughter to be lacking. If I durst speak to herself, you may be certain I would never dream of trusting it to you; because I know you like the back of my hand, and all your blustering talk is that much wind to me. However, I believe in your way you do still care something for your daughter after all; and I must just be doing with that ground of confidence, such as it is.”

Whereupon, I arranged with him that he was to communicate with me, as to his whereabouts and Catriona’s welfare, in consideration of which I was to serve him a small stipend.

He heard the business out with a great deal of eagerness; and when it was done, “My dear fellow, my dear son,” he cried out, “this is more like yourself than any of it yet! I will serve you with a soldier’s faithfulness—”

“Let me hear no more of it!” says I. “You have got me to that pitch that the bare name of soldier rises on my stomach. Our traffic is settled; I am now going forth and will return in one half-hour, when I expect to find my chambers purged of you.”

I gave them good measure of time; it was my one fear that I might see Catriona again, because tears and weakness were ready in my heart, and I cherished my anger like a piece of dignity. Perhaps an hour went by; the sun had gone down, a little wisp of a new moon was following it across a scarlet sunset; already there were stars in the east, and in my chambers, when at last I entered them, the night lay blue. I lit a taper and reviewed the rooms; in the first there remained nothing so much as to awake a memory of those who were gone; but in the second, in a corner of the floor, I spied a little heap that brought my heart into my mouth. She had left behind at her departure all that she had ever had of me. It was the blow that I felt sorest, perhaps because it was the last; and I fell upon that pile of clothing and behaved myself more foolish than I care to tell of.

Late in the night, in a strict frost, and my teeth chattering, I came again by some portion of my manhood and considered with myself. The sight of these poor frocks and ribbons, and her shifts, and the clocked stockings, was not to be endured; and if I were to recover any constancy of mind, I saw I must be rid of them ere the morning. It was my first thought to have made a fire and burned them; but my disposition has always been opposed to wastery, for one thing; and for another, to have burned these things that she had worn so close upon her body seemed in the nature of a cruelty. There was a corner cupboard in that chamber; there I determined to bestow them. The which I did and made it a long business, folding them with very little skill indeed but the more care; and sometimes dropping them with my tears. All the heart was gone out of me, I was weary as though I had run miles, and sore like one beaten; when, as I was folding a kerchief that she wore often at her neck, I observed there was a corner neatly cut from it. It was a kerchief of a very pretty hue, on which I had frequently remarked; and once that she had it on, I remembered telling her (by way of a banter) that she wore my colours. There came a glow of hope and like a tide of sweetness in my bosom; and the next moment I was plunged back in a fresh despair. For there was the corner crumpled in a knot and cast down by itself in another part of the floor.

But when I argued with myself, I grew more hopeful. She had cut that corner off in some childish freak that was manifestly tender; that she had cast it away again was little to be wondered at; and I was inclined to dwell more upon the first than upon the second, and to be more pleased that she had ever conceived the idea of that keepsake, than concerned because she had flung it from her in an hour of natural resentment.

CHAPTER XXIX—WE MEET IN DUNKIRK

Altogether, then, I was scare so miserable the next days but what I had many hopeful and happy snatches; threw myself with a good deal of constancy upon my studies; and made out to endure the time till Alan should arrive, or I might hear word of Catriona by the means of James More. I had altogether three letters in the time of our separation. One was to announce their arrival in the town of Dunkirk in France, from which place James shortly after started alone upon a private mission. This was to England and to see Lord Holderness; and it has always been a bitter thought that my good money helped to pay the charges of the same. But he has need of a long spoon who soups with the de’il, or James More either. During this absence, the time was to fall due for another letter; and as the letter was the condition of his stipend, he had been so careful as to prepare it beforehand and leave it with Catriona to be despatched. The fact of our correspondence aroused her suspicions, and he was no sooner gone than she had burst the seal. What I received began accordingly in the writing of James More:

“My dear Sir,—Your esteemed favour came to hand duly, and I have to acknowledge the inclosure according to agreement. It shall be all faithfully expended on my daughter, who is well, and desires to be remembered to her dear friend. I find her in rather a melancholy disposition, but trust in the mercy of God to see her re-established. Our manner of life is very much alone, but we solace ourselves with the melancholy tunes of our native mountains, and by walking up the margin of the sea that lies next to Scotland. It was better days with me when I lay with five wounds upon my body on the field of Gladsmuir. I have found employment here in the haras of a French nobleman, where my experience is valued. But, my dear Sir, the wages are so exceedingly unsuitable that I would be ashamed to mention them, which makes your remittances the more necessary to my daughter’s comfort, though I daresay the sight of old friends would be still better.

“My dear Sir,
“Your affectionate, obedient servant,
“James Macgregor Drummond.”

Below it began again in the hand of Catriona:—

“Do not be believing him, it is all lies together,—C. M. D.”

Not only did she add this postscript, but I think she must have come near suppressing the letter; for it came long after date, and was closely followed by the third. In the time betwixt them, Alan had arrived, and made another life to me with his merry conversation; I had been presented to his cousin of the Scots-Dutch, a man that drank more than I could have thought possible and was not otherwise of interest; I had been entertained to many jovial dinners and given some myself, all with no great change upon my sorrow; and we two (by which I mean Alan and myself, and not at all the cousin) had discussed a good deal the nature of my relations with James More and his daughter. I was naturally diffident to give particulars; and this disposition was not anyway lessened by the nature of Alan’s commentary upon those I gave.

“I cannae make heed nor tail of it,” he would say, “but it sticks in my mind ye’ve made a gowk of yourself. There’s few people that has had more experience than Alan Breck: and I can never call to mind to have heard tell of a lassie like this one of yours. The way that you tell it, the thing’s fair impossible. Ye must have made a terrible hash of the business, David.”

“There are whiles that I am of the same mind,” said I.

“The strange thing is that ye seem to have a kind of fancy for her too!” said Alan.

“The biggest kind, Alan,” said I, “and I think I’ll take it to my grave with me.”

“Well, ye beat me, whatever!” he would conclude.

I showed him the letter with Catriona’s postscript. “And here again!” he cried. “Impossible to deny a kind of decency to this Catriona, and sense forby! As for James More, the man’s as boss as a drum; he’s just a wame and a wheen words; though I’ll can never deny that he fought reasonably well at Gladsmuir, and it’s true what he says here about the five wounds. But the loss of him is that the man’s boss.”

“Ye see, Alan,” said I, “it goes against the grain with me to leave the maid in such poor hands.”

“Ye couldnae weel find poorer,” he admitted. “But what are ye to do with it? It’s this way about a man and a woman, ye see, Davie: The weemenfolk have got no kind of reason to them. Either they like the man, and then a’ goes fine; or else they just detest him, and ye may spare your breath—ye can do naething. There’s just the two sets of them—them that would sell their coats for ye, and them that never look the road ye’re on. That’s a’ that there is to women; and you seem to be such a gomeral that ye cannae tell the tane frae the tither.”

“Well, and I’m afraid that’s true for me,” said I.

“And yet there’s naething easier!” cried Alan. “I could easy learn ye the science of the thing; but ye seem to me to be born blind, and there’s where the deefficulty comes in.”

“And can you no help me?” I asked, “you that are so clever at the trade?”

“Ye see, David, I wasnae here,” said he. “I’m like a field officer that has naebody but blind men for scouts and Éclaireurs; and what would he ken? But it sticks in my mind that ye’ll have made some kind of bauchle; and if I was you I would have a try at her again.”

“Would ye so, man Alan?” said I.

“I would e’en’t,” says he.

The third letter came to my hand while we were deep in some such talk: and it will be seen how pat it fell to the occasion. James professed to be in some concern upon his daughter’s health, which I believe was never better; abounded in kind expressions to myself; and finally proposed that I should visit them at Dunkirk.

“You will now be enjoying the society of my old comrade Mr. Stewart,” he wrote. “Why not accompany him so far in his return to France? I have something very particular for Mr. Stewart’s ear; and, at any rate, I would be pleased to meet in with an old fellow-soldier and one so mettle as himself. As for you, my dear sir, my daughter and I would be proud to receive our benefactor, whom we regard as a brother and a son. The French nobleman has proved a person of the most filthy avarice of character, and I have been necessitate to leave the haras. You will find us in consequence a little poorly lodged in the auberge of a man Bazin on the dunes; but the situation is caller, and I make no doubt but we might spend some very pleasant days, when Mr. Stewart and I could recall our services, and you and my daughter divert yourselves in a manner more befitting your age. I beg at least that Mr. Stewart would come here; my business with him opens a very wide door.”

“What does the man want with me?” cried Alan, when he had read. “What he wants with you is clear enough—it’s siller. But what can he want with Alan Breck?”

“O, it’ll be just an excuse,” said I. “He is still after this marriage, which I wish from my heart that we could bring about. And he asks you because he thinks I would be less likely to come wanting you.”

“Well, I wish that I kent,” says Alan. “Him and me were never onyways pack; we used to girn at ither like a pair of pipers. ‘Something for my ear,’ quo’ he! I’ll maybe have something for his hinder-end, before we’re through with it. Dod, I’m thinking it would be a kind of divertisement to gang and see what he’ll be after! Forby that I could see your lassie then. What say ye, Davie? Will ye ride with Alan?”

You may be sure I was not backward, and Alan’s furlough running towards an end, we set forth presently upon this joint adventure.

It was near dark of a January day when we rode at last into the town of Dunkirk. We left our horses at the post, and found a guide to Bazin’s Inn, which lay beyond the walls. Night was quite fallen, so that we were the last to leave that fortress, and heard the doors of it close behind us as we passed the bridge. On the other side there lay a lighted suburb, which we thridded for a while, then turned into a dark lane, and presently found ourselves wading in the night among deep sand where we could hear a bullering of the sea. We travelled in this fashion for some while, following our conductor mostly by the sound of his voice; and I had begun to think he was perhaps misleading us, when we came to the top of a small brae, and there appeared out of the darkness a dim light in a window.

“VoilÀ l’auberge À Bazin,” says the guide.

Alan smacked his lips. “An unco lonely bit,” said he, and I thought by his tone he was not wholly pleased.

A little after, and we stood in the lower storey of that house, which was all in the one apartment, with a stairs leading to the chambers at the side, benches and tables by the wall, the cooking fire at the one end of it, and shelves of bottles and the cellar-trap at the other. Here Bazin, who was an ill-looking, big man, told us the Scottish gentleman was gone abroad he knew not where, but the young lady was above, and he would call her down to us.

I took from my breast that kerchief wanting the corner, and knotted it about my throat. I could hear my heart go; and Alan patting me on the shoulder with some of his laughable expressions, I could scarce refrain from a sharp word. But the time was not long to wait. I heard her step pass overhead, and saw her on the stair. This she descended very quietly, and greeted me with a pale face and a certain seeming of earnestness, or uneasiness, in her manner that extremely dashed me.

“My father, James More, will be here soon. He will be very pleased to see you,” she said. And then of a sudden her face flamed, her eyes lightened, the speech stopped upon her lips; and I made sure she had observed the kerchief. It was only for a breath that she was discomposed; but methought it was with a new animation that she turned to welcome Alan. “And you will be his friend, Alan Breck?” she cried. “Many is the dozen times I will have heard him tell of you; and I love you already for all your bravery and goodness.”

“Well, well,” says Alan, holding her hand in his and viewing her, “and so this is the young lady at the last of it! David, ye’re an awful poor hand of a description.”

I do not know that ever I heard him speak so straight to people’s hearts; the sound of his voice was like song.

“What? will he have been describing me?” she cried.

“Little else of it since I ever came out of France!” says he, “forby a bit of a speciment one night in Scotland in a shaw of wood by Silvermills. But cheer up, my dear! ye’re bonnier than what he said. And now there’s one thing sure; you and me are to be a pair of friends. I’m a kind of a henchman to Davie here; I’m like a tyke at his heels; and whatever he cares for, I’ve got to care for too—and by the holy airn! they’ve got to care for me! So now you can see what way you stand with Alan Breck, and ye’ll find ye’ll hardly lose on the transaction. He’s no very bonnie, my dear, but he’s leal to them he loves.”

“I thank you from my heart for your good words,” said she. “I have that honour for a brave, honest man that I cannot find any to be answering with.”

Using travellers’ freedom, we spared to wait for James More, and sat down to meat, we threesome. Alan had Catriona sit by him and wait upon his wants: he made her drink first out of his glass, he surrounded her with continual kind gallantries, and yet never gave me the most small occasion to be jealous; and he kept the talk so much in his own hand, and that in so merry a note, that neither she nor I remembered to be embarrassed. If any had seen us there, it must have been supposed that Alan was the old friend and I the stranger. Indeed, I had often cause to love and to admire the man, but I never loved or admired him better than that night; and I could not help remarking to myself (what I was sometimes rather in danger of forgetting) that he had not only much experience of life, but in his own way a great deal of natural ability besides. As for Catriona, she seemed quite carried away; her laugh was like a peal of bells, her face gay as a May morning; and I own, although I was well pleased, yet I was a little sad also, and thought myself a dull, stockish character in comparison of my friend, and very unfit to come into a young maid’s life, and perhaps ding down her gaiety.

But if that was like to be my part, I found that at least I was not alone in it; for, James More returning suddenly, the girl was changed into a piece of stone. Through the rest of that evening, until she made an excuse and slipped to bed, I kept an eye upon her without cease; and I can bear testimony that she never smiled, scarce spoke, and looked mostly on the board in front of her. So that I really marvelled to see so much devotion (as it used to be) changed into the very sickness of hate.

Of James More it is unnecessary to say much; you know the man already, what there was to know of him; and I am weary of writing out his lies. Enough that he drank a great deal, and told us very little that was to any possible purpose. As for the business with Alan, that was to be reserved for the morrow and his private hearing.

It was the more easy to be put off, because Alan and I were pretty weary with four day’s ride, and sat not very late after Catriona.

We were soon alone in a chamber where we were to make-shift with a single bed. Alan looked on me with a queer smile.

“Ye muckle ass!” said he.

“What do ye mean by that?” I cried.

“Mean? What do I mean! It’s extraordinar, David man,” say he, “that you should be so mortal stupit.”

Again I begged him to speak out.

“Well, it’s this of it,” said he. “I told ye there were the two kinds of women—them that would sell their shifts for ye, and the others. Just you try for yoursel, my bonny man! But what’s that neepkin at your craig?”

I told him.

“I thocht it was something thereabout,” said he.

Nor would he say another word though I besieged him long with importunities.

CHAPTER XXX—THE LETTER FROM THE SHIP

Daylight showed us how solitary the inn stood. It was plainly hard upon the sea, yet out of all view of it, and beset on every side with scabbit hills of sand. There was, indeed, only one thing in the nature of a prospect, where there stood out over a brae the two sails of a windmill, like an ass’s ears, but with the ass quite hidden. It was strange (after the wind rose, for at first it was dead calm) to see the turning and following of each other of these great sails behind the hillock. Scarce any road came by there; but a number of footways travelled among the bents in all directions up to Mr. Bazin’s door. The truth is, he was a man of many trades, not any one of them honest, and the position of his inn was the best of his livelihood. Smugglers frequented it; political agents and forfeited persons bound across the water came there to await their passages; and I daresay there was worse behind, for a whole family might have been butchered in that house and nobody the wiser.

I slept little and ill. Long ere it was day, I had slipped from beside my bedfellow, and was warming myself at the fire or walking to and fro before the door. Dawn broke mighty sullen; but a little after, sprang up a wind out of the west, which burst the clouds, let through the sun, and set the mill to the turning. There was something of spring in the sunshine, or else it was in my heart; and the appearing of the great sails one after another from behind the hill, diverted me extremely. At times I could hear a creak of the machinery; and by half-past eight of the day, and I thought this dreary, desert place was like a paradise.

For all which, as the day drew on and nobody came near, I began to be aware of an uneasiness that I could scarce explain. It seemed there was trouble afoot; the sails of the windmill, as they came up and went down over the hill, were like persons spying; and outside of all fancy, it was surely a strange neighbourhood and house for a young lady to be brought to dwell in.

At breakfast, which we took late, it was manifest that James More was in some danger or perplexity; manifest that Alan was alive to the same, and watched him close; and this appearance of duplicity upon the one side, and vigilance upon the other, held me on live coals. The meal was no sooner over than James seemed to come began to make apologies. He had an appointment of a private nature in the town (it was with the French nobleman, he told me), and we would please excuse him till about noon. Meanwhile he carried his daughter aside to the far end of the room, where he seemed to speak rather earnestly and she to listen with much inclination.

“I am caring less and less about this man James,” said Alan. “There’s something no right with the man James, and I shouldnae wonder but what Alan Breck would give an eye to him this day. I would like fine to see yon French nobleman, Davie; and I daresay you could find an employ to yoursel, and that would be to speir at the lassie for some news o’ your affair. Just tell it to her plainly—tell her ye’re a muckle ass at the off-set; and then, if I were you, and ye could do it naitural, I would just mint to her I was in some kind of a danger; a’ weemenfolk likes that.”

“I cannae lee, Alan, I cannae do it naitural,” says I, mocking him.

“The more fool you!” says he. “Then ye’ll can tell her that I recommended it; that’ll set her to the laughing; and I wouldnae wonder but what that was the next best. But see to the pair of them! If I didnae feel just sure of the lassie, and that she was awful pleased and chief with Alan, I would think there was some kind of hocus-pocus about you.”

“And is she so pleased with ye, then, Alan?” I asked.

“She thinks a heap of me,” says he. “And I’m no like you: I’m one that can tell. That she does—she thinks a heap of Alan. And troth! I’m thinking a good deal of him mysel; and with your permission, Shaws, I’ll be getting a wee yont amang the bents, so that I can see what way James goes.”

One after another went, till I was left alone beside the breakfast table; James to Dunkirk, Alan dogging him, Catriona up the stairs to her own chamber. I could very well understand how she should avoid to be alone with me; yet was none the better pleased with it for that, and bent my mind to entrap her to an interview before the men returned. Upon the whole, the best appeared to me to do like Alan. If I was out of view among the sandhills, the fine morning would decoy her forth; and once I had her in the open, I could please myself.

No sooner said than done; nor was I long under the bield of a hillock before she appeared at the inn door, looked here and there, and (seeing nobody) set out by a path that led directly seaward, and by which I followed her. I was in no haste to make my presence known; the further she went I made sure of the longer hearing to my suit; and the ground being all sandy it was easy to follow her unheard. The path rose and came at last to the head of a knowe. Thence I had a picture for the first time of what a desolate wilderness that inn stood hidden in; where was no man to be seen, nor any house of man, except just Bazin’s and the windmill. Only a little further on, the sea appeared and two or three ships upon it, pretty as a drawing. One of these was extremely close in to be so great a vessel; and I was aware of a shock of new suspicion, when I recognised the trim of the Seahorse. What should an English ship be doing so near in to France? Why was Alan brought into her neighbourhood, and that in a place so far from any hope of rescue? and was it by accident, or by design, that the daughter of James More should walk that day to the seaside?

Presently I came forth behind her in the front of the sandhills and above the beach. It was here long and solitary; with a man-o’-war’s boat drawn up about the middle of the prospect, and an officer in charge and pacing the sands like one who waited. I sat down where the rough grass a good deal covered me, and looked for what should follow. Catriona went straight to the boat; the officer met her with civilities; they had ten words together; I saw a letter changing hands; and there was Catriona returning. At the same time, as if this were all her business on the Continent, the boat shoved off and was headed for the Seahorse. But I observed the officer to remain behind and disappear among the bents.

I liked the business little; and the more I considered of it, liked it less. Was it Alan the officer was seeking? or Catriona? She drew near with her head down, looking constantly on the sand, and made so tender a picture that I could not bear to doubt her innocence. The next, she raised her face and recognised me; seemed to hesitate, and then came on again, but more slowly, and I thought with a changed colour. And at that thought, all else that was upon my bosom—fears, suspicions, the care of my friend’s life—was clean swallowed up; and I rose to my feet and stood waiting her in a drunkenness of hope.

I gave her “good morning” as she came up, which she returned with a good deal of composure.

“Will you forgive my having followed you?” said I.

“I know you are always meaning kindly,” she replied; and then, with a little outburst, “but why will you be sending money to that man! It must not be.”

“I never sent it for him,” said I, “but for you, as you know well.”

“And you have no right to be sending it to either one of us,” she said. “David, it is not right.”

“It is not, it is all wrong,” said I, “and I pray God he will help this dull fellow (if it be at all possible) to make it better. Catriona, this is no kind of life for you to lead; and I ask your pardon for the word, but yon man is no fit father to take care of you.”

“Do not be speaking of him, even!” was her cry.

“And I need speak of him no more; it is not of him that I am thinking, O, be sure of that!” says I. “I think of the one thing. I have been alone now this long time in Leyden; and when I was by way of at my studies, still I was thinking of that. Next Alan came, and I went among soldier-men to their big dinners; and still I had the same thought. And it was the same before, when I had her there beside me. Catriona, do you see this napkin at my throat! You cut a corner from it once and then cast it from you. They’re your colours now; I wear them in my heart. My dear, I cannot be wanting you. O, try to put up with me!”

I stepped before her so as to intercept her walking on.

“Try to put up with me,” I was saying, “try and bear me with a little.”

Still she had never the word, and a fear began to rise in me like a fear of death.

“Catriona,” I cried, gazing on her hard, “is it a mistake again? Am I quite lost?”

She raised her face to me, breathless.

“Do you want me, Davie, truly?” said she, and I scarce could hear her say it.

“I do that,” said I. “O, sure you know it—I do that.”

“I have nothing left to give or to keep back,” said she. “I was all yours from the first day, if you would have had a gift of me!” she said.

This was on the summit of a brae; the place was windy and conspicuous, we were to be seen there even from the English ship; but I kneeled down before her in the sand, and embraced her knees, and burst into that storm of weeping that I thought it must have broken me. All thought was wholly beaten from my mind by the vehemency of my discomposure. I knew not where I was. I had forgot why I was happy; only I knew she stooped, and I felt her cherish me to her face and bosom, and heard her words out of a whirl.

“Davie,” she was saying, “O, Davie, is this what you think of me! Is it so that you were caring for poor me! O, Davie, Davie!”

With that she wept also, and our tears were commingled in a perfect gladness.

It might have been ten in the day before I came to a clear sense of what a mercy had befallen me; and sitting over against her, with her hands in mine, gazed in her face, and laughed out loud for pleasure like a child, and called her foolish and kind names. I have never seen the place that looked so pretty as those bents by Dunkirk; and the windmill sails, as they bobbed over the knowe, were like a tune of music.

I know not how much longer we might have continued to forget all else besides ourselves, had I not chanced upon a reference to her father, which brought us to reality.

“My little friend,” I was calling her again and again, rejoicing to summon up the past by the sound of it, and to gaze across on her, and to be a little distant—“My little friend, now you are mine altogether; mine for good, my little friend and that man’s no longer at all.”

There came a sudden whiteness in her face, she plucked her hands from mine.

“Davie, take me away from him!” she cried. “There’s something wrong; he’s not true. There will be something wrong; I have a dreadful terror here at my heart. What will he be wanting at all events with that King’s ship? What will this word be saying?” And she held the letter forth. “My mind misgives me, it will be some ill to Alan. Open it, Davie—open it and see.”

I took it, and looked at it, and shook my head.

“No,” said I, “it goes against me, I cannot open a man’s letter.”

“Not to save your friend?” she cried.

“I cannae tell,” said I. “I think not. If I was only sure!”

“And you have but to break the seal!” said she.

“I know it,” said I, “but the thing goes against me.”

“Give it here,” said she, “and I will open it myself.”

“Nor you neither,” said I. “You least of all. It concerns your father, and his honour, dear, which we are both misdoubting. No question but the place is dangerous-like, and the English ship being here, and your father having word from it, and yon officer that stayed ashore. He would not be alone either; there must be more along with him; I daresay we are spied upon this minute. Ay, no doubt, the letter should be opened; but somehow, not by you nor me.”

I was about thus far with it, and my spirit very much overcome with a sense of danger and hidden enemies, when I spied Alan, come back again from following James and walking by himself among the sand-hills. He was in his soldier’s coat, of course, and mighty fine; but I could not avoid to shudder when I thought how little that jacket would avail him, if he were once caught and flung in a skiff, and carried on board of the Seahorse, a deserter, a rebel, and now a condemned murderer.

“There,” said I, “there is the man that has the best right to open it: or not, as he thinks fit.”

With which I called upon his name, and we both stood up to be a mark for him.

“If it is so—if it be more disgrace—will you can bear it?” she asked, looking upon me with a burning eye.

“I was asked something of the same question when I had seen you but the once,” said I. “What do you think I answered? That if I liked you as I thought I did—and O, but I like you better!—I would marry you at his gallows’ foot.”

The blood rose in her face; she came close up and pressed upon me, holding my hand: and it was so that we awaited Alan.

He came with one of his queer smiles. “What was I telling ye, David?” says he.

“There is a time for all things, Alan,” said I, “and this time is serious. How have you sped? You can speak out plain before this friend of ours.”

“I have been upon a fool’s errand,” said he.

“I doubt we have done better than you, then,” said I; “and, at least, here is a great deal of matter that you must judge of. Do you see that?” I went on, pointing to the ship. “That is the Seahorse, Captain Palliser.”

“I should ken her, too,” says Alan. “I had fyke enough with her when she was stationed in the Forth. But what ails the man to come so close?”

“I will tell you why he came there first,” said I. “It was to bring this letter to James More. Why he stops here now that it’s delivered, what it’s likely to be about, why there’s an officer hiding in the bents, and whether or not it’s probable that he’s alone—I would rather you considered for yourself.”

“A letter to James More?” said he.

“The same,” said I.

“Well, and I can tell ye more than that,” said Alan. “For the last night, when you were fast asleep, I heard the man colloguing with some one in the French, and then the door of that inn to be opened and shut.”

“Alan!” cried I, “you slept all night, and I am here to prove it.”

“Ay, but I would never trust Alan whether he was asleep or waking!” says he. “But the business looks bad. Let’s see the letter.”

I gave it him.

“Catriona,” said he, “you have to excuse me, my dear; but there’s nothing less than my fine bones upon the cast of it, and I’ll have to break this seal.”

“It is my wish,” said Catriona.

He opened it, glanced it through, and flung his hand in the air.

“The stinking brock!” says he, and crammed the paper in his pocket. “Here, let’s get our things together. This place is fair death to me.” And he began to walk towards the inn.

It was Catriona that spoke the first. “He has sold you?” she asked.

“Sold me, my dear,” said Alan. “But thanks to you and Davie, I’ll can jink him yet. Just let me win upon my horse,” he added.

“Catriona must come with us,” said I. “She can have no more traffic with that man. She and I are to be married.” At which she pressed my hand to her side.

“Are ye there with it?” says Alan, looking back. “The best day’s work that ever either of you did yet! And I’m bound to say, my dawtie, ye make a real, bonny couple.”

The way that he was following brought us close in by the windmill, where I was aware of a man in seaman’s trousers, who seemed to be spying from behind it. Only, of course, we took him in the rear.

“See, Alan!”

“Wheesht!” said, he, “this is my affairs.”

The man was, no doubt, a little deafened by the clattering of the mill, and we got up close before he noticed. Then he turned, and we saw he was a big fellow with a mahogany face.

“I think, sir,” says Alan, “that you speak the English?”

“Non, monsieur,” says he, with an incredible bad accent.

“Non, monsieur,” cries Alan, mocking him. “Is that how they learn you French on the Seahorse? Ye muckle, gutsey hash, here’s a Scots boot to your English hurdies!”

And bounding on him before he could escape, he dealt the man a kick that laid him on his nose. Then he stood, with a savage smile, and watched him scramble to his feet and scamper off into the sand-hills.

“But it’s high time I was clear of these empty bents!” said Alan; and continued his way at top speed, and we still following, to the backdoor of Bazin’s inn.

It chanced that as we entered by the one door we came face to face with James More entering by the other.

“Here!” said I to Catriona, “quick! upstairs with you and make your packets; this is no fit scene for you.”

In the meanwhile James and Alan had met in the midst of the long room. She passed them close by to reach the stairs; and after she was some way up I saw her turn and glance at them again, though without pausing. Indeed, they were worth looking at. Alan wore as they met one of his best appearances of courtesy and friendliness, yet with something eminently warlike, so that James smelled danger off the man, as folk smell fire in a house, and stood prepared for accidents.

Time pressed. Alan’s situation in that solitary place, and his enemies about him, might have daunted CÆsar. It made no change in him; and it was in his old spirit of mockery and daffing that he began the interview.

“A braw good day to ye again, Mr. Drummond,” said he. “What’ll yon business of yours be just about?”

“Why, the thing being private, and rather of a long story,” says James, “I think it will keep very well till we have eaten.”

“I’m none so sure of that,” said Alan. “It sticks in my mind it’s either now or never; for the fact is me and Mr. Balfour here have gotten a line, and we’re thinking of the road.”

I saw a little surprise in James’s eye; but he held himself stoutly.

“I have but the one word to say to cure you of that,” said he, “and that is the name of my business.”

“Say it then,” says Alan. “Hout! wha minds for Davie?”

“It is a matter that would make us both rich men,” said James.

“Do you tell me that?” cries Alan.

“I do, sir,” said James. “The plain fact is that it is Cluny’s Treasure.”

“No!” cried Alan. “Have ye got word of it?”

“I ken the place, Mr. Stewart, and can take you there,” said James.

“This crowns all!” says Alan. “Well, and I’m glad I came to Dunkirk. And so this was your business, was it? Halvers, I’m thinking?”

“That is the business, sir,” said James.

“Well, well,” said Alan; and then in the same tone of childlike interest, “it has naething to do with the Seahorse, then?” he asked.

“With what?” says James.

“Or the lad that I have just kicked the bottom of behind yon windmill?” pursued Alan. “Hut, man! have done with your lees! I have Palliser’s letter here in my pouch. You’re by with it, James More. You can never show your face again with dacent folk.”

James was taken all aback with it. He stood a second, motionless and white, then swelled with the living anger.

“Do you talk to me, you bastard?” he roared out.

“Ye glee’d swine!” cried Alan, and hit him a sounding buffet on the mouth, and the next wink of time their blades clashed together.

At the first sound of the bare steel I instinctively leaped back from the collision. The next I saw, James parried a thrust so nearly that I thought him killed; and it lowed up in my mind that this was the girl’s father, and in a manner almost my own, and I drew and ran in to sever them.

“Keep back, Davie! Are ye daft! Damn ye, keep back!” roared Alan. “Your blood be on your ain heid then!”

I beat their blades down twice. I was knocked reeling against the wall; I was back again betwixt them. They took no heed of me, thrusting at each other like two furies. I can never think how I avoided being stabbed myself or stabbing one of these two Rodomonts, and the whole business turned about me like a piece of a dream; in the midst of which I heard a great cry from the stair, and Catriona sprang before her father. In the same moment the point of my sword encountered some thing yielding. It came back to me reddened. I saw the blood flow on the girl’s kerchief, and stood sick.

“Will you be killing him before my eyes, and me his daughter after all!” she cried.

“My dear, I have done with him,” said Alan, and went, and sat on a table, with his arms crossed and the sword naked in his hand.

Awhile she stood before the man, panting, with big eyes, then swung suddenly about and faced him.

“Begone!” was her word, “take your shame out of my sight; leave me with clean folk. I am a daughter of Alpin! Shame of the sons of Alpin, begone!”

It was said with so much passion as awoke me from the horror of my own bloodied sword. The two stood facing, she with the red stain on her kerchief, he white as a rag. I knew him well enough—I knew it must have pierced him in the quick place of his soul; but he betook himself to a bravado air.

“Why,” says he, sheathing his sword, though still with a bright eye on Alan, “if this brawl is over I will but get my portmanteau—”

“There goes no pockmantie out of this place except with me,” says Alan.

“Sir!” cries James.

“James More,” says Alan, “this lady daughter of yours is to marry my friend Davie, upon the which account I let you pack with a hale carcase. But take you my advice of it and get that carcase out of harm’s way or ower late. Little as you suppose it, there are leemits to my temper.”

“Be damned, sir, but my money’s there!” said James.

“I’m vexed about that, too,” says Alan, with his funny face, “but now, ye see, it’s mines.” And then with more gravity, “Be you advised, James More, you leave this house.”

James seemed to cast about for a moment in his mind; but it’s to be thought he had enough of Alan’s swordsmanship, for he suddenly put off his hat to us and (with a face like one of the damned) bade us farewell in a series. With which he was gone.

At the same time a spell was lifted from me.

“Catriona,” I cried, “it was me—it was my sword. O, are you much hurt?”

“I know it, Davie, I am loving you for the pain of it; it was done defending that bad man, my father. See!” she said, and showed me a bleeding scratch, “see, you have made a man of me now. I will carry a wound like an old soldier.”

Joy that she should be so little hurt, and the love of her brave nature, supported me. I embraced her, I kissed the wound.

“And am I to be out of the kissing, me that never lost a chance?” says Alan; and putting me aside and taking Catriona by either shoulder, “My dear,” he said, “you’re a true daughter of Alpin. By all accounts, he was a very fine man, and he may weel be proud of you. If ever I was to get married, it’s the marrow of you I would be seeking for a mother to my sons. And I bear’s a king’s name and speak the truth.”

He said it with a serious heat of admiration that was honey to the girl, and through her, to me. It seemed to wipe us clean of all James More’s disgraces. And the next moment he was just himself again.

“And now by your leave, my dawties,” said he, “this is a’ very bonny; but Alan Breck’ll be a wee thing nearer to the gallows than he’s caring for; and Dod! I think this is a grand place to be leaving.”

The word recalled us to some wisdom. Alan ran upstairs and returned with our saddle-bags and James More’s portmanteau; I picked up Catriona’s bundle where she had dropped it on the stair; and we were setting forth out of that dangerous house, when Bazin stopped the way with cries and gesticulations. He had whipped under a table when the swords were drawn, but now he was as bold as a lion. There was his bill to be settled, there was a chair broken, Alan had sat among his dinner things, James More had fled.

“Here,” I cried, “pay yourself,” and flung him down some Lewie d’ors; for I thought it was no time to be accounting.

He sprang upon that money, and we passed him by, and ran forth into the open. Upon three sides of the house were seamen hasting and closing in; a little nearer to us James More waved his hat as if to hurry them; and right behind him, like some foolish person holding up his hands, were the sails of the windmill turning.

Alan gave but one glance, and laid himself down to run. He carried a great weight in James More’s portmanteau; but I think he would as soon have lost his life as cast away that booty which was his revenge; and he ran so that I was distressed to follow him, and marvelled and exulted to see the girl bounding at my side.

As soon as we appeared, they cast off all disguise upon the other side; and the seamen pursued us with shouts and view-hullohs. We had a start of some two hundred yards, and they were but bandy-legged tarpaulins after all, that could not hope to better us at such an exercise. I suppose they were armed, but did not care to use their pistols on French ground. And as soon as I perceived that we not only held our advantage but drew a little away, I began to feel quite easy of the issue. For all which, it was a hot, brisk bit of work, so long as it lasted; Dunkirk was still far off; and when we popped over a knowe, and found a company of the garrison marching on the other side on some manoeuvre, I could very well understand the word that Alan had.

He stopped running at once; and mopping at his brow, “They’re a real bonny folk, the French nation,” says he.