the lass that could resist the temptation. It's supposed by
divines to be the curse of Eve: because she did not say it when
the devil offered her the apple, her daughters can say nothing
else."

"Since I am so soon to lose my bonny professor," I began.

"This is gallant, indeed," says she curtseying.

"I would put the one question," I went on. "May I ask a lass to
marry to me?"

"You think you could not marry her without!" she asked. "Or else
get her to offer?"

"You see you cannot be serious," said I.

"I shall be very serious in one thing, David," said she: "I shall
always be your friend."

As I got to my horse the next morning, the four ladies were all at
that same window whence we had once looked down on Catriona, and
all cried farewell and waved their pocket napkins as I rode away.
One out of the four I knew was truly sorry; and at the thought of
that, and how I had come to the door three months ago for the first
time, sorrow and gratitude made a confusion in my mind.




PART II—FATHER AND DAUGHTER




CHAPTER XXI—THE VOYAGE INTO HOLLAND



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 grant 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 in 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."



CHAPTER XXIII—TRAVELS IN HOLLAND



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