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Title: Catriona

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

Release date: July 1, 1996 [eBook #589]
Most recently updated: June 6, 2021

Language: English

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Catriona

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Contents

PART I. THE LORD ADVOCATE
CHAPTER I. A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK
CHAPTER II. THE HIGHLAND WRITER
CHAPTER III. I GO TO PILRIG
CHAPTER IV. LORD ADVOCATE PRESTONGRANGE
CHAPTER V. IN THE ADVOCATE’S HOUSE
CHAPTER VI. UMQUILE THE MASTER OF LOVAT
CHAPTER VII. I MAKE A FAULT IN HONOUR
CHAPTER VIII. THE BRAVO
CHAPTER IX. THE HEATHER ON FIRE
CHAPTER X. THE RED-HEADED MAN
CHAPTER XI. THE WOOD BY SILVERMILLS
CHAPTER XII. ON THE MARCH AGAIN WITH ALAN
CHAPTER XIII. GILLANE SANDS
CHAPTER XIV. THE BASS
CHAPTER XV. BLACK ANDIE’S TALE OF TOD LAPRAIK
CHAPTER XVI. THE MISSING WITNESS
CHAPTER XVII. THE MEMORIAL
CHAPTER XVIII. THE TEE’D BALL
CHAPTER XIX. I AM MUCH IN THE HANDS OF THE LADIES
CHAPTER XX. I CONTINUE TO MOVE IN GOOD SOCIETY

PART II. FATHER AND DAUGHTER
CHAPTER XXI. THE VOYAGE INTO HOLLAND
CHAPTER XXII. HELVOETSLUYS
CHAPTER XXIII. TRAVELS IN HOLLAND

CHAPTER XXIV. FULL STORY OF A COPY OF HEINECCIUS
CHAPTER XXV. THE RETURN OF JAMES MORE
CHAPTER XXVI. THE THREESOME
CHAPTER XXVII. A TWOSOME
CHAPTER XXVIII. IN WHICH I AM LEFT ALONE
CHAPTER XXIX. WE MEET IN DUNKIRK
CHAPTER XXX. THE LETTER FROM THE SHIP

DEDICATION.

To
CHARLES BAXTER, Writer to the Signet.
My Dear Charles,
It is the fate of sequels to disappoint those who have waited for them; and
my David, having been left to kick his heels for more than a lustre in the
British Linen Company’s office, must expect his late re-appearance to be
greeted with hoots, if not with missiles. Yet, when I remember the days of
our explorations, I am not without hope. There should be left in our native
city some seed of the elect; some long-legged, hot-headed youth must
repeat to-day our dreams and wanderings of so many years ago; he will
relish the pleasure, which should have been ours, to follow among named
streets and numbered houses the country walks of David Balfour, to identify
Dean, and Silvermills, and Broughton, and Hope Park, and Pilrig, and poor
old Lochend—if it still be standing, and the Figgate Whins—if there be any
of them left; or to push (on a long holiday) so far afield as Gillane or the
Bass. So, perhaps, his eye shall be opened to behold the series of the
generations, and he shall weigh with surprise his momentous and nugatory
gift of life.
You are still—as when first I saw, as when I last addressed you—in the
venerable city which I must always think of as my home. And I have come
so far; and the sights and thoughts of my youth pursue me; and I see like a
vision the youth of my father, and of his father, and the whole stream of
lives flowing down there far in the north, with the sound of laughter and
tears, to cast me out in the end, as by a sudden freshet, on these ultimate
islands. And I admire and bow my head before the romance of destiny.

R. L. S.

Vailima, Upolu,
Samoa, 1892.

CATRIONA

PART I.
THE LORD ADVOCATE

CHAPTER I.
A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK

The 25th day of August, 1751, about two in the afternoon, I, David
Balfour, came forth of the British Linen Company, a porter attending me
with a bag of money, and some of the chief of these merchants bowing me
from their doors. Two days before, and even so late as yestermorning, I was
like a beggar-man by the wayside, clad in rags, brought down to my last
shillings, my companion a condemned traitor, a price set on my own head
for a crime with the news of which the country rang. To-day I was served
heir to my position in life, a landed laird, a bank porter by me carrying my
gold, recommendations in my pocket, and (in the words of the saying) the
ball directly at my foot.
There were two circumstances that served me as ballast to so much sail.
The first was the very difficult and deadly business I had still to handle; the
second, the place that I was in. The tall, black city, and the numbers and
movement and noise of so many folk, made a new world for me, after the
moorland braes, the sea-sands and the still country-sides that I had
frequented up to then. The throng of the citizens in particular abashed me.
Rankeillor’s son was short and small in the girth; his clothes scarce held on
me; and it was plain I was ill qualified to strut in the front of a bank-porter.
It was plain, if I did so, I should but set folk laughing, and (what was worse
in my case) set them asking questions. So that I behooved to come by some
clothes of my own, and in the meanwhile to walk by the porter’s side, and
put my hand on his arm as though we were a pair of friends.
At a merchant’s in the Luckenbooths I had myself fitted out: none too
fine, for I had no idea to appear like a beggar on horseback; but comely and
responsible, so that servants should respect me. Thence to an armourer’s,
where I got a plain sword, to suit with my degree in life. I felt safer with the
weapon, though (for one so ignorant of defence) it might be called an added

danger. The porter, who was naturally a man of some experience, judged
my accoutrement to be well chosen.
“Naething kenspeckle,”[1] said he; “plain, dacent claes. As for the rapier,
nae doubt it sits wi’ your degree; but an I had been you, I would has waired
my siller better-gates than that.” And he proposed I should buy winter-
hosen from a wife in the Cowgate-back, that was a cousin of his own, and
made them “extraordinar endurable.”
But I had other matters on my hand more pressing. Here I was in this old,
black city, which was for all the world like a rabbit-warren, not only by the
number of its indwellers, but the complication of its passages and holes. It
was, indeed, a place where no stranger had a chance to find a friend, let be
another stranger. Suppose him even to hit on the right close, people dwelt so
thronged in these tall houses, he might very well seek a day before he
chanced on the right door. The ordinary course was to hire a lad they called
a caddie, who was like a guide or pilot, led you where you had occasion,
and (your errands being done) brought you again where you were lodging.
But these caddies, being always employed in the same sort of services, and
having it for obligation to be well informed of every house and person in
the city, had grown to form a brotherhood of spies; and I knew from tales of
Mr. Campbell’s how they communicated one with another, what a rage of
curiosity they conceived as to their employer’s business, and how they were
like eyes and fingers to the police. It would be a piece of little wisdom, the
way I was now placed, to take such a ferret to my tails. I had three visits to
make, all immediately needful: to my kinsman Mr. Balfour of Pilrig, to
Stewart the Writer that was Appin’s agent, and to William Grant Esquire of
Prestongrange, Lord Advocate of Scotland. Mr. Balfour’s was a non-
committal visit; and besides (Pilrig being in the country) I made bold to find
the way to it myself, with the help of my two legs and a Scots tongue. But
the rest were in a different case. Not only was the visit to Appin’s agent, in
the midst of the cry about the Appin murder, dangerous in itself, but it was
highly inconsistent with the other. I was like to have a bad enough time of it
with my Lord Advocate Grant, the best of ways; but to go to him hot-foot
from Appin’s agent, was little likely to mend my own affairs, and might
prove the mere ruin of friend Alan’s. The whole thing, besides, gave me a
look of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds that was little to
my fancy. I determined, therefore, to be done at once with Mr. Stewart and
the whole Jacobitical side of my business, and to profit for that purpose by

the guidance of the porter at my side. But it chanced I had scarce given him
the address, when there came a sprinkle of rain—nothing to hurt, only for
my new clothes—and we took shelter under a pend at the head of a close or
alley.
Being strange to what I saw, I stepped a little farther in. The narrow
paved way descended swiftly. Prodigious tall houses sprang upon each side
and bulged out, one storey beyond another, as they rose. At the top only a
ribbon of sky showed in. By what I could spy in the windows, and by the
respectable persons that passed out and in, I saw the houses to be very well
occupied; and the whole appearance of the place interested me like a tale.
I was still gazing, when there came a sudden brisk tramp of feet in time
and clash of steel behind me. Turning quickly, I was aware of a party of
armed soldiers, and, in their midst, a tall man in a great coat. He walked
with a stoop that was like a piece of courtesy, genteel and insinuating: he
waved his hands plausibly as he went, and his face was sly and handsome. I
thought his eye took me in, but could not meet it. This procession went by
to a door in the close, which a serving-man in a fine livery set open; and
two of the soldier-lads carried the prisoner within, the rest lingering with
their firelocks by the door.
There can nothing pass in the streets of a city without some following of
idle folk and children. It was so now; but the more part melted away
incontinent until but three were left. One was a girl; she was dressed like a
lady, and had a screen of the Drummond colours on her head; but her
comrades or (I should say) followers were ragged gillies, such as I had seen
the matches of by the dozen in my Highland journey. They all spoke
together earnestly in Gaelic, the sound of which was pleasant in my ears for
the sake of Alan; and, though the rain was by again, and my porter plucked
at me to be going, I even drew nearer where they were, to listen. The lady
scolded sharply, the others making apologies and cringeing before her, so
that I made sure she was come of a chief’s house. All the while the three of
them sought in their pockets, and by what I could make out, they had the
matter of half a farthing among the party; which made me smile a little to
see all Highland folk alike for fine obeisances and empty sporrans.
It chanced the girl turned suddenly about, so that I saw her face for the
first time. There is no greater wonder than the way the face of a young
woman fits in a man’s mind, and stays there, and he could never tell you

why; it just seems it was the thing he wanted. She had wonderful bright
eyes like stars, and I daresay the eyes had a part in it; but what I remember
the most clearly was the way her lips were a trifle open as she turned. And,
whatever was the cause, I stood there staring like a fool. On her side, as she
had not known there was anyone so near, she looked at me a little longer,
and perhaps with more surprise, than was entirely civil.
It went through my country head she might be wondering at my new
clothes; with that, I blushed to my hair, and at the sight of my colouring it is
to be supposed she drew her own conclusions, for she moved her gillies
farther down the close, and they fell again to this dispute, where I could
hear no more of it.
I had often admired a lassie before then, if scarce so sudden and strong;
and it was rather my disposition to withdraw than to come forward, for I
was much in fear of mockery from the womenkind. You would have
thought I had now all the more reason to pursue my common practice, since
I had met this young lady in the city street, seemingly following a prisoner,
and accompanied with two very ragged indecent-like Highlandmen. But
there was here a different ingredient; it was plain the girl thought I had been
prying in her secrets; and with my new clothes and sword, and at the top of
my new fortunes, this was more than I could swallow. The beggar on
horseback could not bear to be thrust down so low, or, at least of it, not by
this young lady.
I followed, accordingly, and took off my new hat to her the best that I
was able.
“Madam,” said I, “I think it only fair to myself to let you understand I
have no Gaelic. It is true I was listening, for I have friends of my own
across the Highland line, and the sound of that tongue comes friendly; but
for your private affairs, if you had spoken Greek, I might have had more
guess at them.”
She made me a little, distant curtsey. “There is no harm done,” said she,
with a pretty accent, most like the English (but more agreeable). “A cat may
look at a king.”
“I do not mean to offend,” said I. “I have no skill of city manners; I never
before this day set foot inside the doors of Edinburgh. Take me for a
country lad—it’s what I am; and I would rather I told you than you found it
out.”

“Indeed, it will be a very unusual thing for strangers to be speaking to
each other on the causeway,” she replied. “But if you are landward [2] bred it
will be different. I am as landward as yourself; I am Highland, as you see,
and think myself the farther from my home.”
“It is not yet a week since I passed the line,” said I. “Less than a week
ago I was on the braes of Balwhidder.”
“Balwhither?” she cries. “Come ye from Balwhither! The name of it
makes all there is of me rejoice. You will not have been long there, and not
known some of our friends or family?”
“I lived with a very honest, kind man called Duncan Dhu Maclaren,” I
replied.
“Well, I know Duncan, and you give him the true name!” she said; “and
if he is an honest man, his wife is honest indeed.”
“Ay,” said I, “they are fine people, and the place is a bonny place.”
“Where in the great world is such another!” she cries; “I am loving the
smell of that place and the roots that grow there.”
I was infinitely taken with the spirit of the maid. “I could be wishing I
had brought you a spray of that heather,” says I. “And, though I did ill to
speak with you at the first, now it seems we have common acquaintance, I
make it my petition you will not forget me. David Balfour is the name I am
known by. This is my lucky day, when I have just come into a landed estate,
and am not very long out of a deadly peril. I wish you would keep my name
in mind for the sake of Balwhidder,” said I, “and I will yours for the sake of
my lucky day.”
“My name is not spoken,” she replied, with a great deal of haughtiness.
“More than a hundred years it has not gone upon men’s tongues, save for a
blink. I am nameless, like the Folk of Peace. [3] Catriona Drummond is the
one I use.”
Now indeed I knew where I was standing. In all broad Scotland there was
but the one name proscribed, and that was the name of the Macgregors. Yet
so far from fleeing this undesirable acquaintancy, I plunged the deeper in.
“I have been sitting with one who was in the same case with yourself,”
said I, “and I think he will be one of your friends. They called him Robin
Oig.”
“Did ye so?” cries she. “Ye met Rob?”

“I passed the night with him,” said I.
“He is a fowl of the night,” said she.
“There was a set of pipes there,” I went on, “so you may judge if the time
passed.”
“You should be no enemy, at all events,” said she. “That was his brother
there a moment since, with the red soldiers round him. It is him that I call
father.”
“Is it so?” cried I. “Are you a daughter of James More’s?”
“All the daughter that he has,” says she: “the daughter of a prisoner; that
I should forget it so, even for one hour, to talk with strangers!”
Here one of the gillies addressed her in what he had of English, to know
what “she” (meaning by that himself) was to do about “ta sneeshin.” I took
some note of him for a short, bandy-legged, red-haired, big-headed man,
that I was to know more of to my cost.
“There can be none the day, Neil,” she replied. “How will you get
‘sneeshin,’ wanting siller! It will teach you another time to be more careful;
and I think James More will not be very well pleased with Neil of the Tom.”
“Miss Drummond,” I said, “I told you I was in my lucky day. Here I am,
and a bank-porter at my tail. And remember I have had the hospitality of
your own country of Balwhidder.”
“It was not one of my people gave it,” said she.
“Ah, well,” said I, “but I am owing your uncle at least for some springs
upon the pipes. Besides which, I have offered myself to be your friend, and
you have been so forgetful that you did not refuse me in the proper time.”
“If it had been a great sum, it might have done you honour,” said she;
“but I will tell you what this is. James More lies shackled in prison; but this
time past they will be bringing him down here daily to the Advocate’s. . . .”
“The Advocate’s!” I cried. “Is that . . . ?”
“It is the house of the Lord Advocate Grant of Prestongrange,” said she.
“There they bring my father one time and another, for what purpose I have
no thought in my mind; but it seems there is some hope dawned for him. All
this same time they will not let me be seeing him, nor yet him write; and we
wait upon the King’s street to catch him; and now we give him his snuff as
he goes by, and now something else. And here is this son of trouble, Neil,

son of Duncan, has lost my four-penny piece that was to buy that snuff, and
James More must go wanting, and will think his daughter has forgotten
him.”
I took sixpence from my pocket, gave it to Neil, and bade him go about
his errand. Then to her, “That sixpence came with me by Balwhidder,” said
I.
“Ah!” she said, “you are a friend to the Gregara!”
“I would not like to deceive you, either,” said I. “I know very little of the
Gregara and less of James More and his doings, but since the while I have
been standing in this close, I seem to know something of yourself; and if
you will just say ‘a friend to Miss Catriona’ I will see you are the less
cheated.”
“The one cannot be without the other,” said she.
“I will even try,” said I.
“And what will you be thinking of myself!” she cried, “to be holding my
hand to the first stranger!”
“I am thinking nothing but that you are a good daughter,” said I.
“I must not be without repaying it,” she said; “where is it you stop!”
“To tell the truth, I am stopping nowhere yet,” said I, “being not full three
hours in the city; but if you will give me your direction, I will be so bold as
come seeking my sixpence for myself.”
“Will I can trust you for that?” she asked.
“You need have little fear,” said I.
“James More could not bear it else,” said she. “I stop beyond the village
of Dean, on the north side of the water, with Mrs. Drummond-Ogilvy of
Allardyce, who is my near friend and will be glad to thank you.”
“You are to see me, then, so soon as what I have to do permits,” said I;
and, the remembrance of Alan rolling in again upon my mind, I made haste
to say farewell.
I could not but think, even as I did so, that we had made extraordinary
free upon short acquaintance, and that a really wise young lady would have
shown herself more backward. I think it was the bank-porter that put me
from this ungallant train of thought.

“I thoucht ye had been a lad of some kind o’ sense,” he began, shooting
out his lips. “Ye’re no likely to gang far this gate. A fule and his siller’s
shune parted. Eh, but ye’re a green callant!” he cried, “an’ a veecious, tae!
Cleikin’ up wi’ baubeejoes!”
“If you dare to speak of the young lady. . . ” I began.
“Leddy!” he cried. “Haud us and safe us, whatten leddy? Ca’ thon a
leddy? The toun’s fu’ o’ them. Leddies! Man, its weel seen ye’re no very
acquant in Embro!”
A clap of anger took me.
“Here,” said I, “lead me where I told you, and keep your foul mouth
shut!”
He did not wholly obey me, for, though he no more addressed me
directly, he very impudent sang at me as he went in a manner of innuendo,
and with an exceedingly ill voice and ear—
“As Mally Lee cam doun the street, her capuchin did flee,
She cuist a look ahint her to see her negligee.
And we’re a’ gaun east and wast, we’re a’ gann ajee,
We’re a’ gaun east and wast courtin’ Mally Lee.”

CHAPTER II.
THE HIGHLAND WRITER

Mr. Charles Stewart the Writer dwelt at the top of the longest stair ever
mason set a hand to; fifteen flights of it, no less; and when I had come to his
door, and a clerk had opened it, and told me his master was within, I had
scarce breath enough to send my porter packing.
“Awa’ east and west wi’ ye!” said I, took the money bag out of his hands,
and followed the clerk in.
The outer room was an office with the clerk’s chair at a table spread with
law papers. In the inner chamber, which opened from it, a little brisk man
sat poring on a deed, from which he scarce raised his eyes on my entrance;
indeed, he still kept his finger in the place, as though prepared to show me
out and fall again to his studies. This pleased me little enough; and what
pleased me less, I thought the clerk was in a good posture to overhear what
should pass between us.
I asked if he was Mr. Charles Stewart the Writer.
“The same,” says he; “and, if the question is equally fair, who may you
be yourself?”
“You never heard tell of my name nor of me either,” said I, “but I bring
you a token from a friend that you know well. That you know well,” I
repeated, lowering my voice, “but maybe are not just so keen to hear from
at this present being. And the bits of business that I have to propone to you
are rather in the nature of being confidential. In short, I would like to think
we were quite private.”
He rose without more words, casting down his paper like a man ill-
pleased, sent forth his clerk of an errand, and shut to the house-door behind
him.

“Now, sir,” said he, returning, “speak out your mind and fear nothing;
though before you begin,” he cries out, “I tell you mine misgives me! I tell
you beforehand, ye’re either a Stewart or a Stewart sent ye. A good name it
is, and one it would ill-become my father’s son to lightly. But I begin to
grue at the sound of it.”
“My name is called Balfour,” said I, “David Balfour of Shaws. As for
him that sent me, I will let his token speak.” And I showed the silver button.
“Put it in your pocket, sir!” cries he. “Ye need name no names. The
deevil’s buckie, I ken the button of him! And de’il hae’t! Where is he now!”
I told him I knew not where Alan was, but he had some sure place (or
thought he had) about the north side, where he was to lie until a ship was
found for him; and how and where he had appointed to be spoken with.
“It’s been always my opinion that I would hang in a tow for this family of
mine,” he cried, “and, dod! I believe the day’s come now! Get a ship for
him, quot’ he! And who’s to pay for it? The man’s daft!”
“That is my part of the affair, Mr. Stewart,” said I. “Here is a bag of good
money, and if more be wanted, more is to be had where it came from.”
“I needn’t ask your politics,” said he.
“Ye need not,” said I, smiling, “for I’m as big a Whig as grows.”
“Stop a bit, stop a bit,” says Mr. Stewart. “What’s all this? A Whig? Then
why are you here with Alan’s button? and what kind of a black-foot traffic
is this that I find ye out in, Mr. Whig? Here is a forfeited rebel and an
accused murderer, with two hundred pounds on his life, and ye ask me to
meddle in his business, and then tell me ye’re a Whig! I have no mind of
any such Whigs before, though I’ve kent plenty of them.”
“He’s a forfeited rebel, the more’s the pity,” said I, “for the man’s my
friend. I can only wish he had been better guided. And an accused murderer,
that he is too, for his misfortune; but wrongfully accused.”
“I hear you say so,” said Stewart.
“More than you are to hear me say so, before long,” said I. “Alan Breck
is innocent, and so is James.”
“Oh!” says he, “the two cases hang together. If Alan is out, James can
never be in.”

Hereupon I told him briefly of my acquaintance with Alan, of the
accident that brought me present at the Appin murder, and the various
passages of our escape among the heather, and my recovery of my estate.
“So, sir, you have now the whole train of these events,” I went on, “and can
see for yourself how I come to be so much mingled up with the affairs of
your family and friends, which (for all of our sakes) I wish had been plainer
and less bloody. You can see for yourself, too, that I have certain pieces of
business depending, which were scarcely fit to lay before a lawyer chosen
at random. No more remains, but to ask if you will undertake my service?”
“I have no great mind to it; but coming as you do with Alan’s button, the
choice is scarcely left me,” said he. “What are your instructions?” he added,
and took up his pen.
“The first point is to smuggle Alan forth of this country,” said I, “but I
need not be repeating that.”
“I am little likely to forget it,” said Stewart.
“The next thing is the bit money I am owing to Cluny,” I went on. “It
would be ill for me to find a conveyance, but that should be no stick to you.
It was two pounds five shillings and three-halfpence farthing sterling.”
He noted it.
“Then,” said I, “there’s a Mr. Henderland, a licensed preacher and
missionary in Ardgour, that I would like well to get some snuff into the
hands of; and, as I daresay you keep touch with your friends in Appin (so
near by), it’s a job you could doubtless overtake with the other.”
“How much snuff are we to say?” he asked.
“I was thinking of two pounds,” said I.
“Two,” said he.
“Then there’s the lass Alison Hastie, in Lime Kilns,” said I. “Her that
helped Alan and me across the Forth. I was thinking if I could get her a
good Sunday gown, such as she could wear with decency in her degree, it
would be an ease to my conscience; for the mere truth is, we owe her our
two lives.”
“I am glad so see you are thrifty, Mr. Balfour,” says he, making his notes.
“I would think shame to be otherwise the first day of my fortune,” said I.
“And now, if you will compute the outlay and your own proper charges, I

would be glad to know if I could get some spending-money back. It’s not
that I grudge the whole of it to get Alan safe; it’s not that I lack more; but
having drawn so much the one day, I think it would have a very ill
appearance if I was back again seeking, the next. Only be sure you have
enough,” I added, “for I am very undesirous to meet with you again.”
“Well, and I’m pleased to see you’re cautious, too,” said the Writer. “But
I think ye take a risk to lay so considerable a sum at my discretion.”
He said this with a plain sneer.
“I’ll have to run the hazard,” I replied. “O, and there’s another service I
would ask, and that’s to direct me to a lodging, for I have no roof to my
head. But it must be a lodging I may seem to have hit upon by accident, for
it would never do if the Lord Advocate were to get any jealousy of our
acquaintance.”
“Ye may set your weary spirit at rest,” said he. “I will never name your
name, sir; and it’s my belief the Advocate is still so much to be sympathised
with that he doesnae ken of your existence.”
I saw I had got to the wrong side of the man.
“There’s a braw day coming for him, then,” said I, “for he’ll have to learn
of it on the deaf side of his head no later than to-morrow, when I call on
him.”
“When ye call on him!” repeated Mr. Stewart. “Am I daft, or are you!
What takes ye near the Advocate!”
“O, just to give myself up,” said I.
“Mr. Balfour,” he cried, “are ye making a mock of me?”
“No, sir,” said I, “though I think you have allowed yourself some such
freedom with myself. But I give you to understand once and for all that I
am in no jesting spirit.”
“Nor yet me,” says Stewart. “And I give yon to understand (if that’s to be
the word) that I like the looks of your behaviour less and less. You come
here to me with all sorts of propositions, which will put me in a train of
very doubtful acts and bring me among very undesirable persons this many
a day to come. And then you tell me you’re going straight out of my office
to make your peace with the Advocate! Alan’s button here or Alan’s button
there, the four quarters of Alan wouldnae bribe me further in.”

“I would take it with a little more temper,” said I, “and perhaps we can
avoid what you object to. I can see no way for it but to give myself up, but
perhaps you can see another; and if you could, I could never deny but what
I would be rather relieved. For I think my traffic with his lordship is little
likely to agree with my health. There’s just the one thing clear, that I have to
give my evidence; for I hope it’ll save Alan’s character (what’s left of it),
and James’s neck, which is the more immediate.”
He was silent for a breathing-space, and then, “My man,” said he, “you’ll
never be allowed to give such evidence.”
“We’ll have to see about that,” said I; “I’m stiff-necked when I like.”
“Ye muckle ass!” cried Stewart, “it’s James they want; James has got to
hang—Alan, too, if they could catch him—but James whatever! Go near the
Advocate with any such business, and you’ll see! he’ll find a way to
muzzle, ye.”
“I think better of the Advocate than that,” said I.
“The Advocate be dammed!” cries he. “It’s the Campbells, man! You’ll
have the whole clanjamfry of them on your back; and so will the Advocate
too, poor body! It’s extraordinar ye cannot see where ye stand! If there’s no
fair way to stop your gab, there’s a foul one gaping. They can put ye in the
dock, do ye no see that?” he cried, and stabbed me with one finger in the
leg.
“Ay,” said I, “I was told that same no further back than this morning by
another lawyer.”
“And who was he?” asked Stewart, “He spoke sense at least.”
I told I must be excused from naming him, for he was a decent stout old
Whig, and had little mind to be mixed up in such affairs.
“I think all the world seems to be mixed up in it!” cries Stewart. “But
what said you?”
“I told him what had passed between Rankeillor and myself before the
house of Shaws.
“Well, and so ye will hang!” said he. “Ye’ll hang beside James Stewart.
There’s your fortune told.”
“I hope better of it yet than that,” said I; “but I could never deny there
was a risk.”

“Risk!” says he, and then sat silent again. “I ought to thank you for your
staunchness to my friends, to whom you show a very good spirit,” he says,
“if you have the strength to stand by it. But I warn you that you’re wading
deep. I wouldn’t put myself in your place (me that’s a Stewart born!) for all
the Stewarts that ever there were since Noah. Risk? ay, I take over-many;
but to be tried in court before a Campbell jury and a Campbell judge, and
that in a Campbell country and upon a Campbell quarrel—think what you
like of me, Balfour, it’s beyond me.”
“It’s a different way of thinking, I suppose,” said I; “I was brought up to
this one by my father before me.”
“Glory to his bones! he has left a decent son to his name,” says he. “Yet I
would not have you judge me over-sorely. My case is dooms hard. See, sir,
ye tell me ye’re a Whig: I wonder what I am. No Whig to be sure; I
couldnae be just that. But—laigh in your ear, man—I’m maybe no very
keen on the other side.”
“Is that a fact?” cried I. “It’s what I would think of a man of your
intelligence.”
“Hut! none of your whillywhas!” [4] cries he. “There’s intelligence upon
both sides. But for my private part I have no particular desire to harm King
George; and as for King James, God bless him! he does very well for me
across the water. I’m a lawyer, ye see: fond of my books and my bottle, a
good plea, a well-drawn deed, a crack in the Parliament House with other
lawyer bodies, and perhaps a turn at the golf on a Saturday at e’en. Where
do ye come in with your Hieland plaids and claymores?”
“Well,” said I, “it’s a fact ye have little of the wild Highlandman.”
“Little?” quoth he. “Nothing, man! And yet I’m Hieland born, and when
the clan pipes, who but me has to dance! The clan and the name, that goes
by all. It’s just what you said yourself; my father learned it to me, and a
bonny trade I have of it. Treason and traitors, and the smuggling of them
out and in; and the French recruiting, weary fall it! and the smuggling
through of the recruits; and their pleas—a sorrow of their pleas! Here have I
been moving one for young Ardsheil, my cousin; claimed the estate under
the marriage contract—a forfeited estate! I told them it was nonsense:
muckle they cared! And there was I cocking behind a yadvocate that liked
the business as little as myself, for it was fair ruin to the pair of us—a black
mark, disaffected, branded on our hurdies, like folk’s names upon their kye!

And what can I do? I’m a Stewart, ye see, and must fend for my clan and
family. Then no later by than yesterday there was one of our Stewart lads
carried to the Castle. What for? I ken fine: Act of 1736: recruiting for King
Lewie. And you’ll see, he’ll whistle me in to be his lawyer, and there’ll be
another black mark on my chara’ter! I tell you fair: if I but kent the heid of
a Hebrew word from the hurdies of it, be dammed but I would fling the
whole thing up and turn minister!”
“It’s rather a hard position,” said I.
“Dooms hard!” cries he. “And that’s what makes me think so much of ye
—you that’s no Stewart—to stick your head so deep in Stewart business.
And for what, I do not know: unless it was the sense of duty.”
“I hope it will be that,” said I.
“Well,” says he, “it’s a grand quality. But here is my clerk back; and, by
your leave, we’ll pick a bit of dinner, all the three of us. When that’s done,
I’ll give you the direction of a very decent man, that’ll be very fain to have
you for a lodger. And I’ll fill your pockets to ye, forbye, out of your ain bag.
For this business’ll not be near as dear as ye suppose—not even the ship
part of it.”
I made him a sign that his clerk was within hearing.
“Hoot, ye neednae mind for Robbie,” cries he. “A Stewart, too, puir
deevil! and has smuggled out more French recruits and trafficking Papists
than what he has hairs upon his face. Why, it’s Robin that manages that
branch of my affairs. Who will we have now, Rob, for across the water!”
“There’ll be Andie Scougal, in the Thristle,” replied Rob. “I saw
Hoseason the other day, but it seems he’s wanting the ship. Then there’ll be
Tam Stobo; but I’m none so sure of Tam. I’ve seen him colloguing with
some gey queer acquaintances; and if was anybody important, I would give
Tam the go-by.”
“The head’s worth two hundred pounds, Robin,” said Stewart.
“Gosh, that’ll no be Alan Breck!” cried the clerk.
“Just Alan,” said his master.
“Weary winds! that’s sayrious,” cried Robin. “I’ll try Andie, then;
Andie’ll be the best.”
“It seems it’s quite a big business,” I observed.

“Mr. Balfour, there’s no end to it,” said Stewart.
“There was a name your clerk mentioned,” I went on: “Hoseason. That
must be my man, I think: Hoseason, of the brig Covenant. Would you set
your trust on him?”
“He didnae behave very well to you and Alan,” said Mr. Stewart; “but my
mind of the man in general is rather otherwise. If he had taken Alan on
board his ship on an agreement, it’s my notion he would have proved a just
dealer. How say ye, Rob?”
“No more honest skipper in the trade than Eli,” said the clerk. “I would
lippen to [5] Eli’s word—ay, if it was the Chevalier, or Appin himsel’,” he
added.
“And it was him that brought the doctor, wasnae’t?” asked the master.
“He was the very man,” said the clerk.
“And I think he took the doctor back?” says Stewart.
“Ay, with his sporran full!” cried Robin. “And Eli kent of that!” [6]
“Well, it seems it’s hard to ken folk rightly,” said I.
“That was just what I forgot when ye came in, Mr. Balfour!” says the
Writer.

CHAPTER III.
I GO TO PILRIG

The next morning, I was no sooner awake in my new lodging than I was
up and into my new clothes; and no sooner the breakfast swallowed, than I
was forth on my adventurers. Alan, I could hope, was fended for; James
was like to be a more difficult affair, and I could not but think that
enterprise might cost me dear, even as everybody said to whom I had
opened my opinion. It seemed I was come to the top of the mountain only
to cast myself down; that I had clambered up, through so many and hard
trials, to be rich, to be recognised, to wear city clothes and a sword to my
side, all to commit mere suicide at the last end of it, and the worst kind of
suicide, besides, which is to get hanged at the King’s charges.
What was I doing it for? I asked, as I went down the high Street and out
north by Leith Wynd. First I said it was to save James Stewart; and no doubt
the memory of his distress, and his wife’s cries, and a word or so I had let
drop on that occasion worked upon me strongly. At the same time I
reflected that it was (or ought to be) the most indifferent matter to my
father’s son, whether James died in his bed or from a scaffold. He was
Alan’s cousin, to be sure; but so far as regarded Alan, the best thing would
be to lie low, and let the King, and his Grace of Argyll, and the corbie
crows, pick the bones of his kinsman their own way. Nor could I forget that,
while we were all in the pot together, James had shown no such particular
anxiety whether for Alan or me.
Next it came upon me I was acting for the sake of justice: and I thought
that a fine word, and reasoned it out that (since we dwelt in polities, at some
discomfort to each one of us) the main thing of all must still be justice, and
the death of any innocent man a wound upon the whole community. Next,
again, it was the Accuser of the Brethren that gave me a turn of his
argument; bade me think shame for pretending myself concerned in these

high matters, and told me I was but a prating vain child, who had spoken
big words to Rankeillor and to Stewart, and held myself bound upon my
vanity to make good that boastfulness. Nay, and he hit me with the other
end of the stick; for he accused me of a kind of artful cowardice, going
about at the expense of a little risk to purchase greater safety. No doubt,
until I had declared and cleared myself, I might any day encounter Mungo
Campbell or the sheriff’s officer, and be recognised, and dragged into the
Appin murder by the heels; and, no doubt, in case I could manage my
declaration with success, I should breathe more free for ever after. But
when I looked this argument full in the face I could see nothing to be
ashamed of. As for the rest, “Here are the two roads,” I thought, “and both
go to the same place. It’s unjust that James should hang if I can save him;
and it would be ridiculous in me to have talked so much and then do
nothing. It’s lucky for James of the Glens that I have boasted beforehand;
and none so unlucky for myself, because now I’m committed to do right. I
have the name of a gentleman and the means of one; it would be a poor
duty that I was wanting in the essence.” And then I thought this was a
Pagan spirit, and said a prayer in to myself, asking for what courage I might
lack, and that I might go straight to my duty like a soldier to battle, and
come off again scatheless, as so many do.
This train of reasoning brought me to a more resolved complexion;
though it was far from closing up my sense of the dangers that surrounded
me, nor of how very apt I was (if I went on) to stumble on the ladder of the
gallows. It was a plain, fair morning, but the wind in the east. The little chill
of it sang in my blood, and gave me a feeling of the autumn, and the dead
leaves, and dead folks’ bodies in their graves. It seemed the devil was in it,
if I was to die in that tide of my fortunes and for other folks’ affairs. On the
top of the Calton Hill, though it was not the customary time of year for that
diversion, some children were crying and running with their kites. These
toys appeared very plain against the sky; I remarked a great one soar on the
wind to a high altitude and then plump among the whins; and I thought to
myself at sight of it, “There goes Davie.”
My way lay over Mouter’s Hill, and through an end of a clachan on the
braeside among fields. There was a whirr of looms in it went from house to
house; bees bummed in the gardens; the neighbours that I saw at the
doorsteps talked in a strange tongue; and I found out later that this was
Picardy, a village where the French weavers wrought for the Linen

Company. Here I got a fresh direction for Pilrig, my destination; and a little
beyond, on the wayside, came by a gibbet and two men hanged in chains.
They were dipped in tar, as the manner is; the wind span them, the chains
clattered, and the birds hung about the uncanny jumping-jacks and cried.
The sight coming on me suddenly, like an illustration of my fears, I could
scarce be done with examining it and drinking in discomfort. And, as I thus
turned and turned about the gibbet, what should I strike on, but a weird old
wife, that sat behind a leg of it, and nodded, and talked aloud to herself with
becks and courtesies.
“Who are these two, mother?” I asked, and pointed to the corpses.
“A blessing on your precious face!” she cried. “Twa joes [7] o’mine: just
two o’ my old joes, my hinny dear.”
“What did they suffer for?” I asked.
“Ou, just for the guid cause,” said she. “Aften I spaed to them the way
that it would end. Twa shillin’ Scots: no pickle mair; and there are twa
bonny callants hingin’ for ’t! They took it frae a wean [8] belanged to
Brouchton.”
“Ay!” said I to myself, and not to the daft limmer, “and did they come to
such a figure for so poor a business? This is to lose all indeed.”
“Gie’s your loof, [9] hinny,” says she, “and let me spae your weird to ye.”
“No, mother,” said I, “I see far enough the way I am. It’s an unco thing to
see too far in front.”
“I read it in your bree,” she said. “There’s a bonnie lassie that has bricht
een, and there’s a wee man in a braw coat, and a big man in a pouthered
wig, and there’s the shadow of the wuddy, [10] joe, that lies braid across your
path. Gie’s your loof, hinny, and let Auld Merren spae it to ye bonny.”
The two chance shots that seemed to point at Alan and the daughter of
James More struck me hard; and I fled from the eldritch creature, casting
her a baubee, which she continued to sit and play with under the moving
shadows of the hanged.
My way down the causeway of Leith Walk would have been more
pleasant to me but for this encounter. The old rampart ran among fields, the
like of them I had never seen for artfulness of agriculture; I was pleased,
besides, to be so far in the still countryside; but the shackles of the gibbet
clattered in my head; and the mope and mows of the old witch, and the

thought of the dead men, hag-rode my spirits. To hang on a gallows, that
seemed a hard case; and whether a man came to hang there for two shillings
Scots, or (as Mr. Stewart had it) from the sense of duty, once he was tarred
and shackled and hung up, the difference seemed small. There might David
Balfour hang, and other lads pass on their errands and think light of him;
and old daft limmers sit at a leg-foot and spae their fortunes; and the clean
genty maids go by, and look to the other aide, and hold a nose. I saw them
plain, and they had grey eyes, and their screens upon their heads were of the
Drummed colours.
I was thus in the poorest of spirits, though still pretty resolved, when I
came in view of Pilrig, a pleasant gabled house set by the walkside among
some brave young woods. The laird’s horse was standing saddled at the
door as I came up, but himself was in the study, where he received me in
the midst of learned works and musical instruments, for he was not only a
deep philosopher but much of a musician. He greeted me at first pretty well,
and when he had read Rankeillor’s letter, placed himself obligingly at my
disposal.
“And what is it, cousin David!” said he—“since it appears that we are
cousins—what is this that I can do for you! A word to Prestongrange!
Doubtless that is easily given. But what should be the word?”
“Mr. Balfour,” said I, “if I were to tell you my whole story the way it fell
out, it’s my opinion (and it was Rankeillor’s before me) that you would be
very little made up with it.”
“I am sorry to hear this of you, kinsman,” says he.
“I must not take that at your hands, Mr. Balfour,” said I; “I have nothing
to my charge to make me sorry, or you for me, but just the common
infirmities of mankind. ‘The guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original
righteousness, and the corruption of my whole nature,’ so much I must
answer for, and I hope I have been taught where to look for help,” I said; for
I judged from the look of the man he would think the better of me if I knew
my questions. [11] “But in the way of worldly honour I have no great stumble
to reproach myself with; and my difficulties have befallen me very much
against my will and (by all that I can see) without my fault. My trouble is to
have become dipped in a political complication, which it is judged you
would be blythe to avoid a knowledge of.”

“Why, very well, Mr. David,” he replied, “I am pleased to see you are all
that Rankeillor represented. And for what you say of political
complications, you do me no more than justice. It is my study to be beyond
suspicion, and indeed outside the field of it. The question is,” says he, “how,
if I am to know nothing of the matter, I can very well assist you?”
“Why sir,” said I, “I propose you should write to his lordship, that I am a
young man of reasonable good family and of good means: both of which I
believe to be the case.”
“I have Rankeillor’s word for it,” said Mr. Balfour, “and I count that a
warran-dice against all deadly.”
“To which you might add (if you will take my word for so much) that I
am a good churchman, loyal to King George, and so brought up,” I went on.
“None of which will do you any harm,” said Mr. Balfour.
“Then you might go on to say that I sought his lordship on a matter of
great moment, connected with His Majesty’s service and the administration
of justice,” I suggested.
“As I am not to hear the matter,” says the laird, “I will not take upon
myself to qualify its weight. ‘Great moment’ therefore falls, and ‘moment’
along with it. For the rest I might express myself much as you propose.”
“And then, sir,” said I, and rubbed my neck a little with my thumb, “then
I would be very desirous if you could slip in a word that might perhaps tell
for my protection.”
“Protection?” says he, “for your protection! Here is a phrase that
somewhat dampens me. If the matter be so dangerous, I own I would be a
little loath to move in it blindfold.”
“I believe I could indicate in two words where the thing sticks,” said I.
“Perhaps that would be the best,” said he.
“Well, it’s the Appin murder,” said I.
He held up both his hands. “Sirs! sirs!” cried he.
I thought by the expression of his face and voice that I had lost my
helper.
“Let me explain. . .” I began.
“I thank you kindly, I will hear no more of it,” says he. “I decline in toto
to hear more of it. For your name’s sake and Rankeillor’s, and perhaps a

little for your own, I will do what I can to help you; but I will hear no more
upon the facts. And it is my first clear duty to warn you. These are deep
waters, Mr. David, and you are a young man. Be cautious and think twice.”
“It is to be supposed I will have thought oftener than that, Mr. Balfour,”
said I, “and I will direct your attention again to Rankeillor’s letter, where (I
hope and believe) he has registered his approval of that which I design.”
“Well, well,” said he; and then again, “Well, well! I will do what I can for
you.” There with he took a pen and paper, sat a while in thought, and began
to write with much consideration. “I understand that Rankeillor approved of
what you have in mind?” he asked presently.
“After some discussion, sir, he bade me to go forward in God’s name,”
said I.
“That is the name to go in,” said Mr. Balfour, and resumed his writing.
Presently, he signed, re-read what he had written, and addressed me again.
“Now here, Mr. David,” said he, “is a letter of introduction, which I will
seal without closing, and give into your hands open, as the form requires.
But, since I am acting in the dark, I will just read it to you, so that you may
see if it will secure your end—

“Pilrig, August 26th, 1751.

“My Lord,—This is to bring to your notice my namesake
and cousin, David Balfour Esquire of Shaws, a young
gentleman of unblemished descent and good estate. He has
enjoyed, besides, the more valuable advantages of a godly
training, and his political principles are all that your lordship
can desire. I am not in Mr. Balfour’s confidence, but I
understand him to have a matter to declare, touching His
Majesty’s service and the administration of justice; purposes
for which your Lordship’s zeal is known. I should add that
the young gentleman’s intention is known to and approved
by some of his friends, who will watch with hopeful anxiety
the event of his success or failure.

“Whereupon,” continued Mr. Balfour, “I have subscribed myself with the
usual compliments. You observe I have said ‘some of your friends’; I hope
you can justify my plural?”

“Perfectly, sir; my purpose is known and approved by more than one,”
said I. “And your letter, which I take a pleasure to thank you for, is all I
could have hoped.”
“It was all I could squeeze out,” said he; “and from what I know of the
matter you design to meddle in, I can only pray God that it may prove
sufficient.”

CHAPTER IV.
LORD ADVOCATE PRESTONGRANGE

My kinsman kept me to a meal, “for the honour of the roof,” he said; and
I believe I made the better speed on my return. I had no thought but to be
done with the next stage, and have myself fully committed; to a person
circumstanced as I was, the appearance of closing a door on hesitation and
temptation was itself extremely tempting; and I was the more disappointed,
when I came to Prestongrange’s house, to be informed he was abroad. I
believe it was true at the moment, and for some hours after; and then I have
no doubt the Advocate came home again, and enjoyed himself in a
neighbouring chamber among friends, while perhaps the very fact of my
arrival was forgotten. I would have gone away a dozen times, only for this
strong drawing to have done with my declaration out of hand and be able to
lay me down to sleep with a free conscience. At first I read, for the little
cabinet where I was left contained a variety of books. But I fear I read with
little profit; and the weather falling cloudy, the dusk coming up earlier than
usual, and my cabinet being lighted with but a loophole of a window, I was
at last obliged to desist from this diversion (such as it was), and pass the
rest of my time of waiting in a very burthensome vacuity. The sound of
people talking in a near chamber, the pleasant note of a harpsichord, and
once the voice of a lady singing, bore me a kind of company.
I do not know the hour, but the darkness was long come, when the door
of the cabinet opened, and I was aware, by the light behind him, of a tall
figure of a man upon the threshold. I rose at once.
“Is anybody there?” he asked. “Who in that?”
“I am bearer of a letter from the laird of Pilrig to the Lord Advocate,”
said I.
“Have you been here long?” he asked.

“I would not like to hazard an estimate of how many hours,” said I.
“It is the first I hear of it,” he replied, with a chuckle. “The lads must
have forgotten you. But you are in the bit at last, for I am Prestongrange.”
So saying, he passed before me into the next room, whither (upon his
sign) I followed him, and where he lit a candle and took his place before a
business-table. It was a long room, of a good proportion, wholly lined with
books. That small spark of light in a corner struck out the man’s handsome
person and strong face. He was flushed, his eye watered and sparkled, and
before he sat down I observed him to sway back and forth. No doubt, he
had been supping liberally; but his mind and tongue were under full control.
“Well, sir, sit ye down,” said he, “and let us see Pilrig’s letter.”
He glanced it through in the beginning carelessly, looking up and bowing
when he came to my name; but at the last words I thought I observed his
attention to redouble, and I made sure he read them twice. All this while
you are to suppose my heart was beating, for I had now crossed my
Rubicon and was come fairly on the field of battle.
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Balfour,” he said, when he
had done. “Let me offer you a glass of claret.”
“Under your favour, my lord, I think it would scarce be fair on me,” said
I. “I have come here, as the letter will have mentioned, on a business of
some gravity to myself; and, as I am little used with wine, I might be the
sooner affected.”
“You shall be the judge,” said he. “But if you will permit, I believe I will
even have the bottle in myself.”
He touched a bell, and a footman came, as at a signal, bringing wine and
glasses.
“You are sure you will not join me?” asked the Advocate. “Well, here is
to our better acquaintance! In what way can I serve you?”
“I should, perhaps, begin by telling you, my lord, that I am here at your
own pressing invitation,” said I.
“You have the advantage of me somewhere,” said he, “for I profess I
think I never heard of you before this evening.”
“Right, my lord; the name is, indeed, new to you,” said I. “And yet you
have been for some time extremely wishful to make my acquaintance, and

have declared the same in public.”
“I wish you would afford me a clue,” says he. “I am no Daniel.”
“It will perhaps serve for such,” said I, “that if I was in a jesting humour
—which is far from the case—I believe I might lay a claim on your lordship
for two hundred pounds.”
“In what sense?” he inquired.
“In the sense of rewards offered for my person,” said I.
He thrust away his glass once and for all, and sat straight up in the chair
where he had been previously lolling. “What am I to understand?” said he.
“A tall strong lad of about eighteen,” I quoted, “speaks like a Lowlander
and has no beard.”
“I recognise those words,” said he, “which, if you have come here with
any ill-judged intention of amusing yourself, are like to prove extremely
prejudicial to your safety.”
“My purpose in this,” I replied, “is just entirely as serious as life and
death, and you have understood me perfectly. I am the boy who was
speaking with Glenure when he was shot.”
“I can only suppose (seeing you here) that you claim to be innocent,”
said he.
“The inference is clear,” I said. “I am a very loyal subject to King
George, but if I had anything to reproach myself with, I would have had
more discretion than to walk into your den.”
“I am glad of that,” said he. “This horrid crime, Mr. Balfour, is of a dye
which cannot permit any clemency. Blood has been barbarously shed. It has
been shed in direct opposition to his Majesty and our whole frame of laws,
by those who are their known and public oppugnants. I take a very high
sense of this. I will not deny that I consider the crime as directly personal to
his Majesty.”
“And unfortunately, my lord,” I added, a little drily, “directly personal to
another great personage who may be nameless.”
“If you mean anything by those words, I must tell you I consider them
unfit for a good subject; and were they spoke publicly I should make it my
business to take note of them,” said he. “You do not appear to me to
recognise the gravity of your situation, or you would be more careful not to

pejorate the same by words which glance upon the purity of justice. Justice,
in this country, and in my poor hands, is no respecter of persons.”
“You give me too great a share in my own speech, my lord,” said I. “I did
but repeat the common talk of the country, which I have heard everywhere,
and from men of all opinions as I came along.”
“When you are come to more discretion you will understand such talk in
not to be listened to, how much less repeated,” says the Advocate. “But I
acquit you of an ill intention. That nobleman, whom we all honour, and who
has indeed been wounded in a near place by the late barbarity, sits too high
to be reached by these aspersions. The Duke of Argyle—you see that I deal
plainly with you—takes it to heart as I do, and as we are both bound to do
by our judicial functions and the service of his Majesty; and I could wish
that all hands, in this ill age, were equally clean of family rancour. But from
the accident that this is a Campbell who has fallen martyr to his duty—as
who else but the Campbells have ever put themselves foremost on that
path?—I may say it, who am no Campbell—and that the chief of that great
house happens (for all our advantages) to be the present head of the College
of Justice, small minds and disaffected tongues are set agog in every
changehouse in the country; and I find a young gentleman like Mr. Balfour
so ill-advised as to make himself their echo.” So much he spoke with a very
oratorical delivery, as if in court, and then declined again upon the manner
of a gentleman. “All this apart,” said he. “It now remains that I should learn
what I am to do with you.”
“I had thought it was rather I that should learn the same from your
lordship,” said I.
“Ay, true,” says the Advocate. “But, you see, you come to me well
recommended. There is a good honest Whig name to this letter,” says he,
picking it up a moment from the table. “And—extra-judicially, Mr. Balfour
—there is always the possibility of some arrangement, I tell you, and I tell
you beforehand that you may be the more upon your guard, your fate lies
with me singly. In such a matter (be it said with reverence) I am more
powerful than the King’s Majesty; and should you please me—and of
course satisfy my conscience—in what remains to be held of our interview,
I tell you it may remain between ourselves.”
“Meaning how?” I asked.

“Why, I mean it thus, Mr. Balfour,” said he, “that if you give satisfaction,
no soul need know so much as that you visited my house; and you may
observe that I do not even call my clerk.”
I saw what way he was driving. “I suppose it is needless anyone should
be informed upon my visit,” said I, “though the precise nature of my gains
by that I cannot see. I am not at all ashamed of coming here.”
“And have no cause to be,” says he, encouragingly. “Nor yet (if you are
careful) to fear the consequences.”
“My lord,” said I, “speaking under your correction, I am not very easy to
be frightened.”
“And I am sure I do not seek to frighten you,” says he. “But to the
interrogation; and let me warn you to volunteer nothing beyond the
questions I shall ask you. It may consist very immediately with your safety.
I have a great discretion, it is true, but there are bounds to it.”
“I shall try to follow your lordship’s advice,” said I.
He spread a sheet of paper on the table and wrote a heading. “It appears
you were present, by the way, in the wood of Lettermore at the moment of
the fatal shot,” he began. “Was this by accident?”
“By accident,” said I.
“How came you in speech with Colin Campbell?” he asked.
“I was inquiring my way of him to Aucharn,” I replied.
I observed he did not write this answer down.
“H’m, true,” said he, “I had forgotten that. And do you know, Mr.
Balfour, I would dwell, if I were you, as little as might be on your relations
with these Stewarts. It might be found to complicate our business. I am not
yet inclined to regard these matters as essential.”
“I had thought, my lord, that all points of fact were equally material in
such a case,” said I.
“You forget we are now trying these Stewarts,” he replied, with great
significance. “If we should ever come to be trying you, it will be very
different; and I shall press these very questions that I am now willing to
glide upon. But to resume: I have it here in Mr. Mungo Campbell’s
precognition that you ran immediately up the brae. How came that?”

“Not immediately, my lord, and the cause was my seeing of the
murderer.”
“You saw him, then?”
“As plain as I see your lordship, though not so near hand.”
“You know him?”
“I should know him again.”
“In your pursuit you were not so fortunate, then, as to overtake him?”
“I was not.”
“Was he alone?”
“He was alone.”
“There was no one else in that neighbourhood?”
“Alan Breck Stewart was not far off, in a piece of a wood.”
The Advocate laid his pen down. “I think we are playing at cross
purposes,” said he, “which you will find to prove a very ill amusement for
yourself.”
“I content myself with following your lordship’s advice, and answering
what I am asked,” said I.
“Be so wise as to bethink yourself in time,” said he, “I use you with the
most anxious tenderness, which you scarce seem to appreciate, and which
(unless you be more careful) may prove to be in vain.”
“I do appreciate your tenderness, but conceive it to be mistaken,” I
replied, with something of a falter, for I saw we were come to grips at last.
“I am here to lay before you certain information, by which I shall convince
you Alan had no hand whatever in the killing of Glenure.”
The Advocate appeared for a moment at a stick, sitting with pursed lips,
and blinking his eyes upon me like an angry cat. “Mr. Balfour,” he said at
last, “I tell you pointedly you go an ill way for your own interests.”
“My lord,” I said, “I am as free of the charge of considering my own
interests in this matter as your lordship. As God judges me, I have but the
one design, and that is to see justice executed and the innocent go clear. If
in pursuit of that I come to fall under your lordship’s displeasure, I must
bear it as I may.”

At this he rose from his chair, lit a second candle, and for a while gazed
upon me steadily. I was surprised to see a great change of gravity fallen
upon his face, and I could have almost thought he was a little pale.
“You are either very simple, or extremely the reverse, and I see that I
must deal with you more confidentially,” says he. “This is a political case—
ah, yes, Mr. Balfour! whether we like it or no, the case is political—and I
tremble when I think what issues may depend from it. To a political case, I
need scarce tell a young man of your education, we approach with very
different thoughts from one which is criminal only. Salus populi suprema
lex is a maxim susceptible of great abuse, but it has that force which we
find elsewhere only in the laws of nature: I mean it has the force of
necessity. I will open this out to you, if you will allow me, at more length.
You would have me believe—”
“Under your pardon, my lord, I would have you to believe nothing but
that which I can prove,” said I.
“Tut! tut; young gentleman,” says he, “be not so pragmatical, and suffer a
man who might be your father (if it was nothing more) to employ his own
imperfect language, and express his own poor thoughts, even when they
have the misfortune not to coincide with Mr. Balfour’s. You would have me
to believe Breck innocent. I would think this of little account, the more so
as we cannot catch our man. But the matter of Breck’s innocence shoots
beyond itself. Once admitted, it would destroy the whole presumptions of
our case against another and a very different criminal; a man grown old in
treason, already twice in arms against his king and already twice forgiven; a
fomentor of discontent, and (whoever may have fired the shot) the
unmistakable original of the deed in question. I need not tell you that I
mean James Stewart.”
“And I can just say plainly that the innocence of Alan and of James is
what I am here to declare in private to your lordship, and what I am
prepared to establish at the trial by my testimony,” said I.
“To which I can only answer by an equal plainness, Mr. Balfour,” said he,
“that (in that case) your testimony will not be called by me, and I desire you
to withhold it altogether.”
“You are at the head of Justice in this country,” I cried, “and you propose
to me a crime!”

“I am a man nursing with both hands the interests of this country,” he
replied, “and I press on you a political necessity. Patriotism is not always
moral in the formal sense. You might be glad of it, I think: it is your own
protection; the facts are heavy against you; and if I am still trying to except
you from a very dangerous place, it is in part of course because I am not
insensible to your honesty in coming here; in part because of Pilrig’s letter;
but in part, and in chief part, because I regard in this matter my political
duty first and my judicial duty only second. For the same reason—I repeat
it to you in the same frank words—I do not want your testimony.”
“I desire not to be thought to make a repartee, when I express only the
plain sense of our position,” said I. “But if your lordship has no need of my
testimony, I believe the other side would be extremely blythe to get it.”
Prestongrange arose and began to pace to and fro in the room. “You are
not so young,” he said, “but what you must remember very clearly the year
’45 and the shock that went about the country. I read in Pilrig’s letter that
you are sound in Kirk and State. Who saved them in that fatal year? I do not
refer to His Royal Highness and his ramrods, which were extremely useful
in their day; but the country had been saved and the field won before ever
Cumberland came upon Drummossie. Who saved it? I repeat; who saved
the Protestant religion and the whole frame of our civil institutions? The
late Lord President Culloden, for one; he played a man’s part, and small
thanks he got for it—even as I, whom you see before you, straining every
nerve in the same service, look for no reward beyond the conscience of my
duties done. After the President, who else? You know the answer as well as
I do; ’tis partly a scandal, and you glanced at it yourself, and I reproved you
for it, when you first came in. It was the Duke and the great clan of
Campbell. Now here is a Campbell foully murdered, and that in the King’s
service. The Duke and I are Highlanders. But we are Highlanders civilised,
and it is not so with the great mass of our clans and families. They have still
savage virtues and defects. They are still barbarians, like these Stewarts;
only the Campbells were barbarians on the right side, and the Stewarts were
barbarians on the wrong. Now be you the judge. The Campbells expect
vengeance. If they do not get it—if this man James escape—there will be
trouble with the Campbells. That means disturbance in the Highlands,
which are uneasy and very far from being disarmed: the disarming is a
farce. . .”

“I can bear you out in that,” said I.
“Disturbance in the Highlands makes the hour of our old watchful
enemy,” pursued his lordship, holding out a finger as he paced; “and I give
you my word we may have a ’45 again with the Campbells on the other
side. To protect the life of this man Stewart—which is forfeit already on
half-a-dozen different counts if not on this—do you propose to plunge your
country in war, to jeopardise the faith of your fathers, and to expose the
lives and fortunes of how many thousand innocent persons? . . . These are
considerations that weigh with me, and that I hope will weigh no less with
yourself, Mr. Balfour, as a lover of your country, good government, and
religious truth.”
“You deal with me very frankly, and I thank you for it,” said I. “I will try
on my side to be no less honest. I believe your policy to be sound. I believe
these deep duties may lie upon your lordship; I believe you may have laid
them on your conscience when you took the oath of the high office which
you hold. But for me, who am just a plain man—or scarce a man yet—the
plain duties must suffice. I can think but of two things, of a poor soul in the
immediate and unjust danger of a shameful death, and of the cries and tears
of his wife that still tingle in my head. I cannot see beyond, my lord. It’s the
way that I am made. If the country has to fall, it has to fall. And I pray God,
if this be wilful blindness, that He may enlighten me before too late.”
He had heard me motionless, and stood so a while longer.
“This is an unexpected obstacle,” says he, aloud, but to himself.
“And how is your lordship to dispose of me?” I asked.
“If I wished,” said he, “you know that you might sleep in gaol?”
“My lord,” said I, “I have slept in worse places.”
“Well, my boy,” said he, “there is one thing appears very plainly from our
interview, that I may rely on your pledged word. Give me your honour that
you will be wholly secret, not only on what has passed to-night, but in the
matter of the Appin case, and I let you go free.”
“I will give it till to-morrow or any other near day that you may please to
set,” said I. “I would not be thought too wily; but if I gave the promise
without qualification your lordship would have attained his end.”
“I had no thought to entrap you,” said he.
“I am sure of that,” said I.

“Let me see,” he continued. “To-morrow is the Sabbath. Come to me on
Monday by eight in the morning, and give me your promise until then.”
“Freely given, my lord,” said I. “And with regard to what has fallen from
yourself, I will give it for an long as it shall please God to spare your days.”
“You will observe,” he said next, “that I have made no employment of
menaces.”
“It was like your lordship’s nobility,” said I. “Yet I am not altogether so
dull but what I can perceive the nature of those you have not uttered.”
“Well,” said he, “good-night to you. May you sleep well, for I think it is
more than I am like to do.”
With that he sighed, took up a candle, and gave me his conveyance as far
as the street door.

CHAPTER V.
IN THE ADVOCATE’S HOUSE

The next day, Sabbath, August 27th, I had the occasion I had long looked
forward to, to hear some of the famous Edinburgh preachers, all well known
to me already by the report of Mr Campbell. Alas! and I might just as well
have been at Essendean, and sitting under Mr. Campbell’s worthy self! the
turmoil of my thoughts, which dwelt continually on the interview with
Prestongrange, inhibiting me from all attention. I was indeed much less
impressed by the reasoning of the divines than by the spectacle of the
thronged congregation in the churches, like what I imagined of a theatre or
(in my then disposition) of an assize of trial; above all at the West Kirk,
with its three tiers of galleries, where I went in the vain hope that I might
see Miss Drummond.
On the Monday I betook me for the first time to a barber’s, and was very
well pleased with the result. Thence to the Advocate’s, where the red coats
of the soldiers showed again about his door, making a bright place in the
close. I looked about for the young lady and her gillies: there was never a
sign of them. But I was no sooner shown into the cabinet or antechamber
where I had spent so wearyful a time upon the Saturday, than I was aware
of the tall figure of James More in a corner. He seemed a prey to a painful
uneasiness, reaching forth his feet and hands, and his eyes speeding here
and there without rest about the walls of the small chamber, which recalled
to me with a sense of pity the man’s wretched situation. I suppose it was
partly this, and partly my strong continuing interest in his daughter, that
moved me to accost him.
“Give you a good-morning, sir,” said I.
“And a good-morning to you, sir,” said he.
“You bide tryst with Prestongrange?” I asked.

“I do, sir, and I pray your business with that gentleman be more agreeable
than mine,” was his reply.
“I hope at least that yours will be brief, for I suppose you pass before
me,” said I.
“All pass before me,” he said, with a shrug and a gesture upward of the
open hands. “It was not always so, sir, but times change. It was not so when
the sword was in the scale, young gentleman, and the virtues of the soldier
might sustain themselves.”
There came a kind of Highland snuffle out of the man that raised my
dander strangely.
“Well, Mr. Macgregor,” said I, “I understand the main thing for a soldier
is to be silent, and the first of his virtues never to complain.”
“You have my name, I perceive”—he bowed to me with his arms crossed
—“though it’s one I must not use myself. Well, there is a publicity—I have
shown my face and told my name too often in the beards of my enemies. I
must not wonder if both should be known to many that I know not.”
“That you know not in the least, sir,” said I, “nor yet anybody else; but
the name I am called, if you care to hear it, is Balfour.”
“It is a good name,” he replied, civilly; “there are many decent folk that
use it. And now that I call to mind, there was a young gentleman, your
namesake, that marched surgeon in the year ’45 with my battalion.”
“I believe that would be a brother to Balfour of Baith,” said I, for I was
ready for the surgeon now.
“The same, sir,” said James More. “And since I have been fellow-soldier
with your kinsman, you must suffer me to grasp your hand.”
He shook hands with me long and tenderly, beaming on me the while as
though he had found a brother.
“Ah!” says he, “these are changed days since your cousin and I heard the
balls whistle in our lugs.”
“I think he was a very far-away cousin,” said I, drily, “and I ought to tell
you that I never clapped eyes upon the man.”
“Well, well,” said he, “it makes no change. And you—I do not think you
were out yourself, sir—I have no clear mind of your face, which is one not
probable to be forgotten.”

“In the year you refer to, Mr. Macgregor, I was getting skelped in the
parish school,” said I.
“So young!” cries he. “Ah, then, you will never be able to think what this
meeting is to me. In the hour of my adversity, and here in the house of my
enemy, to meet in with the blood of an old brother-in-arms—it heartens me,
Mr. Balfour, like the skirling of the highland pipes! Sir, this is a sad look
back that many of us have to make: some with falling tears. I have lived in
my own country like a king; my sword, my mountains, and the faith of my
friends and kinsmen sufficed for me. Now I lie in a stinking dungeon; and
do you know, Mr. Balfour,” he went on, taking my arm and beginning to
lead me about, “do you know, sir, that I lack mere necessaries? The malice
of my foes has quite sequestered my resources. I lie, as you know, sir, on a
trumped-up charge, of which I am as innocent as yourself. They dare not
bring me to my trial, and in the meanwhile I am held naked in my prison. I
could have wished it was your cousin I had met, or his brother Baith
himself. Either would, I know, have been rejoiced to help me; while a
comparative stranger like yourself—”
I would be ashamed to set down all he poured out to me in this beggarly
vein, or the very short and grudging answers that I made to him. There were
times when I was tempted to stop his mouth with some small change; but
whether it was from shame or pride—whether it was for my own sake or
Catriona’s—whether it was because I thought him no fit father for his
daughter, or because I resented that grossness of immediate falsity that
clung about the man himself—the thing was clean beyond me. And I was
still being wheedled and preached to, and still being marched to and fro,
three steps and a turn, in that small chamber, and had already, by some very
short replies, highly incensed, although not finally discouraged, my beggar,
when Prestongrange appeared in the doorway and bade me eagerly into his
big chamber.
“I have a moment’s engagements,” said he; “and that you may not sit
empty-handed I am going to present you to my three braw daughters, of
whom perhaps you may have heard, for I think they are more famous than
papa. This way.”
He led me into another long room above, where a dry old lady sat at a
frame of embroidery, and the three handsomest young women (I suppose)
in Scotland stood together by a window.

“This is my new friend, Mr Balfour,” said he, presenting me by the arm,
“David, here is my sister, Miss Grant, who is so good as keep my house for
me, and will be very pleased if she can help you. And here,” says he,
turning to the three younger ladies, “here are my three braw dauchters. A
fair question to ye, Mr. Davie: which of the three is the best favoured? And
I wager he will never have the impudence to propound honest Alan
Ramsay’s answer!”
Hereupon all three, and the old Miss Grant as well, cried out against this
sally, which (as I was acquainted with the verses he referred to) brought
shame into my own check. It seemed to me a citation unpardonable in a
father, and I was amazed that these ladies could laugh even while they
reproved, or made believe to.
Under cover of this mirth, Prestongrange got forth of the chamber, and I
was left, like a fish upon dry land, in that very unsuitable society. I could
never deny, in looking back upon what followed, that I was eminently
stockish; and I must say the ladies were well drilled to have so long a
patience with me. The aunt indeed sat close at her embroidery, only looking
now and again and smiling; but the misses, and especially the eldest, who
was besides the most handsome, paid me a score of attentions which I was
very ill able to repay. It was all in vain to tell myself I was a young follow
of some worth as well as a good estate, and had no call to feel abashed
before these lasses, the eldest not so much older than myself, and no one of
them by any probability half as learned. Reasoning would not change the
fact; and there were times when the colour came into my face to think I was
shaved that day for the first time.
The talk going, with all their endeavours, very heavily, the eldest took
pity on my awkwardness, sat down to her instrument, of which she was a
passed mistress, and entertained me for a while with playing and singing,
both in the Scots and in the Italian manners; this put me more at my ease,
and being reminded of Alan’s air that he had taught me in the hole near
Carriden, I made so bold as to whistle a bar or two, and ask if she knew
that.
She shook her head. “I never heard a note of it,” said she. “Whistle it all
through. And now once again,” she added, after I had done so.
Then she picked it out upon the keyboard, and (to my surprise) instantly
enriched the same with well-sounding chords, and sang, as she played, with

a very droll expression and broad accent—
“Haenae I got just the lilt of it?
Isnae this the tune that ye whustled?”

“You see,” she says, “I can do the poetry too, only it won’t rhyme. And
then again:
“I am Miss Grant, sib to the Advocate:
You, I believe, are Dauvit Balfour.”

I told her how much astonished I was by her genius.
“And what do you call the name of it?” she asked.
“I do not know the real name,” said I. “I just call it Alan’s air.”
She looked at me directly in the face. “I shall call it David’s air,” said
she; “though if it’s the least like what your namesake of Israel played to
Saul I would never wonder that the king got little good by it, for it’s but
melancholy music. Your other name I do not like; so if you was ever
wishing to hear your tune again you are to ask for it by mine.”
This was said with a significance that gave my heart a jog. “Why that,
Miss Grant?” I asked.
“Why,” says she, “if ever you should come to get hanged, I will set your
last dying speech and confession to that tune and sing it.”
This put it beyond a doubt that she was partly informed of my story and
peril. How, or just how much, it was more difficult to guess. It was plain
she knew there was something of danger in the name of Alan, and thus
warned me to leave it out of reference; and plain she knew that I stood
under some criminal suspicion. I judged besides that the harshness of her
last speech (which besides she had followed up immediately with a very
noisy piece of music) was to put an end to the present conversation. I stood
beside her, affecting to listen and admire, but truly whirled away by my
own thoughts. I have always found this young lady to be a lover of the
mysterious; and certainly this first interview made a mystery that was
beyond my plummet. One thing I learned long after, the hours of the
Sunday had been well employed, the bank porter had been found and
examined, my visit to Charles Stewart was discovered, and the deduction
made that I was pretty deep with James and Alan, and most likely in a

continued correspondence with the last. Hence this broad hint that was
given me across the harpsichord.
In the midst of the piece of music, one of the younger misses, who was at
a window over the close, cried on her sisters to come quick, for there was
“Grey eyes again.” The whole family trooped there at once, and crowded
one another for a look. The window whither they ran was in an odd corner
of that room, gave above the entrance door, and flanked up the close.
“Come, Mr. Balfour,” they cried, “come and see. She is the most
beautiful creature! She hangs round the close-head these last days, always
with some wretched-like gillies, and yet seems quite a lady.”
I had no need to look; neither did I look twice, or long. I was afraid she
might have seen me there, looking down upon her from that chamber of
music, and she without, and her father in the same house, perhaps begging
for his life with tears, and myself come but newly from rejecting his
petitions. But even that glance set me in a better conceit of myself and
much less awe of the young ladies. They were beautiful, that was beyond
question, but Catriona was beautiful too, and had a kind of brightness in her
like a coal of fire. As much as the others cast me down, she lifted me up. I
remembered I had talked easily with her. If I could make no hand of it with
these fine maids, it was perhaps something their own fault. My
embarrassment began to be a little mingled and lightened with a sense of
fun; and when the aunt smiled at me from her embroidery, and the three
daughters unbent to me like a baby, all with “papa’s orders” written on their
faces, there were times when I could have found it in my heart to smile
myself.
Presently papa returned, the same kind, happy-like, pleasant-spoken man.
“Now, girls,” said he, “I must take Mr. Balfour away again; but I hope
you have been able to persuade him to return where I shall be always
gratified to find him.”
So they each made me a little farthing compliment, and I was led away.
If this visit to the family had been meant to soften my resistance, it was
the worst of failures. I was no such ass but what I understood how poor a
figure I had made, and that the girls would be yawning their jaws off as
soon as my stiff back was turned. I felt I had shown how little I had in me
of what was soft and graceful; and I longed for a chance to prove that I had
something of the other stuff, the stern and dangerous.

Well, I was to be served to my desire, for the scene to which he was
conducting me was of a different character.

CHAPTER VI.
UMQUILE THE MASTER OF LOVAT

There was a man waiting us in Prestongrange’s study, whom I distasted at
the first look, as we distaste a ferret or an earwig. He was bitter ugly, but
seemed very much of a gentleman; had still manners, but capable of sudden
leaps and violences; and a small voice, which could ring out shrill and
dangerous when he so desired.
The Advocate presented us in a familiar, friendly way.
“Here, Fraser,” said he, “here is Mr. Balfour whom we talked about. Mr.
David, this is Mr. Simon Fraser, whom we used to call by another title, but
that is an old song. Mr. Fraser has an errand to you.”
With that he stepped aside to his book-shelves, and made believe to
consult a quarto volume in the far end.
I was thus left (in a sense) alone with perhaps the last person in the world
I had expected. There was no doubt upon the terms of introduction; this
could be no other than the forfeited Master of Lovat and chief of the great
clan Fraser. I knew he had led his men in the Rebellion; I knew his father’s
head—my old lord’s, that grey fox of the mountains—to have fallen on the
block for that offence, the lands of the family to have been seized, and their
nobility attainted. I could not conceive what he should be doing in Grant’s
house; I could not conceive that he had been called to the bar, had eaten all
his principles, and was now currying favour with the Government even to
the extent of acting Advocate-Depute in the Appin murder.
“Well, Mr. Balfour,” said he, “what is all this I hear of ye?”
“It would not become me to prejudge,” said I, “but if the Advocate was
your authority he is fully possessed of my opinions.”
“I may tell you I am engaged in the Appin case,” he went on; “I am to
appear under Prestongrange; and from my study of the precognitions I can

assure you your opinions are erroneous. The guilt of Breck is manifest; and
your testimony, in which you admit you saw him on the hill at the very
moment, will certify his hanging.”
“It will be rather ill to hang him till you catch him,” I observed. “And for
other matters I very willingly leave you to your own impressions.”
“The Duke has been informed,” he went on. “I have just come from his
Grace, and he expressed himself before me with an honest freedom like the
great nobleman he is. He spoke of you by name, Mr. Balfour, and declared
his gratitude beforehand in case you would be led by those who understand
your own interests and those of the country so much better than yourself.
Gratitude is no empty expression in that mouth: experto-crede. I daresay
you know something of my name and clan, and the damnable example and
lamented end of my late father, to say nothing of my own errata. Well, I
have made my peace with that good Duke; he has intervened for me with
our friend Prestongrange; and here I am with my foot in the stirrup again
and some of the responsibility shared into my hand of prosecuting King
George’s enemies and avenging the late daring and barefaced insult to his
Majesty.”
“Doubtless a proud position for your father’s son,” says I.
He wagged his bald eyebrows at me. “You are pleased to make
experiments in the ironical, I think,” said he. “But I am here upon duty, I am
here to discharge my errand in good faith, it is in vain you think to divert
me. And let me tell you, for a young fellow of spirit and ambition like
yourself, a good shove in the beginning will do more than ten years’
drudgery. The shove is now at your command; choose what you will to be
advanced in, the Duke will watch upon you with the affectionate disposition
of a father.”
“I am thinking that I lack the docility of the son,” says I.
“And do you really suppose, sir, that the whole policy of this country is
to be suffered to trip up and tumble down for an ill-mannered colt of a
boy?” he cried. “This has been made a test case, all who would prosper in
the future must put a shoulder to the wheel. Look at me! Do you suppose it
is for my pleasure that I put myself in the highly invidious position of
persecuting a man that I have drawn the sword alongside of? The choice is
not left me.”

“But I think, sir, that you forfeited your choice when you mixed in with
that unnatural rebellion,” I remarked. “My case is happily otherwise; I am a
true man, and can look either the Duke or King George in the face without
concern.”
“Is it so the wind sits?” says he. “I protest you are fallen in the worst sort
of error. Prestongrange has been hitherto so civil (he tells me) as not to
combat your allegations; but you must not think they are not looked upon
with strong suspicion. You say you are innocent. My dear sir, the facts
declare you guilty.”
“I was waiting for you there,” said I.
“The evidence of Mungo Campbell; your flight after the completion of
the murder; your long course of secresy—my good young man!” said Mr.
Simon, “here is enough evidence to hang a bullock, let be a David Balfour!
I shall be upon that trial; my voice shall be raised; I shall then speak much
otherwise from what I do to-day, and far less to your gratification, little as
you like it now! Ah, you look white!” cries he. “I have found the key of
your impudent heart. You look pale, your eyes waver, Mr. David! You see
the grave and the gallows nearer by than you had fancied.”
“I own to a natural weakness,” said I. “I think no shame for that. Shame. .
.” I was going on.
“Shame waits for you on the gibbet,” he broke in.
“Where I shall but be even’d with my lord your father,” said I.
“Aha, but not so!” he cried, “and you do not yet see to the bottom of this
business. My father suffered in a great cause, and for dealing in the affairs
of kings. You are to hang for a dirty murder about boddle-pieces. Your
personal part in it, the treacherous one of holding the poor wretch in talk,
your accomplices a pack of ragged Highland gillies. And it can be shown,
my great Mr. Balfour—it can be shown, and it will be shown, trust me that
has a finger in the pie—it can be shown, and shall be shown, that you were
paid to do it. I think I can see the looks go round the court when I adduce
my evidence, and it shall appear that you, a young man of education, let
yourself be corrupted to this shocking act for a suit of cast clothes, a bottle
of Highland spirits, and three-and-fivepence-halfpenny in copper money.”
There was a touch of the truth in these words that knocked me like a
blow: clothes, a bottle of usquebaugh, and three-and-fivepence-halfpenny

in change made up, indeed, the most of what Alan and I had carried from
Auchurn; and I saw that some of James’s people had been blabbing in their
dungeons.
“You see I know more than you fancied,” he resumed in triumph. “And
as for giving it this turn, great Mr. David, you must not suppose the
Government of Great Britain and Ireland will ever be stuck for want of
evidence. We have men here in prison who will swear out their lives as we
direct them; as I direct, if you prefer the phrase. So now you are to guess
your part of glory if you choose to die. On the one hand, life, wine, women,
and a duke to be your handgun: on the other, a rope to your craig, and a
gibbet to clatter your bones on, and the lousiest, lowest story to hand down
to your namesakes in the future that was ever told about a hired assassin.
And see here!” he cried, with a formidable shrill voice, “see this paper that I
pull out of my pocket. Look at the name there: it is the name of the great
David, I believe, the ink scarce dry yet. Can you guess its nature? It is the
warrant for your arrest, which I have but to touch this bell beside me to
have executed on the spot. Once in the Tolbooth upon this paper, may God
help you, for the die is cast!”
I must never deny that I was greatly horrified by so much baseness, and
much unmanned by the immediacy and ugliness of my danger. Mr. Simon
had already gloried in the changes of my hue; I make no doubt I was now
no ruddier than my shirt; my speech besides trembled.
“There is a gentleman in this room,” cried I. “I appeal to him. I put my
life and credit in his hands.”
Prestongrange shut his book with a snap. “I told you so, Simon,” said he;
“you have played your hand for all it was worth, and you have lost. Mr.
David,” he went on, “I wish you to believe it was by no choice of mine you
were subjected to this proof. I wish you could understand how glad I am
you should come forth from it with so much credit. You may not quite see
how, but it is a little of a service to myself. For had our friend here been
more successful than I was last night, it might have appeared that he was a
better judge of men than I; it might have appeared we were altogether in the
wrong situations, Mr. Simon and myself. And I know our friend Simon to
be ambitious,” says he, striking lightly on Fraser’s shoulder. “As for this
stage play, it is over; my sentiments are very much engaged in your behalf;

and whatever issue we can find to this unfortunate affair, I shall make it my
business to see it is adopted with tenderness to you.”
These were very good words, and I could see besides that there was little
love, and perhaps a spice of genuine ill-will, between these two who were
opposed to me. For all that, it was unmistakable this interview had been
designed, perhaps rehearsed, with the consent of both; it was plain my
adversaries were in earnest to try me by all methods; and now (persuasion,
flattery, and menaces having been tried in vain) I could not but wonder
what would be their next expedient. My eyes besides were still troubled,
and my knees loose under me, with the distress of the late ordeal; and I
could do no more than stammer the same form of words: “I put my life and
credit in your hands.”
“Well, well,” said he, “we must try to save them. And in the meanwhile
let us return to gentler methods. You must not bear any grudge upon my
friend, Mr. Simon, who did but speak by his brief. And even if you did
conceive some malice against myself, who stood by and seemed rather to
hold a candle, I must not let that extend to innocent members of my family.
These are greatly engaged to see more of you, and I cannot consent to have
my young womenfolk disappointed. To-morrow they will be going to Hope
Park, where I think it very proper you should make your bow. Call for me
first, when I may possibly have something for your private hearing; then
you shall be turned abroad again under the conduct of my misses; and until
that time repeat to me your promise of secrecy.”
I had done better to have instantly refused, but in truth I was beside the
power of reasoning; did as I was bid; took my leave I know not how; and
when I was forth again in the close, and the door had shut behind me, was
glad to lean on a house wall and wipe my face. That horrid apparition (as I
may call it) of Mr. Simon rang in my memory, as a sudden noise rings after
it is over in the ear. Tales of the man’s father, of his falseness, of his
manifold perpetual treacheries, rose before me from all that I had heard and
read, and joined on with what I had just experienced of himself. Each time
it occurred to me, the ingenious foulness of that calumny he had proposed
to nail upon my character startled me afresh. The case of the man upon the
gibbet by Leith Walk appeared scarce distinguishable from that I was now
to consider as my own. To rob a child of so little more than nothing was
certainly a paltry enterprise for two grown men; but my own tale, as it was

to be represented in a court by Simon Fraser, appeared a fair second in
every possible point of view of sordidness and cowardice.
The voices of two of Prestongrange’s liveried men upon his doorstep
recalled me to myself.
“Ha’e,” said the one, “this billet as fast as ye can link to the captain.”
“Is that for the cateran back again?” asked the other.
“It would seem sae,” returned the first. “Him and Simon are seeking
him.”
“I think Prestongrange is gane gyte,” says the second. “He’ll have James
More in bed with him next.”
“Weel, it’s neither your affair nor mine’s,” said the first.
And they parted, the one upon his errand, and the other back into the
house.
This looked as ill as possible. I was scarce gone and they were sending
already for James More, to whom I thought Mr. Simon must have pointed
when he spoke of men in prison and ready to redeem their lives by all
extremities. My scalp curdled among my hair, and the next moment the
blood leaped in me to remember Catriona. Poor lass! her father stood to be
hanged for pretty indefensible misconduct. What was yet more unpalatable,
it now seemed he was prepared to save his four quarters by the worst of
shame and the most foul of cowardly murders—murder by the false oath;
and to complete our misfortunes, it seemed myself was picked out to be the
victim.
I began to walk swiftly and at random, conscious only of a desire for
movement, air, and the open country.

CHAPTER VII.
I MAKE A FAULT IN HONOUR

I came forth, I vow I know not how, on the Lang Dykes [12]. This is a rural
road which runs on the north side over against the city. Thence I could see
the whole black length of it tail down, from where the castle stands upon its
crags above the loch in a long line of spires and gable ends, and smoking
chimneys, and at the sight my heart swelled in my bosom. My youth, as I
have told, was already inured to dangers; but such danger as I had seen the
face of but that morning, in the midst of what they call the safety of a town,
shook me beyond experience. Peril of slavery, peril of shipwreck, peril of
sword and shot, I had stood all of these without discredit; but the peril there
was in the sharp voice and the fat face of Simon, properly Lord Lovat,
daunted me wholly.
I sat by the lake side in a place where the rushes went down into the
water, and there steeped my wrists and laved my temples. If I could have
done so with any remains of self-esteem, I would now have fled from my
foolhardy enterprise. But (call it courage or cowardice, and I believe it was
both the one and the other) I decided I was ventured out beyond the
possibility of a retreat. I had out-faced these men, I would continue to out-
face them; come what might, I would stand by the word spoken.
The sense of my own constancy somewhat uplifted my spirits, but not
much. At the best of it there was an icy place about my heart, and life
seemed a black business to be at all engaged in. For two souls in particular
my pity flowed. The one was myself, to be so friendless and lost among
dangers. The other was the girl, the daughter of James More. I had seen but
little of her; yet my view was taken and my judgment made. I thought her a
lass of a clean honour, like a man’s; I thought her one to die of a disgrace;
and now I believed her father to be at that moment bargaining his vile life
for mine. It made a bond in my thoughts betwixt the girl and me. I had seen

her before only as a wayside appearance, though one that pleased me
strangely; I saw her now in a sudden nearness of relation, as the daughter of
my blood foe, and I might say, my murderer. I reflected it was hard I should
be so plagued and persecuted all my days for other folks’ affairs, and have
no manner of pleasure myself. I got meals and a bed to sleep in when my
concerns would suffer it; beyond that my wealth was of no help to me. If I
was to hang, my days were like to be short; if I was not to hang but to
escape out of this trouble, they might yet seem long to me ere I was done
with them. Of a sudden her face appeared in my memory, the way I had first
seen it, with the parted lips; at that, weakness came in my bosom and
strength into my legs; and I set resolutely forward on the way to Dean. If I
was to hang to-morrow, and it was sure enough I might very likely sleep
that night in a dungeon, I determined I should hear and speak once more
with Catriona.
The exercise of walking and the thought of my destination braced me yet
more, so that I began to pluck up a kind of spirit. In the village of Dean,
where it sits in the bottom of a glen beside the river, I inquired my way of a
miller’s man, who sent me up the hill upon the farther side by a plain path,
and so to a decent-like small house in a garden of lawns and apple-trees.
My heart beat high as I stepped inside the garden hedge, but it fell low
indeed when I came face to face with a grim and fierce old lady, walking
there in a white mutch with a man’s hat strapped upon the top of it.
“What do ye come seeking here?” she asked.
I told her I was after Miss Drummond.
“And what may be your business with Miss Drummond?” says she.
I told her I had met her on Saturday last, had been so fortunate as to
render her a trifling service, and was come now on the young lady’s
invitation.
“O, so you’re Saxpence!” she cried, with a very sneering manner. “A
braw gift, a bonny gentleman. And hae ye ony ither name and designation,
or were ye bapteesed Saxpence?” she asked.
I told my name.
“Preserve me!” she cried. “Has Ebenezer gotten a son?”
“No, ma’am,” said I. “I am a son of Alexander’s. It’s I that am the Laird
of Shaws.”

“Ye’ll find your work cut out for ye to establish that,” quoth she.
“I perceive you know my uncle,” said I; “and I daresay you may be the
better pleased to hear that business is arranged.”
“And what brings ye here after Miss Drummond?” she pursued.
“I’m come after my saxpence, mem,” said I. “It’s to be thought, being my
uncle’s nephew, I would be found a careful lad.”
“So ye have a spark of sleeness in ye?” observed the old lady, with some
approval. “I thought ye had just been a cuif—you and your saxpence, and
your lucky day and your sake of Balwhidder”—from which I was gratified
to learn that Catriona had not forgotten some of our talk. “But all this is by
the purpose,” she resumed. “Am I to understand that ye come here keeping
company?”
“This is surely rather an early question,” said I. “The maid is young, so
am I, worse fortune. I have but seen her the once. I’ll not deny,” I added,
making up my mind to try her with some frankness, “I’ll not deny but she
has run in my head a good deal since I met in with her. That is one thing;
but it would be quite another, and I think I would look very like a fool, to
commit myself.”
“You can speak out of your mouth, I see,” said the old lady. “Praise God,
and so can I! I was fool enough to take charge of this rogue’s daughter: a
fine charge I have gotten; but it’s mine, and I’ll carry it the way I want to.
Do ye mean to tell me, Mr. Balfour of Shaws, that you would marry James
More’s daughter, and him hanged! Well, then, where there’s no possible
marriage there shall be no manner of carryings on, and take that for said.
Lasses are bruckle things,” she added, with a nod; “and though ye would
never think it by my wrunkled chafts, I was a lassie mysel’, and a bonny
one.”
“Lady Allardyce,” said I, “for that I suppose to be your name, you seem
to do the two sides of the talking, which is a very poor manner to come to
an agreement. You give me rather a home thrust when you ask if I would
marry, at the gallow’s foot, a young lady whom I have seen but once. I have
told you already I would never be so untenty as to commit myself. And yet
I’ll go some way with you. If I continue to like the lass as well as I have
reason to expect, it will be something more than her father, or the gallows
either, that keeps the two of us apart. As for my family, I found it by the

wayside like a lost bawbee! I owe less than nothing to my uncle and if ever
I marry, it will be to please one person: that’s myself.”
“I have heard this kind of talk before ye were born,” said Mrs. Ogilvy,
“which is perhaps the reason that I think of it so little. There’s much to be
considered. This James More is a kinsman of mine, to my shame be it
spoken. But the better the family, the mair men hanged or headed, that’s
always been poor Scotland’s story. And if it was just the hanging! For my
part I think I would be best pleased with James upon the gallows, which
would be at least an end to him. Catrine’s a good lass enough, and a good-
hearted, and lets herself be deaved all day with a runt of an auld wife like
me. But, ye see, there’s the weak bit. She’s daft about that long, false,
fleeching beggar of a father of hers, and red-mad about the Gregara, and
proscribed names, and King James, and a wheen blethers. And you might
think ye could guide her, ye would find yourself sore mista’en. Ye say ye’ve
seen her but the once. . .”
“Spoke with her but the once, I should have said,” I interrupted. “I saw
her again this morning from a window at Prestongrange’s.”
This I daresay I put in because it sounded well; but I was properly paid
for my ostentation on the return.
“What’s this of it?” cries the old lady, with a sudden pucker of her face.
“I think it was at the Advocate’s door-cheek that ye met her first.”
I told her that was so.
“H’m,” she said; and then suddenly, upon rather a scolding tone, “I have
your bare word for it,” she cries, “as to who and what you are. By your way
of it, you’re Balfour of the Shaws; but for what I ken you may be Balfour of
the Deevil’s oxter. It’s possible ye may come here for what ye say, and it’s
equally possible ye may come here for deil care what! I’m good enough
Whig to sit quiet, and to have keepit all my men-folk’s heads upon their
shoulders. But I’m not just a good enough Whig to be made a fool of
neither. And I tell you fairly, there’s too much Advocate’s door and
Advocate’s window here for a man that comes taigling after a Macgregor’s
daughter. Ye can tell that to the Advocate that sent ye, with my fond love.
And I kiss my loof to ye, Mr. Balfour,” says she, suiting the action to the
word; “and a braw journey to ye back to where ye cam frae.”
“If you think me a spy,” I broke out, and speech stuck in my throat. I
stood and looked murder at the old lady for a space, then bowed and turned

away.
“Here! Hoots! The callant’s in a creel!” she cried. “Think ye a spy? what
else would I think ye—me that kens naething by ye? But I see that I was
wrong; and as I cannot fight, I’ll have to apologise. A bonny figure I would
be with a broadsword. Ay! ay!” she went on, “you’re none such a bad lad in
your way; I think ye’ll have some redeeming vices. But, O! Davit Balfour,
ye’re damned countryfeed. Ye’ll have to win over that, lad; ye’ll have to
soople your back-bone, and think a wee pickle less of your dainty self; and
ye’ll have to try to find out that women-folk are nae grenadiers. But that can
never be. To your last day you’ll ken no more of women-folk than what I do
of sow-gelding.”
I had never been used with such expressions from a lady’s tongue, the
only two ladies I had known, Mrs. Campbell and my mother, being most
devout and most particular women; and I suppose my amazement must
have been depicted in my countenance, for Mrs. Ogilvy burst forth
suddenly in a fit of laughter.
“Keep me!” she cried, struggling with her mirth, “you have the finest
timber face—and you to marry the daughter of a Hieland cateran! Davie,
my dear, I think we’ll have to make a match of it—if it was just to see the
weans. And now,” she went on, “there’s no manner of service in your
daidling here, for the young woman is from home, and it’s my fear that the
old woman is no suitable companion for your father’s son. Forbye that I
have nobody but myself to look after my reputation, and have been long
enough alone with a sedooctive youth. And come back another day for your
saxpence!” she cried after me as I left.
My skirmish with this disconcerting lady gave my thoughts a boldness
they had otherwise wanted. For two days the image of Catriona had mixed
in all my meditations; she made their background, so that I scarce enjoyed
my own company without a glint of her in a corner of my mind. But now
she came immediately near; I seemed to touch her, whom I had never
touched but the once; I let myself flow out to her in a happy weakness, and
looking all about, and before and behind, saw the world like an undesirable
desert, where men go as soldiers on a march, following their duty with what
constancy they have, and Catriona alone there to offer me some pleasure of
my days. I wondered at myself that I could dwell on such considerations in
that time of my peril and disgrace; and when I remembered my youth I was

ashamed. I had my studies to complete: I had to be called into some useful
business; I had yet to take my part of service in a place where all must
serve; I had yet to learn, and know, and prove myself a man; and I had so
much sense as blush that I should be already tempted with these further-on
and holier delights and duties. My education spoke home to me sharply; I
was never brought up on sugar biscuits but on the hard food of the truth. I
knew that he was quite unfit to be a husband who was not prepared to be a
father also; and for a boy like me to play the father was a mere derision.
When I was in the midst of these thoughts and about half-way back to
town I saw a figure coming to meet me, and the trouble of my heart was
heightened. It seemed I had everything in the world to say to her, but
nothing to say first; and remembering how tongue-tied I had been that
morning at the Advocate’s I made sure that I would find myself struck
dumb. But when she came up my fears fled away; not even the
consciousness of what I had been privately thinking disconcerted me the
least; and I found I could talk with her as easily and rationally as I might
with Alan.
“O!” she cried, “you have been seeking your sixpence; did you get it?”
I told her no; but now I had met with her my walk was not in vain.
“Though I have seen you to-day already,” said I, and told her where and
when.
“I did not see you,” she said. “My eyes are big, but there are better than
mine at seeing far. Only I heard singing in the house.”
“That was Miss Grant,” said I, “the eldest and the bonniest.”
“They say they are all beautiful,” said she.
“They think the same of you, Miss Drummond,” I replied, “and were all
crowding to the window to observe you.”
“It is a pity about my being so blind,” said she, “or I might have seen
them too. And you were in the house? You must have been having the fine
time with the fine music and the pretty ladies.”
“There is just where you are wrong,” said I; “for I was as uncouth as a
sea-fish upon the brae of a mountain. The truth is that I am better fitted to
go about with rudas men than pretty ladies.”
“Well, I would think so too, at all events!” said she, at which we both of
us laughed.

“It is a strange thing, now,” said I. “I am not the least afraid with you, yet
I could have run from the Miss Grants. And I was afraid of your cousin
too.”
“O, I think any man will be afraid of her,” she cried. “My father is afraid
of her himself.”
The name of her father brought me to a stop. I looked at her as she
walked by my side; I recalled the man, and the little I knew and the much I
guessed of him; and comparing the one with the other, felt like a traitor to
be silent.
“Speaking of which,” said I, “I met your father no later than this
morning.”
“Did you?” she cried, with a voice of joy that seemed to mock at me.
“You saw James More? You will have spoken with him then?”
“I did even that,” said I.
Then I think things went the worst way for me that was humanly
possible. She gave me a look of mere gratitude. “Ah, thank you for that!”
says she.
“You thank me for very little,” said I, and then stopped. But it seemed
when I was holding back so much, something at least had to come out. “I
spoke rather ill to him,” said I; “I did no like him very much; I spoke him
rather ill, and he was angry.”
“I think you had little to do then, and less to tell it to his daughter!” she
cried out. “But those that do not love and cherish him I will not know.”
“I will take the freedom of a word yet,” said I, beginning to tremble.
“Perhaps neither your father nor I are in the best of spirits at
Prestongrange’s. I daresay we both have anxious business there, for it’s a
dangerous house. I was sorry for him too, and spoke to him the first, if I
could but have spoken the wiser. And for one thing, in my opinion, you will
soon find that his affairs are mending.”
“It will not be through your friendship, I am thinking,” said she; “and he
is much made up to you for your sorrow.”
“Miss Drummond,” cried I, “I am alone in this world.”
“And I am not wondering at that,” said she.

“O, let me speak!” said I. “I will speak but the once, and then leave you,
if you will, for ever. I came this day in the hopes of a kind word that I am
sore in want of. I know that what I said must hurt you, and I knew it then. It
would have been easy to have spoken smooth, easy to lie to you; can you
not think how I was tempted to the same? Cannot you see the truth of my
heart shine out?”
“I think here is a great deal of work, Mr. Balfour,” said she. “I think we
will have met but the once, and will can part like gentle folk.”
“O, let me have one to believe in me!” I pleaded, “I cannae bear it else.
The whole world is clanned against me. How am I to go through with my
dreadful fate? If there’s to be none to believe in me I cannot do it. The man
must just die, for I cannot do it.”
She had still looked straight in front of her, head in air; but at my words
or the tone of my voice she came to a stop. “What is this you say?” she
asked. “What are you talking of?”
“It is my testimony which may save an innocent life,” said I, “and they
will not suffer me to bear it. What would you do yourself? You know what
this is, whose father lies in danger. Would you desert the poor soul? They
have tried all ways with me. They have sought to bribe me; they offered me
hills and valleys. And to-day that sleuth-hound told me how I stood, and to
what a length he would go to butcher and disgrace me. I am to be brought in
a party to the murder; I am to have held Glenure in talk for money and old
clothes; I am to be killed and shamed. If this is the way I am to fall, and me
scarce a man—if this is the story to be told of me in all Scotland—if you
are to believe it too, and my name is to be nothing but a by-word—
Catriona, how can I go through with it? The thing’s not possible; it’s more
than a man has in his heart.”
I poured my words out in a whirl, one upon the other; and when I stopped
I found her gazing on me with a startled face.
“Glenure! It is the Appin murder,” she said softly, but with a very deep
surprise.
I had turned back to bear her company, and we were now come near the
head of the brae above Dean village. At this word I stepped in front of her
like one suddenly distracted.

“For God’s sake!” I cried, “for God’s sake, what is this that I have done?”
and carried my fists to my temples. “What made me do it? Sure, I am
bewitched to say these things!”
“In the name of heaven, what ails you now!” she cried.
“I gave my honour,” I groaned, “I gave my honour and now I have broke
it. O, Catriona!”
“I am asking you what it is,” she said; “was it these things you should not
have spoken? And do you think I have no honour, then? or that I am one
that would betray a friend? I hold up my right hand to you and swear.”
“O, I knew you would be true!” said I. “It’s me—it’s here. I that stood
but this morning and out-faced them, that risked rather to die disgraced
upon the gallows than do wrong—and a few hours after I throw my honour
away by the roadside in common talk! ‘There is one thing clear upon our
interview,’ says he, ‘that I can rely on your pledged word.’ Where is my
word now? Who could believe me now? You could not believe me. I am
clean fallen down; I had best die!” All this I said with a weeping voice, but I
had no tears in my body.
“My heart is sore for you,” said she, “but be sure you are too nice. I
would not believe you, do you say? I would trust you with anything. And
these men? I would not be thinking of them! Men who go about to entrap
and to destroy you! Fy! this is no time to crouch. Look up! Do you not think
I will be admiring you like a great hero of the good—and you a boy not
much older than myself? And because you said a word too much in a
friend’s ear, that would die ere she betrayed you—to make such a matter! It
is one thing that we must both forget.”
“Catriona,” said I, looking at her, hang-dog, “is this true of it? Would ye
trust me yet?”
“Will you not believe the tears upon my face?” she cried. “It is the world
I am thinking of you, Mr. David Balfour. Let them hang you; I will never
forget, I will grow old and still remember you. I think it is great to die so: I
will envy you that gallows.”
“And maybe all this while I am but a child frighted with bogles,” said I.
“Maybe they but make a mock of me.”
“It is what I must know,” she said. “I must hear the whole. The harm is
done at all events, and I must hear the whole.”

I had sat down on the wayside, where she took a place beside me, and I
told her all that matter much as I have written it, my thoughts about her
father’s dealings being alone omitted.
“Well,” she said, when I had finished, “you are a hero, surely, and I never
would have thought that same! And I think you are in peril, too. O, Simon
Fraser! to think upon that man! For his life and the dirty money, to be
dealing in such traffic!” And just then she called out aloud with a queer
word that was common with her, and belongs, I believe, to her own
language. “My torture!” says she, “look at the sun!”
Indeed, it was already dipping towards the mountains.
She bid me come again soon, gave me her hand, and left me in a turmoil
of glad spirits. I delayed to go home to my lodging, for I had a terror of
immediate arrest; but got some supper at a change house, and the better part
of that night walked by myself in the barley-fields, and had such a sense of
Catriona’s presence that I seemed to bear her in my arms.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE BRAVO

The next day, August 29th, I kept my appointment at the Advocate’s in a
coat that I had made to my own measure, and was but newly ready.
“Aha,” says Prestongrange, “you are very fine to-day; my misses are to
have a fine cavalier. Come, I take that kind of you. I take that kind of you,
Mr. David. O, we shall do very well yet, and I believe your troubles are
nearly at an end.”
“You have news for me?” cried I.
“Beyond anticipation,” he replied. “Your testimony is after all to be
received; and you may go, if you will, in my company to the trial, which in
to be held at Inverary, Thursday, 21st proximo.”
I was too much amazed to find words.
“In the meanwhile,” he continued, “though I will not ask you to renew
your pledge, I must caution you strictly to be reticent. To-morrow your
precognition must be taken; and outside of that, do you know, I think least
said will be soonest mended.”
“I shall try to go discreetly,” said I. “I believe it is yourself that I must
thank for this crowning mercy, and I do thank you gratefully. After
yesterday, my lord, this is like the doors of Heaven. I cannot find it in my
heart to get the thing believed.”
“Ah, but you must try and manage, you must try and manage to believe
it,” says he, soothing-like, “and I am very glad to hear your
acknowledgment of obligation, for I think you may be able to repay me
very shortly”—he coughed—“or even now. The matter is much changed.
Your testimony, which I shall not trouble you for to-day, will doubtless alter
the complexion of the case for all concerned, and this makes it less delicate
for me to enter with you on a side issue.”

“My Lord,” I interrupted, “excuse me for interrupting you, but how has
this been brought about? The obstacles you told me of on Saturday
appeared even to me to be quite insurmountable; how has it been
contrived?”
“My dear Mr. David,” said he, “it would never do for me to divulge (even
to you, as you say) the councils of the Government; and you must content
yourself, if you please, with the gross fact.”
He smiled upon me like a father as he spoke, playing the while with a
new pen; methought it was impossible there could be any shadow of
deception in the man: yet when he drew to him a sheet of paper, dipped his
pen among the ink, and began again to address me, I was somehow not so
certain, and fell instinctively into an attitude of guard.
“There is a point I wish to touch upon,” he began. “I purposely left it
before upon one side, which need be now no longer necessary. This is not,
of course, a part of your examination, which is to follow by another hand;
this is a private interest of my own. You say you encountered Alan Breck
upon the hill?”
“I did, my lord,” said I.
“This was immediately after the murder?”
“It was.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“I did.”
“You had known him before, I think?” says my lord, carelessly.
“I cannot guess your reason for so thinking, my lord,” I replied, “but such
in the fact.”
“And when did you part with him again?” said he.
“I reserve my answer,” said I. “The question will be put to me at the
assize.”
“Mr. Balfour,” said he, “will you not understand that all this is without
prejudice to yourself? I have promised you life and honour; and, believe
me, I can keep my word. You are therefore clear of all anxiety. Alan, it
appears, you suppose you can protect; and you talk to me of your gratitude,
which I think (if you push me) is not ill-deserved. There are a great many
different considerations all pointing the same way; and I will never be

persuaded that you could not help us (if you chose) to put salt on Alan’s
tail.”
“My lord,” said I, “I give you my word I do not so much as guess where
Alan is.”
He paused a breath. “Nor how he might be found?” he asked.
I sat before him like a log of wood.
“And so much for your gratitude, Mr. David!” he observed. Again there
was a piece of silence. “Well,” said he, rising, “I am not fortunate, and we
are a couple at cross purposes. Let us speak of it no more; you will receive
notice when, where, and by whom, we are to take your precognition. And in
the meantime, my misses must be waiting you. They will never forgive me
if I detain their cavalier.”
Into the hands of these Graces I was accordingly offered up, and found
them dressed beyond what I had thought possible, and looking fair as a
posy.
As we went forth from the doors a small circumstance occurred which
came afterwards to look extremely big. I heard a whistle sound loud and
brief like a signal, and looking all about, spied for one moment the red head
of Neil of the Tom, the son of Duncan. The next moment he was gone
again, nor could I see so much as the skirt-tail of Catriona, upon whom I
naturally supposed him to be then attending.
My three keepers led me out by Bristo and the Bruntsfield Links; whence
a path carried us to Hope Park, a beautiful pleasance, laid with gravel-
walks, furnished with seats and summer-sheds, and warded by a keeper. The
way there was a little longsome; the two younger misses affected an air of
genteel weariness that damped me cruelly, the eldest considered me with
something that at times appeared like mirth; and though I thought I did
myself more justice than the day before, it was not without some effort.
Upon our reaching the park I was launched on a bevy of eight or ten young
gentlemen (some of them cockaded officers, the rest chiefly advocates) who
crowded to attend upon these beauties; and though I was presented to all of
them in very good words, it seemed I was by all immediately forgotten.
Young folk in a company are like to savage animals: they fall upon or scorn
a stranger without civility, or I may say, humanity; and I am sure, if I had
been among baboons, they would have shown me quite as much of both.
Some of the advocates set up to be wits, and some of the soldiers to be

rattles; and I could not tell which of these extremes annoyed me most. All
had a manner of handling their swords and coat-skirts, for the which (in
mere black envy) I could have kicked them from the park. I daresay, upon
their side, they grudged me extremely the fine company in which I had
arrived; and altogether I had soon fallen behind, and stepped stiffly in the
rear of all that merriment with my own thoughts.
From these I was recalled by one of the officers, Lieutenant Hector
Duncansby, a gawky, leering Highland boy, asking if my name was not
“Palfour.”
I told him it was, not very kindly, for his manner was scant civil.
“Ha, Palfour,” says he, and then, repeating it, “Palfour, Palfour!”
“I am afraid you do not like my name, sir,” says I, annoyed with myself
to be annoyed with such a rustical fellow.
“No,” says he, “but I wass thinking.”
“I would not advise you to make a practice of that, sir,” says I. “I feel
sure you would not find it to agree with you.”
“Tit you effer hear where Alan Grigor fand the tangs?” said he.
I asked him what he could possibly mean, and he answered, with a
heckling laugh, that he thought I must have found the poker in the same
place and swallowed it.
There could be no mistake about this, and my cheek burned.
“Before I went about to put affronts on gentlemen,” said I, “I think I
would learn the English language first.”
He took me by the sleeve with a nod and a wink and led me quietly
outside Hope Park. But no sooner were we beyond the view of the
promenaders, than the fashion of his countenance changed. “You tam
lowland scoon’rel!” cries he, and hit me a buffet on the jaw with his closed
fist.
I paid him as good or better on the return; whereupon he stepped a little
back and took off his hat to me decorously.
“Enough plows I think,” says he. “I will be the offended shentleman, for
who effer heard of such suffeeciency as tell a shentlemans that is the king’s
officer he cannae speak Cot’s English? We have swords at our hurdles, and

here is the King’s Park at hand. Will ye walk first, or let me show ye the
way?”
I returned his bow, told him to go first, and followed him. As he went I
heard him grumble to himself about Cot’s English and the King’s coat, so
that I might have supposed him to be seriously offended. But his manner at
the beginning of our interview was there to belie him. It was manifest he
had come prepared to fasten a quarrel on me, right or wrong; manifest that I
was taken in a fresh contrivance of my enemies; and to me (conscious as I
was of my deficiencies) manifest enough that I should be the one to fall in
our encounter.
As we came into that rough rocky desert of the King’s Park I was
tempted half-a-dozen times to take to my heels and run for it, so loath was I
to show my ignorance in fencing, and so much averse to die or even to be
wounded. But I considered if their malice went as far as this, it would likely
stick at nothing; and that to fall by the sword, however ungracefully, was
still an improvement on the gallows. I considered besides that by the
unguarded pertness of my words and the quickness of my blow I had put
myself quite out of court; and that even if I ran, my adversary would
probably pursue and catch me, which would add disgrace to my misfortune.
So that, taking all in all, I continued marching behind him, much as a man
follows the hangman, and certainly with no more hope.
We went about the end of the long craigs, and came into the Hunter’s
Bog. Here, on a piece of fair turf, my adversary drew. There was nobody
there to see us but some birds; and no resource for me but to follow his
example, and stand on guard with the best face I could display. It seems it
was not good enough for Mr. Dancansby, who spied some flaw in my
manœuvres, paused, looked upon me sharply, and came off and on, and
menaced me with his blade in the air. As I had seen no such proceedings
from Alan, and was besides a good deal affected with the proximity of
death, I grew quite bewildered, stood helpless, and could have longed to run
away.
“Fat deil ails her?” cries the lieutenant.
And suddenly engaging, he twitched the sword out of my grasp and sent
it flying far among the rushes.
Twice was this manœuvre repeated; and the third time when I brought
back my humiliated weapon, I found he had returned his own to the

scabbard, and stood awaiting me with a face of some anger, and his hands
clasped under his skirt.
“Pe tamned if I touch you!” he cried, and asked me bitterly what right I
had to stand up before “shentlemans” when I did not know the back of a
sword from the front of it.
I answered that was the fault of my upbringing; and would he do me the
justice to say I had given him all the satisfaction it was unfortunately in my
power to offer, and had stood up like a man?
“And that is the truth,” said he. “I am fery prave myself, and pold as a
lions. But to stand up there—and you ken naething of fence!—the way that
you did, I declare it was peyond me. And I am sorry for the plow; though I
declare I pelief your own was the elder brother, and my heid still sings with
it. And I declare if I had kent what way it wass, I would not put a hand to
such a piece of pusiness.”
“That is handsomely said,” I replied, “and I am sure you will not stand up
a second time to be the actor for my private enemies.”
“Indeed, no, Palfour,” said he; “and I think I was used extremely
suffeeciently myself to be set up to fecht with an auld wife, or all the same
as a bairn whateffer! And I will tell the Master so, and fecht him, by Cot,
himself!”
“And if you knew the nature of Mr. Simon’s quarrel with me,” said I,
“you would be yet the more affronted to be mingled up with such affairs.”
He swore he could well believe it; that all the Lovats were made of the
same meal and the devil was the miller that ground that; then suddenly
shaking me by the hand, he vowed I was a pretty enough fellow after all,
that it was a thousand pities I had been neglected, and that if he could find
the time, he would give an eye himself to have me educated.
“You can do me a better service than even what you propose,” said I; and
when he had asked its nature—“Come with me to the house of one of my
enemies, and testify how I have carried myself this day,” I told him. “That
will be the true service. For though he has sent me a gallant adversary for
the first, the thought in Mr. Simon’s mind is merely murder. There will be a
second and then a third; and by what you have seen of my cleverness with
the cold steel, you can judge for yourself what is like to be the upshot.”

“And I would not like it myself, if I was no more of a man than what you
wass!” he cried. “But I will do you right, Palfour. Lead on!”
If I had walked slowly on the way into that accursed park my heels were
light enough on the way out. They kept time to a very good old air, that is as
ancient as the Bible, and the words of it are: “Surely the bitterness of death
is passed.” I mind that I was extremely thirsty, and had a drink at Saint
Margaret’s well on the road down, and the sweetness of that water passed
belief. We went through the sanctuary, up the Canongate, in by the
Netherbow, and straight to Prestongrange’s door, talking as we came and
arranging the details of our affair. The footman owned his master was at
home, but declared him engaged with other gentlemen on very private
business, and his door forbidden.
“My business is but for three minutes, and it cannot wait,” said I. “You
may say it is by no means private, and I shall be even glad to have some
witnesses.”
As the man departed unwillingly enough upon this errand, we made so
bold as to follow him to the ante-chamber, whence I could hear for a while
the murmuring of several voices in the room within. The truth is, they were
three at the one table—Prestongrange, Simon Fraser, and Mr. Erskine,
Sheriff of Perth; and as they were met in consultation on the very business
of the Appin murder, they were a little disturbed at my appearance, but
decided to receive me.
“Well, well, Mr. Balfour, and what brings you here again? and who is this
you bring with you?” says Prestongrange.
As for Fraser, he looked before him on the table.
“He is here to bear a little testimony in my favour, my lord, which I think
it very needful you should hear,” said I, and turned to Duncansby.
“I have only to say this,” said the lieutenant, “that I stood up this day
with Palfour in the Hunter’s Pog, which I am now fery sorry for, and he
behaved himself as pretty as a shentlemans could ask it. And I have creat
respects for Palfour,” he added.
“I thank you for your honest expressions,” said I.
Whereupon Duncansby made his bow to the company, and left the
chamber, as we had agreed upon before.
“What have I to do with this?” says Prestongrange.

“I will tell your lordship in two words,” said I. “I have brought this
gentleman, a King’s officer, to do me so much justice. Now I think my
character is covered, and until a certain date, which your lordship can very
well supply, it will be quite in vain to despatch against me any more
officers. I will not consent to fight my way through the garrison of the
castle.”
The veins swelled on Prestongrange’s brow, and he regarded me with
fury.
“I think the devil uncoupled this dog of a lad between my legs!” he cried;
and then, turning fiercely on his neighbour, “This is some of your work,
Simon,” he said. “I spy your hand in the business, and, let me tell you, I
resent it. It is disloyal, when we are agreed upon one expedient, to follow
another in the dark. You are disloyal to me. What! you let me send this lad
to the place with my very daughters! And because I let drop a word to
you..... Fy, sir, keep your dishonours to yourself!”
Simon was deadly pale. “I will be a kick-ball between you and the Duke
no longer,” he exclaimed. “Either come to an agreement, or come to a
differ, and have it out among yourselves. But I will no longer fetch and
carry, and get your contrary instructions, and be blamed by both. For if I
were to tell you what I think of all your Hanover business it would make
your head sing.”
But Sheriff Erskine had preserved his temper, and now intervened
smoothly. “And in the meantime,” says he, “I think we should tell Mr.
Balfour that his character for valour is quite established. He may sleep in
peace. Until the date he was so good as to refer to it shall be put to the proof
no more.”
His coolness brought the others to their prudence; and they made haste,
with a somewhat distracted civility, to pack me from the house.

CHAPTER IX.
THE HEATHER ON FIRE

When I left Prestongrange that afternoon I was for the first time angry.
The Advocate had made a mock of me. He had pretended my testimony was
to be received and myself respected; and in that very hour, not only was
Simon practising against my life by the hands of the Highland soldier, but
(as appeared from his own language) Prestongrange himself had some
design in operation. I counted my enemies; Prestongrange with all the
King’s authority behind him; and the Duke with the power of the West
Highlands; and the Lovat interest by their side to help them with so great a
force in the north, and the whole clan of old Jacobite spies and traffickers.
And when I remembered James More, and the red head of Neil the son of
Duncan, I thought there was perhaps a fourth in the confederacy, and what
remained of Rob Roy’s old desperate sept of caterans would be banded
against me with the others. One thing was requisite—some strong friend or
wise adviser. The country must be full of such, both able and eager to
support me, or Lovat and the Duke and Prestongrange had not been nosing
for expedients; and it made me rage to think that I might brush against my
champions in the street and be no wiser.
And just then (like an answer) a gentleman brushed against me going by,
gave me a meaning look, and turned into a close. I knew him with the tail of
my eye—it was Stewart the Writer; and, blessing my good fortune, turned
in to follow him. As soon as I had entered the close I saw him standing in
the mouth of a stair, where he made me a signal and immediately vanished.
Seven storeys up, there he was again in a house door, the which he looked
behind us after we had entered. The house was quite dismantled, with not a
stick of furniture; indeed, it was one of which Stewart had the letting in his
hands.

“We’ll have to sit upon the floor,” said he; “but we’re safe here for the
time being, and I’ve been wearying to see ye, Mr. Balfour.”
“How’s it with Alan?” I asked.
“Brawly,” said he. “Andie picks him up at Gillane sands to-morrow,
Wednesday. He was keen to say good-bye to ye, but the way that things
were going, I was feared the pair of ye was maybe best apart. And that
brings me to the essential: how does your business speed?”
“Why,” said I, “I was told only this morning that my testimony was
accepted, and I was to travel to Inverary with the Advocate, no less.”
“Hout awa!” cried Stewart. “I’ll never believe that.”
“I have maybe a suspicion of my own,” says I, “but I would like fine to
hear your reasons.”
“Well, I tell ye fairly, I’m horn-mad,” cries Stewart. “If my one hand
could pull their Government down I would pluck it like a rotten apple. I’m
doer for Appin and for James of the Glens; and, of course, it’s my duty to
defend my kinsman for his life. Hear how it goes with me, and I’ll leave the
judgment of it to yourself. The first thing they have to do is to get rid of
Alan. They cannae bring in James as art and part until they’ve brought in
Alan first as principal; that’s sound law: they could never put the cart before
the horse.”
“And how are they to bring in Alan till they can catch him?” says I.
“Ah, but there is a way to evite that arrestment,” said he. “Sound law,
too. It would be a bonny thing if, by the escape of one ill-doer another was
to go scatheless, and the remeid is to summon the principal and put him to
outlawry for the non-compearance. Now there’s four places where a person
can be summoned: at his dwelling-house; at a place where he has resided
forty days; at the head burgh of the shire where he ordinarily resorts; or
lastly (if there be ground to think him forth of Scotland) at the cross of
Edinburgh, and the pier and shore of Leith, for sixty days. The purpose of
which last provision is evident upon its face: being that outgoing ships may
have time to carry news of the transaction, and the summonsing be
something other than a form. Now take the case of Alan. He has no
dwelling-house that ever I could hear of; I would be obliged if anyone
would show me where he has lived forty days together since the ’45; there
is no shire where he resorts whether ordinarily or extraordinarily; if he has a

domicile at all, which I misdoubt, it must be with his regiment in France;
and if he is not yet forth of Scotland (as we happen to know and they
happen to guess) it must be evident to the most dull it’s what he’s aiming
for. Where, then, and what way should he be summoned? I ask it at
yourself, a layman.”
“You have given the very words,” said I. “Here at the cross, and at the
pier and shore of Leith, for sixty days.”
“Ye’re a sounder Scots lawyer than Prestongrange, then!” cries the
Writer. “He has had Alan summoned once; that was on the twenty-fifth, the
day that we first met. Once, and done with it. And where? Where, but at the
cross of Inverary, the head burgh of the Campbells? A word in your ear, Mr.
Balfour—they’re not seeking Alan.”
“What do you mean?” I cried. “Not seeking him?”
“By the best that I can make of it,” said he. “Not wanting to find him, in
my poor thought. They think perhaps he might set up a fair defence, upon
the back of which James, the man they’re really after, might climb out. This
is not a case, ye see, it’s a conspiracy.”
“Yet I can tell you Prestongrange asked after Alan keenly,” said I;
“though, when I come to think of it, he was something of the easiest put
by.”
“See that!” says he. “But there! I may be right or wrong, that’s guesswork
at the best, and let me get to my facts again. It comes to my ears that James
and the witnesses—the witnesses, Mr. Balfour!—lay in close dungeons, and
shackled forbye, in the military prison at Fort William; none allowed in to
them, nor they to write. The witnesses, Mr. Balfour; heard ye ever the
match of that? I assure ye, no old, crooked Stewart of the gang ever out-
faced the law more impudently. It’s clean in the two eyes of the Act of
Parliament of 1700, anent wrongous imprisonment. No sooner did I get the
news than I petitioned the Lord Justice Clerk. I have his word to-day.
There’s law for ye! here’s justice!”
He put a paper in my hand, that same mealy-mouthed, false-faced paper
that was printed since in the pamphlet “by a bystander,” for behoof (as the
title says) of James’s “poor widow and five children.”
“See,” said Stewart, “he couldn’t dare to refuse me access to my client,
so he recommends the commanding officer to let me in. Recommends!—the

Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland recommends. Is not the purpose of such
language plain? They hope the officer may be so dull, or so very much the
reverse, as to refuse the recommendation. I would have to make the journey
back again betwixt here and Fort William. Then would follow a fresh delay
till I got fresh authority, and they had disavowed the officer—military man,
notoriously ignorant of the law, and that—I ken the cant of it. Then the
journey a third time; and there we should be on the immediate heels of the
trial before I had received my first instruction. Am I not right to call this a
conspiracy?”
“It will bear that colour,” said I.
“And I’ll go on to prove it you outright,” said he. “They have the right to
hold James in prison, yet they cannot deny me to visit him. They have no
right to hold the witnesses; but am I to get a sight of them, that should be as
free as the Lord Justice Clerk himself! See—read: For the rest, refuses to
give any orders to keepers of prisons who are not accused as having done
anything contrary to the duties of their office. Anything contrary! Sirs! And
the Act of seventeen hunner? Mr. Balfour, this makes my heart to burst; the
heather is on fire inside my wame.”
“And the plain English of that phrase,” said I, “is that the witnesses are
still to lie in prison and you are not to see them?”
“And I am not to see them until Inverary, when the court is set!” cries he,
“and then to hear Prestongrange upon the anxious responsibilities of his
office and the great facilities afforded the defence! But I’ll begowk them
there, Mr. David. I have a plan to waylay the witnesses upon the road, and
see if I cannae get I a little harle of justice out of the military man
notoriously ignorant of the law that shall command the party.”
It was actually so—it was actually on the wayside near Tynedrum, and by
the connivance of a soldier officer, that Mr. Stewart first saw the witnesses
upon the case.
“There is nothing that would surprise me in this business,” I remarked.
“I’ll surprise you ere I’m done!” cries he. “Do ye see this?”—producing a
print still wet from the press. “This is the libel: see, there’s Prestongrange’s
name to the list of witnesses, and I find no word of any Balfour. But here is
not the question. Who do ye think paid for the printing of this paper?”
“I suppose it would likely be King George,” said I.

“But it happens it was me!” he cried. “Not but it was printed by and for
themselves, for the Grants and the Erskines, and yon thief of the black
midnight, Simon Fraser. But could I win to get a copy! No! I was to go
blindfold to my defence; I was to hear the charges for the first time in court
alongst the jury.”
“Is not this against the law?” I asked.
“I cannot say so much,” he replied. “It was a favour so natural and so
constantly rendered (till this nonesuch business) that the law has never
looked to it. And now admire the hand of Providence! A stranger is in
Fleming’s printing house, spies a proof on the floor, picks it up, and carries
it to me. Of all things, it was just this libel. Whereupon I had it set again—
printed at the expense of the defence: sumptibus moesti rei; heard ever man
the like of it?—and here it is for anybody, the muckle secret out—all may
see it now. But how do you think I would enjoy this, that has the life of my
kinsman on my conscience?”
“Troth, I think you would enjoy it ill,” said I.
“And now you see how it is,” he concluded, “and why, when you tell me
your evidence is to be let in, I laugh aloud in your face.”
It was now my turn. I laid before him in brief Mr. Simon’s threats and
offers, and the whole incident of the bravo, with the subsequent scene at
Prestongrange’s. Of my first talk, according to promise, I said nothing, nor
indeed was it necessary. All the time I was talking Stewart nodded his head
like a mechanical figure; and no sooner had my voice ceased, than he
opened his mouth and gave me his opinion in two words, dwelling strong
on both of them.
“Disappear yourself,” said he.
“I do not take you,” said I.
“Then I’ll carry you there,” said he. “By my view of it you’re to
disappear whatever. O, that’s outside debate. The Advocate, who is not
without some spunks of a remainder decency, has wrung your life-safe out
of Simon and the Duke. He has refused to put you on your trial, and refused
to have you killed; and there is the clue to their ill words together, for
Simon and the Duke can keep faith with neither friend nor enemy. Ye’re not
to be tried then, and ye’re not to be murdered; but I’m in bitter error if ye’re

not to be kidnapped and carried away like the Lady Grange. Bet me what ye
please—there was their expedient!”
“You make me think,” said I, and told him of the whistle and the red-
headed retainer, Neil.
“Wherever James More is there’s one big rogue, never be deceived on
that,” said he. “His father was none so ill a man, though a kenning on the
wrong side of the law, and no friend to my family, that I should waste my
breath to be defending him! But as for James he’s a brock and a blagyard. I
like the appearance of this red-headed Neil as little as yourself. It looks
uncanny: fiegh! it smells bad. It was old Lovat that managed the Lady
Grange affair; if young Lovat is to handle yours, it’ll be all in the family.
What’s James More in prison for? The same offence: abduction. His men
have had practice in the business. He’ll be to lend them to be Simon’s
instruments; and the next thing we’ll be hearing, James will have made his
peace, or else he’ll have escaped; and you’ll be in Benbecula or
Applecross.”
“Ye make a strong case,” I admitted.
“And what I want,” he resumed, “is that you should disappear yourself
ere they can get their hands upon ye. Lie quiet until just before the trial, and
spring upon them at the last of it when they’ll be looking for you least. This
is always supposing Mr. Balfour, that your evidence is worth so very great a
measure of both risk and fash.”
“I will tell you one thing,” said I. “I saw the murderer and it was not
Alan.”
“Then, by God, my cousin’s saved!” cried Stewart. “You have his life
upon your tongue; and there’s neither time, risk, nor money to be spared to
bring you to the trial.” He emptied his pockets on the floor. “Here is all that
I have by me,” he went on, “Take it, ye’ll want it ere ye’re through. Go
straight down this close, there’s a way out by there to the Lang Dykes, and
by my will of it! see no more of Edinburgh till the clash is over.”
“Where am I to go, then?” I inquired.
“And I wish that I could tell ye!” says he, “but all the places that I could
send ye to, would be just the places they would seek. No, ye must fend for
yourself, and God be your guiding! Five days before the trial, September

the sixteen, get word to me at the King’s Arms in Stirling; and if ye’ve
managed for yourself as long as that, I’ll see that ye reach Inverary.”
“One thing more,” said I. “Can I no see Alan?”
He seemed boggled. “Hech, I would rather you wouldnae,” said he. “But
I can never deny that Alan is extremely keen of it, and is to lie this night by
Silvermills on purpose. If you’re sure that you’re not followed, Mr. Balfour
—but make sure of that—lie in a good place and watch your road for a clear
hour before ye risk it. It would be a dreadful business if both you and him
was to miscarry!”

CHAPTER X.
THE RED-HEADED MAN

It was about half-past three when I came forth on the Lang Dykes. Dean
was where I wanted to go. Since Catriona dwelled there, and her kinsfolk
the Glengyle Macgregors appeared almost certainly to be employed against
me, it was just one of the few places I should have kept away from; and
being a very young man, and beginning to be very much in love, I turned
my face in that direction without pause. As a slave to my conscience and
common sense, however, I took a measure of precaution. Coming over the
crown of a bit of a rise in the road, I clapped down suddenly among the
barley and lay waiting. After a while, a man went by that looked to be a
Highlandman, but I had never seen him till that hour. Presently after came
Neil of the red head. The next to go past was a miller’s cart, and after that
nothing but manifest country people. Here was enough to have turned the
most foolhardy from his purpose, but my inclination ran too strong the other
way. I argued it out that if Neil was on that road, it was the right road to find
him in, leading direct to his chief’s daughter; as for the other Highlandman,
if I was to be startled off by every Highlandman I saw, I would scarce reach
anywhere. And having quite satisfied myself with this disingenuous debate,
I made the better speed of it, and came a little after four to Mrs. Drumond-
Ogilvy’s.
Both ladies were within the house; and upon my perceiving them
together by the open door, I plucked off my hat and said, “Here was a lad
come seeking saxpence,” which I thought might please the dowager.
Catriona ran out to greet me heartily, and, to my surprise, the old lady
seemed scarce less forward than herself. I learned long afterwards that she
had despatched a horseman by daylight to Rankeillor at the Queensferry,
whom she knew to be the doer for Shaws, and had then in her pocket a
letter from that good friend of mine, presenting, in the most favourable

view, my character and prospects. But had I read it I could scarce have seen
more clear in her designs. Maybe I was countryfeed; at least, I was not so
much so as she thought; and it was even to my homespun wits, that she was
bent to hammer up a match between her cousin and a beardless boy that
was something of a laird in Lothian.
“Saxpence had better take his broth with us, Catrine,” says she. “Run and
tell the lasses.”
And for the little while we were alone was at a good deal of pains to
flatter me; always cleverly, always with the appearance of a banter, still
calling me Saxpence, but with such a turn that should rather uplift me in my
own opinion. When Catriona returned, the design became if possible more
obvious; and she showed off the girl’s advantages like a horse-couper with a
horse. My face flamed that she should think me so obtuse. Now I would
fancy the girl was being innocently made a show of, and then I could have
beaten the old carline wife with a cudgel; and now, that perhaps these two
had set their heads together to entrap me, and at that I sat and gloomed
betwixt them like the very image of ill-will. At last the matchmaker had a
better device, which was to leave the pair of us alone. When my suspicions
are anyway roused it is sometimes a little the wrong side of easy to allay
them. But though I knew what breed she was of, and that was a breed of
thieves, I could never look in Catriona’s face and disbelieve her.
“I must not ask?” says she, eagerly, the same moment we were left alone.
“Ah, but to-day I can talk with a free conscience,” I replied. “I am
lightened of my pledge, and indeed (after what has come and gone since
morning) I would not have renewed it were it asked.”
“Tell me,” she said. “My cousin will not be so long.”
So I told her the tale of the lieutenant from the first step to the last of it,
making it as mirthful as I could, and, indeed, there was matter of mirth in
that absurdity.
“And I think you will be as little fitted for the rudas men as for the pretty
ladies, after all!” says she, when I had done. “But what was your father that
he could not learn you to draw the sword! It is most ungentle; I have not
heard the match of that in anyone.”
“It is most misconvenient at least,” said I; “and I think my father (honest
man!) must have been wool-gathering to learn me Latin in the place of it.

But you see I do the best I can, and just stand up like Lot’s wife and let
them hammer at me.”
“Do you know what makes me smile?” said she. “Well, it is this. I am
made this way, that I should have been a man child. In my own thoughts it
is so I am always; and I go on telling myself about this thing that is to befall
and that. Then it comes to the place of the fighting, and it comes over me
that I am only a girl at all events, and cannot hold a sword or give one good
blow; and then I have to twist my story round about, so that the fighting is
to stop, and yet me have the best of it, just like you and the lieutenant; and I
am the boy that makes the fine speeches all through, like Mr. David
Balfour.”
“You are a bloodthirsty maid,” said I.
“Well, I know it is good to sew and spin, and to make samplers,” she
said, “but if you were to do nothing else in the great world, I think you will
say yourself it is a driech business; and it is not that I want to kill, I think.
Did ever you kill anyone?”
“That I have, as it chances. Two, no less, and me still a lad that should be
at the college,” said I. “But yet, in the look-back, I take no shame for it.”
“But how did you feel, then—after it?” she asked.
‘”Deed, I sat down and grat like a bairn,” said I.
“I know that, too,” she cried. “I feel where these tears should come from.
And at any rate, I would not wish to kill, only to be Catherine Douglas that
put her arm through the staples of the bolt, where it was broken. That is my
chief hero. Would you not love to die so—for your king?” she asked.
“Troth,” said I, “my affection for my king, God bless the puggy face of
him, is under more control; and I thought I saw death so near to me this day
already, that I am rather taken up with the notion of living.”
“Right,” she said, “the right mind of a man! Only you must learn arms; I
would not like to have a friend that cannot strike. But it will not have been
with the sword that you killed these two?”
“Indeed, no,” said I, “but with a pair of pistols. And a fortunate thing it
was the men were so near-hand to me, for I am about as clever with the
pistols as I am with the sword.”
So then she drew from me the story of our battle in the brig, which I had
omitted in my first account of my affairs.

“Yes,” said she, “you are brave. And your friend, I admire and love him.”
“Well, and I think anyone would!” said I. “He has his faults like other
folk; but he is brave and staunch and kind, God bless him! That will be a
strange day when I forget Alan.” And the thought of him, and that it was
within my choice to speak with him that night, had almost overcome me.
“And where will my head be gone that I have not told my news!” she
cried, and spoke of a letter from her father, bearing that she might visit him
to-morrow in the castle whither he was now transferred, and that his affairs
were mending. “You do not like to hear it,” said she. “Will you judge my
father and not know him?”
“I am a thousand miles from judging,” I replied. “And I give you my
word I do rejoice to know your heart is lightened. If my face fell at all, as I
suppose it must, you will allow this is rather an ill day for compositions,
and the people in power extremely ill persons to be compounding with. I
have Simon Fraser extremely heavy on my stomach still.”
“Ah!” she cried, “you will not be evening these two; and you should bear
in mind that Prestongrange and James More, my father, are of the one
blood.”
“I never heard tell of that,” said I.
“It is rather singular how little you are acquainted with,” said she. “One
part may call themselves Grant, and one Macgregor, but they are still of the
same clan. They are all the sons of Alpin, from whom, I think, our country
has its name.”
“What country is that?” I asked.
“My country and yours,” said she.
“This is my day for discovering I think,” said I, “for I always thought the
name of it was Scotland.”
“Scotland is the name of what you call Ireland,” she replied. “But the old
ancient true name of this place that we have our foot-soles on, and that our
bones are made of, will be Alban. It was Alban they called it when our
forefathers will be fighting for it against Rome and Alexander; and it is
called so still in your own tongue that you forget.”
“Troth,” said I, “and that I never learned!” For I lacked heart to take her
up about the Macedonian.

“But your fathers and mothers talked it, one generation with another,”
said she. “And it was sung about the cradles before you or me were ever
dreamed of; and your name remembers it still. Ah, if you could talk that
language you would find me another girl. The heart speaks in that tongue.”
I had a meal with the two ladies, all very good, served in fine old plate,
and the wine excellent, for it seems that Mrs. Ogilvy was rich. Our talk, too,
was pleasant enough; but as soon as I saw the sun decline sharply and the
shadows to run out long, I rose to take my leave. For my mind was now
made up to say farewell to Alan; and it was needful I should see the trysting
wood, and reconnoitre it, by daylight. Catriona came with me as far as to
the garden gate.
“It is long till I see you now?” she asked.
“It is beyond my judging,” I replied. “It will be long, it may be never.”
“It may be so,” said she. “And you are sorry?”
I bowed my head, looking upon her.
“So am I, at all events,” said she. “I have seen you but a small time, but I
put you very high. You are true, you are brave; in time I think you will be
more of a man yet. I will be proud to hear of that. If you should speed
worse, if it will come to fall as we are afraid—O well! think you have the
one friend. Long after you are dead and me an old wife, I will be telling the
bairns about David Balfour, and my tears running. I will be telling how we
parted, and what I said to you, and did to you. God go with you and guide
you, prays your little friend: so I said—I will be telling them—and here is
what I did.”
She took up my hand and kissed it. This so surprised my spirits that I
cried out like one hurt. The colour came strong in her face, and she looked
at me and nodded.
“O yes, Mr. David,” said she, “that is what I think of you. The head goes
with the lips.”
I could read in her face high spirit, and a chivalry like a brave child’s; not
anything besides. She kissed my hand, as she had kissed Prince Charlie’s,
with a higher passion than the common kind of clay has any sense of.
Nothing before had taught me how deep I was her lover, nor how far I had
yet to climb to make her think of me in such a character. Yet I could tell

myself I had advanced some way, and that her heart had beat and her blood
flowed at thoughts of me.
After that honour she had done me I could offer no more trivial civility. It
was even hard for me to speak; a certain lifting in her voice had knocked
directly at the door of my own tears.
“I praise God for your kindness, dear,” said I. “Farewell, my little
friend!” giving her that name which she had given to herself; with which I
bowed and left her.
My way was down the glen of the Leith River, towards Stockbridge and
Silvermills. A path led in the foot of it, the water bickered and sang in the
midst; the sunbeams overhead struck out of the west among long shadows
and (as the valley turned) made like a new scene and a new world of it at
every corner. With Catriona behind and Alan before me, I was like one
lifted up. The place besides, and the hour, and the talking of the water,
infinitely pleased me; and I lingered in my steps and looked before and
behind me as I went. This was the cause, under Providence, that I spied a
little in my rear a red head among some bushes.
Anger sprang in my heart, and I turned straight about and walked at a
stiff pace to where I came from. The path lay close by the bushes where I
had remarked the head. The cover came to the wayside, and as I passed I
was all strung up to meet and to resist an onfall. No such thing befell, I
went by unmeddled with; and at that fear increased upon me. It was still day
indeed, but the place exceeding solitary. If my haunters had let slip that fair
occasion I could but judge they aimed at something more than David
Balfour. The lives of Alan and James weighed upon my spirit with the
weight of two grown bullocks.
Catriona was yet in the garden walking by herself.
“Catriona,” said I, “you see me back again.”
“With a changed face,” said she.
“I carry two men’s lives besides my own,” said I. “It would be a sin and
shame not to walk carefully. I was doubtful whether I did right to come
here. I would like it ill, if it was by that means we were brought to harm.”
“I could tell you one that would be liking it less, and will like little
enough to hear you talking at this very same time,” she cried. “What have I
done, at all events?”

“O, you I you are not alone,” I replied. “But since I went off I have been
dogged again, and I can give you the name of him that follows me. It is
Neil, son of Duncan, your man or your father’s.”
“To be sure you are mistaken there,” she said, with a white face. “Neil is
in Edinburgh on errands from my father.”
“It is what I fear,” said I, “the last of it. But for his being in Edinburgh I
think I can show you another of that. For sure you have some signal, a
signal of need, such as would bring him to your help, if he was anywhere
within the reach of ears and legs?”
“Why, how will you know that?” says she.
“By means of a magical talisman God gave to me when I was born, and
the name they call it by is Common-sense,” said I. “Oblige me so far as
make your signal, and I will show you the red head of Neil.”
No doubt but I spoke bitter and sharp. My heart was bitter. I blamed
myself and the girl and hated both of us: her for the vile crew that she was
come of, myself for my wanton folly to have stuck my head in such a byke
of wasps.
Catriona set her fingers to her lips and whistled once, with an exceeding
clear, strong, mounting note, as full as a ploughman’s. A while we stood
silent; and I was about to ask her to repeat the same, when I heard the sound
of some one bursting through the bushes below on the braeside. I pointed in
that direction with a smile, and presently Neil leaped into the garden. His
eyes burned, and he had a black knife (as they call it on the Highland side)
naked in his hand; but, seeing me beside his mistress, stood like a man
struck.
“He has come to your call,” said I; “judge how near he was to Edinburgh,
or what was the nature of your father’s errands. Ask himself. If I am to lose
my life, or the lives of those that hang by me, through the means of your
clan, let me go where I have to go with my eyes open.”
She addressed him tremulously in the Gaelic. Remembering Alan’s
anxious civility in that particular, I could have laughed out loud for
bitterness; here, sure, in the midst of these suspicions, was the hour she
should have stuck by English.
Twice or thrice they spoke together, and I could make out that Neil (for
all his obsequiousness) was an angry man.

Then she turned to me. “He swears it is not,” she said.
“Catriona,” said I, “do you believe the man yourself?”
She made a gesture like wringing the hands.
“How will I can know?” she cried.
“But I must find some means to know,” said I. “I cannot continue to go
dovering round in the black night with two men’s lives at my girdle!
Catriona, try to put yourself in my place, as I vow to God I try hard to put
myself in yours. This is no kind of talk that should ever have fallen between
me and you; no kind of talk; my heart is sick with it. See, keep him here till
two of the morning, and I care not. Try him with that.”
They spoke together once more in the Gaelic.
“He says he has James More my father’s errand,” said she. She was
whiter than ever, and her voice faltered as she said it.
“It is pretty plain now,” said I, “and may God forgive the wicked!”
She said never anything to that, but continued gazing at me with the same
white face.
“This is a fine business,” said I again. “Am I to fall, then, and those two
along with me?”
“O, what am I to do?” she cried. “Could I go against my father’s orders,
him in prison, in the danger of his life!”
“But perhaps we go too fast,” said I. “This may be a lie too. He may have
no right orders; all may be contrived by Simon, and your father knowing
nothing.”
She burst out weeping between the pair of us; and my heart smote me
hard, for I thought this girl was in a dreadful situation.
“Here,” said I, “keep him but the one hour; and I’ll chance it, and may
God bless you.”
She put out her hand to me, “I will he needing one good word,” she
sobbed.
“The full hour, then?” said I, keeping her hand in mine. “Three lives of it,
my lass!”
“The full hour!” she said, and cried aloud on her Redeemer to forgive
her.

I thought it no fit place for me, and fled.

CHAPTER XI.
THE WOOD BY SILVERMILLS

I lost no time, but down through the valley and by Stockbridge and
Silvermills as hard as I could stave. It was Alan’s tryst to be every night
between twelve and two “in a bit scrog of wood by east of Silvermills and
by south the south mill-lade.” This I found easy enough, where it grew on a
steep brae, with the mill-lade flowing swift and deep along the foot of it;
and here I began to walk slower and to reflect more reasonably on my
employment. I saw I had made but a fool’s bargain with Catriona. It was not
to be supposed that Neil was sent alone upon his errand, but perhaps he was
the only man belonging to James More; in which case I should have done
all I could to hang Catriona’s father, and nothing the least material to help
myself. To tell the truth, I fancied neither one of these ideas. Suppose by
holding back Neil, the girl should have helped to hang her father, I thought
she would never forgive herself this side of time. And suppose there were
others pursuing me that moment, what kind of a gift was I come bringing to
Alan? and how would I like that?
I was up with the west end of that wood when these two considerations
struck me like a cudgel. My feet stopped of themselves and my heart along
with them. “What wild game is this that I have been playing?” thought I;
and turned instantly upon my heels to go elsewhere.
This brought my face to Silvermills; the path came past the village with a
crook, but all plainly visible; and, Highland or Lowland, there was nobody
stirring. Here was my advantage, here was just such a conjuncture as
Stewart had counselled me to profit by, and I ran by the side of the mill-
lade, fetched about beyond the east corner of the wood, threaded through
the midst of it, and returned to the west selvage, whence I could again
command the path, and yet be myself unseen. Again it was all empty, and
my heart began to rise.

For more than an hour I sat close in the border of the trees, and no hare or
eagle could have kept a more particular watch. When that hour began the
sun was already set, but the sky still all golden and the daylight clear;
before the hour was done it had fallen to be half mirk, the images and
distances of things were mingled, and observation began to be difficult. All
that time not a foot of man had come east from Silvermills, and the few that
had gone west were honest countryfolk and their wives upon the road to
bed. If I were tracked by the most cunning spies in Europe, I judged it was
beyond the course of nature they could have any jealousy of where I was:
and going a little further home into the wood I lay down to wait for Alan.
The strain of my attention had been great, for I had watched not the path
only, but every bush and field within my vision. That was now at an end.
The moon, which was in her first quarter, glinted a little in the wood; all
round there was a stillness of the country; and as I lay there on my back, the
next three or four hours, I had a fine occasion to review my conduct.
Two things became plain to me first: that I had no right to go that day to
Dean, and (having gone there) had now no right to be lying where I was.
This (where Alan was to come) was just the one wood in all broad Scotland
that was, by every proper feeling, closed against me; I admitted that, and
yet stayed on, wondering at myself. I thought of the measure with which I
had meted to Catriona that same night; how I had prated of the two lives I
carried, and had thus forced her to enjeopardy her father’s; and how I was
here exposing them again, it seemed in wantonness. A good conscience is
eight parts of courage. No sooner had I lost conceit of my behaviour, than I
seemed to stand disarmed amidst a throng of terrors. Of a sudden I sat up.
How if I went now to Prestongrange, caught him (as I still easily might)
before he slept, and made a full submission? Who could blame me? Not
Stewart the Writer; I had but to say that I was followed, despaired of getting
clear, and so gave in. Not Catriona: here, too, I had my answer ready; that I
could not bear she should expose her father. So, in a moment, I could lay all
these troubles by, which were after all and truly none of mine; swim clear of
the Appin Murder; get forth out of hand-stroke of all the Stewarts and
Campbells, all the Whigs and Tories, in the land; and live henceforth to my
own mind, and be able to enjoy and to improve my fortunes, and devote
some hours of my youth to courting Catriona, which would be surely a
more suitable occupation than to hide and run and be followed like a hunted
thief, and begin over again the dreadful miseries of my escape with Alan.

At first I thought no shame of this capitulation; I was only amazed I had
not thought upon the thing and done it earlier; and began to inquire into the
causes of the change. These I traced to my lowness of spirits, that back to
my late recklessness, and that again to the common, old, public,
disconsidered sin of self-indulgence. Instantly the text came in my head,
“How can Satan cast out Satan?” What? (I thought) I had, by self-
indulgence; and the following of pleasant paths, and the lure of a young
maid, cast myself wholly out of conceit with my own character, and
jeopardised the lives of James and Alan? And I was to seek the way out by
the same road as I had entered in? No; the hurt that had been caused by self-
indulgence must be cured by self-denial; the flesh I had pampered must be
crucified. I looked about me for that course which I least liked to follow:
this was to leave the wood without waiting to see Alan, and go forth again
alone, in the dark and in the midst of my perplexed and dangerous fortunes.
I have been the more careful to narrate this passage of my reflections,
because I think it is of some utility, and may serve as an example to young
men. But there is reason (they say) in planting kale, and even in ethic and
religion, room for common sense. It was already close on Alan’s hour, and
the moon was down. If I left (as I could not very decently whistle to my
spies to follow me) they might miss me in the dark and tack themselves to
Alan by mistake. If I stayed, I could at the least of it set my friend upon his
guard which might prove his mere salvation. I had adventured other
peoples’ safety in a course of self-indulgence; to have endangered them
again, and now on a mere design of penance, would have been scarce
rational. Accordingly, I had scarce risen from my place ere I sat down again,
but already in a different frame of spirits, and equally marvelling at my past
weakness and rejoicing in my present composure.
Presently after came a crackling in the thicket. Putting my mouth near
down to the ground, I whistled a note or two, of Alan’s air; an answer came
in the like guarded tone, and soon we had knocked together in the dark.
“Is this you at last, Davie?” he whispered.
“Just myself,” said I.
“God, man, but I’ve been wearying to see ye!” says he. “I’ve had the
longest kind of a time. A’ day, I’ve had my dwelling into the inside of a
stack of hay, where I couldnae see the nebs of my ten fingers; and then two
hours of it waiting here for you, and you never coming! Dod, and ye’re

none too soon the way it is, with me to sail the morn! The morn? what am I
saying?—the day, I mean.”
“Ay, Alan, man, the day, sure enough,” said I. “It’s past twelve now,
surely, and ye sail the day. This’ll be a long road you have before you.”
“We’ll have a long crack of it first,” said he.
“Well, indeed, and I have a good deal it will be telling you to hear,” said
I.
And I told him what behooved, making rather a jumble of it, but clear
enough when done. He heard me out with very few questions, laughing here
and there like a man delighted: and the sound of his laughing (above all
there, in the dark, where neither one of us could see the other) was
extraordinary friendly to my heart.
“Ay, Davie, ye’re a queer character,” says he, when I had done: “a queer
bitch after a’, and I have no mind of meeting with the like of ye. As for your
story, Prestongrange is a Whig like yoursel’, so I’ll say the less of him; and,
dod! I believe he was the best friend ye had, if ye could only trust him. But
Simon Fraser and James More are my ain kind of cattle, and I’ll give them
the name that they deserve. The muckle black deil was father to the Frasers,
a’body kens that; and as for the Gregara, I never could abye the reek of
them since I could stotter on two feet. I bloodied the nose of one, I mind,
when I was still so wambly on my legs that I cowped upon the top of him.
A proud man was my father that day, God rest him! and I think he had the
cause. I’ll never can deny but what Robin was something of a piper,” he
added; “but as for James More, the deil guide him for me!”
“One thing we have to consider,” said I. “Was Charles Stewart right or
wrong? Is it only me they’re after, or the pair of us?”
“And what’s your ain opinion, you that’s a man of so much experience?”
said he.
“It passes me,” said I.
“And me too,” says Alan. “Do ye think this lass would keep her word to
ye?” he asked.
“I do that,” said I.
“Well, there’s nae telling,” said he. “And anyway, that’s over and done:
he’ll be joined to the rest of them lang syne.”

“How many would ye think there would be of them?” I asked.
“That depends,” said Alan. “If it was only you, they would likely send
two-three lively, brisk young birkies, and if they thought that I was to
appear in the employ, I daresay ten or twelve,” said he.
It was no use, I gave a little crack of laughter.
“And I think your own two eyes will have seen me drive that number, or
the double of it, nearer hand!” cries he.
“It matters the less,” said I, “because I am well rid of them for this time.”
“Nae doubt that’s your opinion,” said he; “but I wouldnae be the least
surprised if they were hunkering this wood. Ye see, David man; they’ll be
Hieland folk. There’ll be some Frasers, I’m thinking, and some of the
Gregara; and I would never deny but what the both of them, and the
Gregara in especial, were clever experienced persons. A man kens little till
he’s driven a spreagh of neat cattle (say) ten miles through a throng lowland
country and the black soldiers maybe at his tail. It’s there that I learned a
great part of my penetration. And ye need nae tell me: it’s better than war;
which is the next best, however, though generally rather a bauchle of a
business. Now the Gregara have had grand practice.”
“No doubt that’s a branch of education that was left out with me,” said I.
“And I can see the marks of it upon ye constantly,” said Alan. “But that’s
the strange thing about you folk of the college learning: ye’re ignorat, and
ye cannae see ’t. Wae’s me for my Greek and Hebrew; but, man, I ken that I
dinnae ken them—there’s the differ of it. Now, here’s you. Ye lie on your
wame a bittie in the bield of this wood, and ye tell me that ye’ve cuist off
these Frasers and Macgregors. Why? Because I couldnae see them, says
you. Ye blockhead, that’s their livelihood.”
“Take the worst of it,” said I, “and what are we to do?”
“I am thinking of that same,” said he. “We might twine. It wouldnae be
greatly to my taste; and forbye that, I see reasons against it. First, it’s now
unco dark, and it’s just humanly possible we might give them the clean slip.
If we keep together, we make but the ae line of it; if we gang separate, we
make twae of them: the more likelihood to stave in upon some of these
gentry of yours. And then, second, if they keep the track of us, it may come
to a fecht for it yet, Davie; and then, I’ll confess I would be blythe to have
you at my oxter, and I think you would be none the worse of having me at

yours. So, by my way of it, we should creep out of this wood no further
gone than just the inside of next minute, and hold away east for Gillane,
where I’m to find my ship. It’ll be like old days while it lasts, Davie; and
(come the time) we’ll have to think what you should be doing. I’m wae to
leave ye here, wanting me.”
“Have with ye, then!” says I. “Do ye gang back where you were
stopping?”
“Deil a fear!” said Alan. “They were good folks to me, but I think they
would be a good deal disappointed if they saw my bonny face again. For
(the way times go) I am nae just what ye could call a Walcome Guest.
Which makes me the keener for your company, Mr. David Balfour of the
Shaws, and set ye up! For, leave aside twa cracks here in the wood with
Charlie Stewart, I have scarce said black or white since the day we parted at
Corstorphine.”
With which he rose from his place, and we began to move quietly
eastward through the wood.

CHAPTER XII.
ON THE MARCH AGAIN WITH ALAN

It was likely between one and two; the moon (as I have said) was down; a
strongish wind, carrying a heavy wrack of cloud, had set in suddenly from
the west; and we began our movement in as black a night as ever a fugitive
or a murderer wanted. The whiteness of the path guided us into the sleeping
town of Broughton, thence through Picardy, and beside my old
acquaintance the gibbet of the two thieves. A little beyond we made a useful
beacon, which was a light in an upper window of Lochend. Steering by this,
but a good deal at random, and with some trampling of the harvest, and
stumbling and falling down upon the banks, we made our way across
country, and won forth at last upon the linky, boggy muirland that they call
the Figgate Whins. Here, under a bush of whin, we lay down the remainder
of that night and slumbered.
The day called us about five. A beautiful morning it was, the high
westerly wind still blowing strong, but the clouds all blown away to
Europe. Alan was already sitting up and smiling to himself. It was my first
sight of my friend since we were parted, and I looked upon him with
enjoyment. He had still the same big great-coat on his back; but (what was
new) he had now a pair of knitted boot-hose drawn above the knee.
Doubtless these were intended for disguise; but, as the day promised to be
warm, he made a most unseasonable figure.
“Well, Davie,” said he, “is this no a bonny morning? Here is a day that
looks the way that a day ought to. This is a great change of it from the belly
of my haystack; and while you were there sottering and sleeping I have
done a thing that maybe I do very seldom.”
“And what was that?” said I.
“O, just said my prayers,” said he.

“And where are my gentry, as ye call them?” I asked.
“Gude kens,” says he; “and the short and the long of it is that we must
take our chance of them. Up with your foot-soles, Davie! Forth, Fortune,
once again of it! And a bonny walk we are like to have.”
So we went east by the beach of the sea, towards where the salt-pans
were smoking in by the Esk mouth. No doubt there was a by-ordinary
bonny blink of morning sun on Arthur’s Seat and the green Pentlands; and
the pleasantness of the day appeared to set Alan among nettles.
“I feel like a gomeral,” says he, “to be leaving Scotland on a day like
this. It sticks in my head; I would maybe like it better to stay here and
hing.”
“Ay, but ye wouldnae, Alan,” said I.
“No, but what France is a good place too,” he explained; “but it’s some
way no the same. It’s brawer I believe, but it’s no Scotland. I like it fine
when I’m there, man; yet I kind of weary for Scots divots and the Scots
peat-reek.”
“If that’s all you have to complain of, Alan, it’s no such great affair,” said
I.
“And it sets me ill to be complaining, whatever,” said he, “and me but
new out of yon deil’s haystack.”
“And so you were unco weary of your haystack?” I asked.
“Weary’s nae word for it,” said he. “I’m not just precisely a man that’s
easily cast down; but I do better with caller air and the lift above my head.
I’m like the auld Black Douglas (wasnae’t?) that likit better to hear the
laverock sing than the mouse cheep. And yon place, ye see, Davie—whilk
was a very suitable place to hide in, as I’m free to own—was pit mirk from
dawn to gloaming. There were days (or nights, for how would I tell one
from other?) that seemed to me as long as a long winter.”
“How did you know the hour to bide your tryst?” I asked.
“The goodman brought me my meat and a drop brandy, and a candle-
dowp to eat it by, about eleeven,” said he. “So, when I had swallowed a bit,
it would he time to be getting to the wood. There I lay and wearied for ye
sore, Davie,” says he, laying his hand on my shoulder “and guessed when
the two hours would be about by—unless Charlie Stewart would come and

tell me on his watch—and then back to the dooms haystack. Na, it was a
driech employ, and praise the Lord that I have warstled through with it!”
“What did you do with yourself?” I asked.
“Faith,” said he, “the best I could! Whiles I played at the knucklebones.
I’m an extraordinar good hand at the knucklebones, but it’s a poor piece of
business playing with naebody to admire ye. And whiles I would make
songs.”
“What were they about?” says I.
“O, about the deer and the heather,” says he, “and about the ancient old
chiefs that are all by with it lang syne, and just about what songs are about
in general. And then whiles I would make believe I had a set of pipes and I
was playing. I played some grand springs, and I thought I played them
awful bonny; I vow whiles that I could hear the squeal of them! But the
great affair is that it’s done with.”
With that he carried me again to my adventures, which he heard all over
again with more particularity, and extraordinary approval, swearing at
intervals that I was “a queer character of a callant.”
“So ye were frich’ened of Sim Fraser?” he asked once.
“In troth was I!” cried I.
“So would I have been, Davie,” said he. “And that is indeed a driedful
man. But it is only proper to give the deil his due: and I can tell you he is a
most respectable person on the field of war.”
“Is he so brave?” I asked.
“Brave!” said he. “He is as brave as my steel sword.”
The story of my duel set him beside himself.
“To think of that!” he cried. “I showed ye the trick in Corrynakiegh too.
And three times—three times disarmed! It’s a disgrace upon my character
that learned ye! Here, stand up, out with your airn; ye shall walk no step
beyond this place upon the road till ye can do yoursel’ and me mair credit.”
“Alan,” said I, “this is midsummer madness. Here is no time for fencing
lessons.”
“I cannae well say no to that,” he admitted. “But three times, man! And
you standing there like a straw bogle and rinning to fetch your ain sword
like a doggie with a pocket-napkin! David, this man Duncansby must be

something altogether by-ordinar! He maun be extraordinar skilly. If I had
the time, I would gang straight back and try a turn at him mysel’. The man
must be a provost.”
“You silly fellow,” said I, “you forget it was just me.”
“Na,” said he, “but three times!”
“When ye ken yourself that I am fair incompetent,” I cried.
“Well, I never heard tell the equal of it,” said he.
“I promise you the one thing, Alan,” said I. “The next time that we
forgather, I’ll be better learned. You shall not continue to bear the disgrace
of a friend that cannot strike.”
“Ay, the next time!” says he. “And when will that be, I would like to
ken?”
“Well, Alan, I have had some thoughts of that, too,” said I; “and my plan
is this. It’s my opinion to be called an advocate.”
“That’s but a weary trade, Davie,” says Alan, “and rather a blagyard one
forby. Ye would be better in a king’s coat than that.”
“And no doubt that would be the way to have us meet,” cried I. “But as
you’ll be in King Lewie’s coat, and I’ll be in King Geordie’s, we’ll have a
dainty meeting of it.”
“There’s some sense in that,” he admitted.
“An advocate, then, it’ll have to be,” I continued, “and I think it a more
suitable trade for a gentleman that was three times disarmed. But the beauty
of the thing is this: that one of the best colleges for that kind of learning—
and the one where my kinsman, Pilrig, made his studies—is the college of
Leyden in Holland. Now, what say you, Alan? Could not a cadet of Royal
Ecossais get a furlough, slip over the marches, and call in upon a Leyden
student?”
“Well, and I would think he could!” cried he. “Ye see, I stand well in with
my colonel, Count Drummond-Melfort; and, what’s mair to the purpose I
have a cousin of mine lieutenant-colonel in a regiment of the Scots-Dutch.
Naething could be mair proper than what I would get a leave to see
Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart of Halkett’s. And Lord Melfort, who is a very
scienteefic kind of a man, and writes books like Cæsar, would be doubtless
very pleased to have the advantage of my observes.”

“Is Lord Meloort an author, then?” I asked, for much as Alan thought of
soldiers, I thought more of the gentry that write books.
“The very same, Davie,” said he. “One would think a colonel would have
something better to attend to. But what can I say that make songs?”
“Well, then,” said I, “it only remains you should give me an address to
write you at in France; and as soon as I am got to Leyden I will send you
mine.”
“The best will be to write me in the care of my chieftain,” said he,
“Charles Stewart, of Ardsheil, Esquire, at the town of Melons, in the Isle of
France. It might take long, or it might take short, but it would aye get to my
hands at the last of it.”
We had a haddock to our breakfast in Musselburgh, where it amused me
vastly to hear Alan. His great-coat and boot-hose were extremely
remarkable this warm morning, and perhaps some hint of an explanation
had been wise; but Alan went into that matter like a business, or I should
rather say, like a diversion. He engaged the goodwife of the house with
some compliments upon the rizzoring of our haddocks; and the whole of the
rest of our stay held her in talk about a cold he had taken on his stomach,
gravely relating all manner of symptoms and sufferings, and hearing with a
vast show of interest all the old wives’ remedies she could supply him with
in return.
We left Musselburgh before the first ninepenny coach was due from
Edinburgh for (as Alan said) that was a rencounter we might very well
avoid. The wind although still high, was very mild, the sun shone strong,
and Alan began to suffer in proportion. From Prestonpans he had me aside
to the field of Gladsmuir, where he exerted himself a great deal more than
needful to describe the stages of the battle. Thence, at his old round pace,
we travelled to Cockenzie. Though they were building herring-busses there
at Mrs. Cadell’s, it seemed a desert-like, back-going town, about half full of
ruined houses; but the ale-house was clean, and Alan, who was now in a
glowing heat, must indulge himself with a bottle of ale, and carry on to the
new luckie with the old story of the cold upon his stomach, only now the
symptoms were all different.
I sat listening; and it came in my mind that I had scarce ever heard him
address three serious words to any woman, but he was always drolling and
fleering and making a private mock of them, and yet brought to that

business a remarkable degree of energy and interest. Something to this
effect I remarked to him, when the good-wife (as chanced) was called away.
“What do ye want?” says he. “A man should aye put his best foot forrit
with the womankind; he should aye give them a bit of a story to divert
them, the poor lambs! It’s what ye should learn to attend to, David; ye
should get the principles, it’s like a trade. Now, if this had been a young
lassie, or onyways bonnie, she would never have heard tell of my stomach,
Davie. But aince they’re too old to be seeking joes, they a’ set up to be
apotecaries. Why? What do I ken? They’ll be just the way God made them,
I suppose. But I think a man would be a gomeral that didnae give his
attention to the same.”
And here, the luckie coming back, he turned from me as if with
impatience to renew their former conversation. The lady had branched some
while before from Alan’s stomach to the case of a goodbrother of her own
in Aberlady, whose last sickness and demise she was describing at
extraordinary length. Sometimes it was merely dull, sometimes both dull
and awful, for she talked with unction. The upshot was that I fell in a deep
muse, looking forth of the window on the road, and scarce marking what I
saw. Presently had any been looking they might have seen me to start.
“We pit a fomentation to his feet,” the good-wife was saying, “and a het
stane to his wame, and we gied him hyssop and water of pennyroyal, and
fine, clean balsam of sulphur for the hoast. . . ”
“Sir,” says I, cutting very quietly in, “there’s a friend of mine gone by the
house.”
“Is that e’en sae?” replies Alan, as though it were a thing of small
account. And then, “Ye were saying, mem?” says he; and the wearyful wife
went on.
Presently, however, he paid her with a half-crown piece, and she must go
forth after the change.
“Was it him with the red head?” asked Alan.
“Ye have it,” said I.
“What did I tell you in the wood?” he cried. “And yet it’s strange he
should be here too! Was he his lane?”
“His lee-lane for what I could see,” said I.
“Did he gang by?” he asked.

“Straight by,” said I, “and looked neither to the right nor left.”
“And that’s queerer yet,” said Alan. “It sticks in my mind, Davie, that we
should be stirring. But where to?—deil hae’t! This is like old days fairly,”
cries he.
“There is one big differ, though,” said I, “that now we have money in our
pockets.”
“And another big differ, Mr. Balfour,” says he, “that now we have dogs at
our tail. They’re on the scent; they’re in full cry, David. It’s a bad business
and be damned to it.” And he sat thinking hard with a look of his that I
knew well.
“I’m saying, Luckie,” says he, when the goodwife returned, “have ye a
back road out of this change house?”
She told him there was and where it led to.
“Then, sir,” says he to me, “I think that will be the shortest road for us.
And here’s good-bye to ye, my braw woman; and I’ll no forget thon of the
cinnamon water.”
We went out by way of the woman’s kale yard, and up a lane among
fields. Alan looked sharply to all sides, and seeing we were in a little hollow
place of the country, out of view of men, sat down.
“Now for a council of war, Davie,” said he. “But first of all, a bit lesson
to ye. Suppose that I had been like you, what would yon old wife have
minded of the pair of us! Just that we had gone out by the back gate. And
what does she mind now? A fine, canty, friendly, cracky man, that suffered
with the stomach, poor body! and was real ta’en up about the goodbrother.
O man, David, try and learn to have some kind of intelligence!”
“I’ll try, Alan,” said I.
“And now for him of the red head,” says he; “was he gaun fast or slow?”
“Betwixt and between,” said I.
“No kind of a hurry about the man?” he asked.
“Never a sign of it,” said I.
“Nhm!” said Alan, “it looks queer. We saw nothing of them this morning
on the Whins; he’s passed us by, he doesnae seem to be looking, and yet
here he is on our road! Dod, Davie, I begin to take a notion. I think it’s no

you they’re seeking, I think it’s me; and I think they ken fine where they’re
gaun.”
“They ken?” I asked.
“I think Andie Scougal’s sold me—him or his mate wha kent some part
of the affair—or else Charlie’s clerk callant, which would be a pity too,”
says Alan; “and if you askit me for just my inward private conviction, I
think there’ll be heads cracked on Gillane sands.”
“Alan,” I cried, “if you’re at all right there’ll be folk there and to spare.
It’ll be small service to crack heads.”
“It would aye be a satisfaction though,” says Alan. “But bide a bit; bide a
bit; I’m thinking—and thanks to this bonny westland wind, I believe I’ve
still a chance of it. It’s this way, Davie. I’m no trysted with this man
Scougal till the gloaming comes. But,” says he, “if I can get a bit of a wind
out of the west I’ll be there long or that,” he says, “and lie-to for ye behind
the Isle of Fidra. Now if your gentry kens the place, they ken the time
forbye. Do ye see me coming, Davie? Thanks to Johnnie Cope and other
red-coat gomerals, I should ken this country like the back of my hand; and
if ye’re ready for another bit run with Alan Breck, we’ll can cast back
inshore, and come to the seaside again by Dirleton. If the ship’s there, we’ll
try and get on board of her. If she’s no there, I’ll just have to get back to my
weary haystack. But either way of it, I think we will leave your gentry
whistling on their thumbs.”
“I believe there’s some chance in it,” said I. “Have on with ye, Alan!”

CHAPTER XIII.
GILLANE SANDS

I did not profit by Alan’s pilotage as he had done by his marchings under
General Cope; for I can scarce tell what way we went. It is my excuse that
we travelled exceeding fast. Some part we ran, some trotted, and the rest
walked at a vengeance of a pace. Twice, while we were at top speed, we ran
against country-folk; but though we plumped into the first from round a
corner, Alan was as ready as a loaded musket.
“Has ye seen my horse?” he gasped.
“Na, man, I haenae seen nae horse the day,” replied the countryman.
And Alan spared the time to explain to him that we were travelling “ride
and tie”; that our charger had escaped, and it was feared he had gone home
to Linton. Not only that, but he expended some breath (of which he had not
very much left) to curse his own misfortune and my stupidity which was
said to be its cause.
“Them that cannae tell the truth,” he observed to myself as we went on
again, “should be aye mindful to leave an honest, handy lee behind them. If
folk dinnae ken what ye’re doing, Davie, they’re terrible taken up with it;
but if they think they ken, they care nae mair for it than what I do for pease
porridge.”
As we had first made inland, so our road came in the end to lie very near
due north; the old Kirk of Aberlady for a landmark on the left; on the right,
the top of the Berwick Law; and it was thus we struck the shore again, not
far from Dirleton. From north Berwick west to Gillane Ness there runs a
string of four small islets, Craiglieth, the Lamb, Fidra, and Eyebrough,
notable by their diversity of size and shape. Fidra is the most particular,
being a strange grey islet of two humps, made the more conspicuous by a
piece of ruin; and I mind that (as we drew closer to it) by some door or

window of these ruins the sea peeped through like a man’s eye. Under the
lee of Fidra there is a good anchorage in westerly winds, and there, from a
far way off, we could see the Thistle riding.
The shore in face of these islets is altogether waste. Here is no dwelling
of man, and scarce any passage, or at most of vagabond children running at
their play. Gillane is a small place on the far side of the Ness, the folk of
Dirleton go to their business in the inland fields, and those of North
Berwick straight to the sea-fishing from their haven; so that few parts of the
coast are lonelier. But I mind, as we crawled upon our bellies into that
multiplicity of heights and hollows, keeping a bright eye upon all sides, and
our hearts hammering at our ribs, there was such a shining of the sun and
the sea, such a stir of the wind in the bent grass, and such a bustle of down-
popping rabbits and up-flying gulls, that the desert seemed to me, like a
place alive. No doubt it was in all ways well chosen for a secret
embarcation, if the secret had been kept; and even now that it was out, and
the place watched, we were able to creep unperceived to the front of the
sandhills, where they look down immediately on the beach and sea.
But here Alan came to a full stop.
“Davie,” said he, “this is a kittle passage! As long as we lie here we’re
safe; but I’m nane sae muckle nearer to my ship or the coast of France. And
as soon as we stand up and signal the brig, it’s another matter. For where
will your gentry be, think ye?”
“Maybe they’re no come yet,” said I. “And even if they are, there’s one
clear matter in our favour. They’ll be all arranged to take us, that’s true. But
they’ll have arranged for our coming from the east and here we are upon
their west.”
“Ay,” says Alan, “I wish we were in some force, and this was a battle, we
would have bonnily out-manœuvred them! But it isnae, Davit; and the way
it is, is a wee thing less inspiring to Alan Breck. I swither, Davie.”
“Time flies, Alan,” said I.
“I ken that,” said Alan. “I ken naething else, as the French folk say. But
this is a dreidful case of heids or tails. O! if I could but ken where your
gentry were!”
“Alan,” said I, “this is no like you. It’s got to be now or never.”
“This is no me, quo’ he,”

sang Alan, with a queer face betwixt shame and drollery.
“Neither you nor me, quo’ he, neither you nor me.
Wow, na, Johnnie man! neither you nor me.”

And then of a sudden he stood straight up where he was, and with a
handkerchief flying in his right hand, marched down upon the beach. I
stood up myself, but lingered behind him, scanning the sand-hills to the
east. His appearance was at first unremarked: Scougal not expecting him so
early, and my gentry watching on the other side. Then they awoke on board
the Thistle, and it seemed they had all in readiness, for there was scarce a
second’s bustle on the deck before we saw a skiff put round her stern and
begin to pull lively for the coast. Almost at the same moment of time, and
perhaps half a mile away towards Gillane Ness, the figure of a man
appeared for a blink upon a sandhill, waving with his arms; and though he
was gone again in the same flash, the gulls in that part continued a little
longer to fly wild.
Alan had not seen this, looking straight to seaward at the ship and skiff.
“It maun be as it will!” said he, when I had told him, “Weel may yon
boatie row, or my craig’ll have to thole a raxing.”
That part of the beach was long and flat, and excellent walking when the
tide was down; a little cressy burn flowed over it in one place to the sea;
and the sandhills ran along the head of it like the rampart of a town. No eye
of ours could spy what was passing behind there in the bents, no hurry of
ours could mend the speed of the boat’s coming: time stood still with us
through that uncanny period of waiting.
“There is one thing I would like to ken,” say Alan. “I would like to ken
these gentry’s orders. We’re worth four hunner pound the pair of us: how if
they took the guns to us, Davie! They would get a bonny shot from the top
of that lang sandy bank.”
“Morally impossible,” said I. “The point is that they can have no guns.
This thing has been gone about too secret; pistols they may have, but never
guns.”
“I believe ye’ll be in the right,” says Alan. “For all which I am wearing a
good deal for yon boat.”
And he snapped his fingers and whistled to it like a dog.

It was now perhaps a third of the way in, and we ourselves already hard
on the margin of the sea, so that the soft sand rose over my shoes. There
was no more to do whatever but to wait, to look as much as we were able at
the creeping nearer of the boat, and as little as we could manage at the long
impenetrable front of the sandhills, over which the gulls twinkled and
behind which our enemies were doubtless marshalling.
“This is a fine, bright, caller place to get shot in,” says Alan suddenly;
“and, man, I wish that I had your courage!”
“Alan!” I cried, “what kind of talk is this of it! You’re just made of
courage; it’s the character of the man, as I could prove myself if there was
nobody else.”
“And you would be the more mistaken,” said he. “What makes the differ
with me is just my great penetration and knowledge of affairs. But for auld,
cauld, dour, deadly courage, I am not fit to hold a candle to yourself. Look
at us two here upon the sands. Here am I, fair hotching to be off; here’s you
(for all that I ken) in two minds of it whether you’ll no stop. Do you think
that I could do that, or would? No me! Firstly, because I havenae got the
courage and wouldnae daur; and secondly, because I am a man of so much
penetration and would see ye damned first.”
“It’s there ye’re coming, is it?” I cried. “Ah, man Alan, you can wile your
old wives, but you never can wile me.”
Remembrance of my temptation in the wood made me strong as iron.
“I have a tryst to keep,” I continued. “I am trysted with your cousin
Charlie; I have passed my word.”
“Braw trysts that you’ll can keep,” said Alan. “Ye’ll just mistryst aince
and for a’ with the gentry in the bents. And what for?” he went on with an
extreme threatening gravity. “Just tell me that, my mannie! Are ye to be
speerited away like Lady Grange? Are they to drive a dirk in your inside
and bury ye in the bents? Or is it to be the other way, and are they to bring
ye in with James? Are they folk to be trustit? Would ye stick your head in
the mouth of Sim Fraser and the ither Whigs?” he added with extraordinary
bitterness.
“Alan,” cried I, “they’re all rogues and liars, and I’m with ye there. The
more reason there should be one decent man in such a land of thieves! My
word is passed, and I’ll stick to it. I said long syne to your kinswoman that I

would stumble at no risk. Do ye mind of that?—the night Red Colin fell, it
was. No more I will, then. Here I stop. Prestongrange promised me my life:
if he’s to be mansworn, here I’ll have to die.”
“Aweel aweel,” said Alan.
All this time we had seen or heard no more of our pursuers. In truth we
had caught them unawares; their whole party (as I was to learn afterwards)
had not yet reached the scene; what there was of them was spread among
the bents towards Gillane. It was quite an affair to call them in and bring
them over, and the boat was making speed. They were besides but cowardly
fellows: a mere leash of Highland cattle-thieves, of several clans, no
gentleman there to be the captain and the more they looked at Alan and me
upon the beach, the less (I must suppose) they liked the look of us.
Whoever had betrayed Alan it was not the captain: he was in the skiff
himself, steering and stirring up his oarsmen, like a man with his heart in
his employ. Already he was near in, and the boat securing—already Alan’s
face had flamed crimson with the excitement of his deliverance, when our
friends in the bents, either in their despair to see their prey escape them or
with some hope of scaring Andie, raised suddenly a shrill cry of several
voices.
This sound, arising from what appeared to be a quite deserted coast, was
really very daunting, and the men in the boat held water instantly.
“What’s this of it?” sings out the captain, for he was come within an easy
hail.
“Freens o’mine,” says Alan, and began immediately to wade forth in the
shallow water towards the boat. “Davie,” he said, pausing, “Davie, are ye
no coming? I am swier to leave ye.”
“Not a hair of me,” said I.
“He stood part of a second where he was to his knees in the salt water,
hesitating.
“He that will to Cupar, maun to Cupar,” said he, and swashing in deeper
than his waist, was hauled into the skiff, which was immediately directed
for the ship.
I stood where he had left me, with my hands behind my back; Alan sat
with his head turned watching me; and the boat drew smoothly away. Of a
sudden I came the nearest hand to shedding tears, and seemed to myself the

most deserted solitary lad in Scotland. With that I turned my back upon the
sea and faced the sandhills. There was no sight or sound of man; the sun
shone on the wet sand and the dry, the wind blew in the bents, the gulls
made a dreary piping. As I passed higher up the beach, the sand-lice were
hopping nimbly about the stranded tangles. The devil any other sight or
sound in that unchancy place. And yet I knew there were folk there,
observing me, upon some secret purpose. They were no soldiers, or they
would have fallen on and taken us ere now; doubtless they were some
common rogues hired for my undoing, perhaps to kidnap, perhaps to
murder me outright. From the position of those engaged, the first was the
more likely; from what I knew of their character and ardency in this
business, I thought the second very possible; and the blood ran cold about
my heart.
I had a mad idea to loosen my sword in the scabbard; for though I was
very unfit to stand up like a gentleman blade to blade, I thought I could do
some scathe in a random combat. But I perceived in time the folly of
resistance. This was no doubt the joint “expedient” on which Prestongrange
and Fraser were agreed. The first, I was very sure, had done something to
secure my life; the second was pretty likely to have slipped in some
contrary hints into the ears of Neil and his companions; and if I were to
show bare steel I might play straight into the hands of my worst enemy and
seal my own doom.
These thoughts brought me to the head of the beach. I cast a look behind,
the boat was nearing the brig, and Alan flew his handkerchief for a farewell,
which I replied to with the waving of my hand. But Alan himself was
shrunk to a small thing in my view, alongside of this pass that lay in front of
me. I set my hat hard on my head, clenched my teeth, and went right before
me up the face of the sand-wreath. It made a hard climb, being steep, and
the sand like water underfoot. But I caught hold at last by the long bent-
grass on the brae-top, and pulled myself to a good footing. The same
moment men stirred and stood up here and there, six or seven of them,
ragged-like knaves, each with a dagger in his hand. The fair truth is, I shut
my eyes and prayed. When I opened them again, the rogues were crept the
least thing nearer without speech or hurry. Every eye was upon mine, which
struck me with a strange sensation of their brightness, and of the fear with
which they continued to approach me. I held out my hands empty;
whereupon one asked, with a strong Highland brogue, if I surrendered.

“Under protest,” said I, “if ye ken what that means, which I misdoubt.”
At that word, they came all in upon me like a flight of birds upon a
carrion, seized me, took my sword, and all the money from my pockets,
bound me hand and foot with some strong line, and cast me on a tussock of
bent. There they sat about their captive in a part of a circle and gazed upon
him silently like something dangerous, perhaps a lion or a tiger on the
spring. Presently this attention was relaxed. They drew nearer together, fell
to speech in the Gaelic, and very cynically divided my property before my
eyes. It was my diversion in this time that I could watch from my place the
progress of my friend’s escape. I saw the boat come to the brig and be
hoisted in, the sails fill, and the ship pass out seaward behind the isles and
by North Berwick.
In the course of two hours or so, more and more ragged Highlandmen
kept collecting. Neil among the first, until the party must have numbered
near a score. With each new arrival there was a fresh bout of talk, that
sounded like complaints and explanations; but I observed one thing, none of
those who came late had any share in the division of my spoils. The last
discussion was very violent and eager, so that once I thought they would
have quarrelled; on the heels of which their company parted, the bulk of
them returning westward in a troop, and only three, Neil and two others,
remaining sentries on the prisoner.
“I could name one who would be very ill pleased with your day’s work,
Neil Duncanson,” said I, when the rest had moved away.
He assured me in answer I should be tenderly used, for he knew he was
“acquent wi’ the leddy.”
This was all our talk, nor did any other son of man appear upon that
portion of the coast until the sun had gone down among the Highland
mountains, and the gloaming was beginning to grow dark. At which hour I
was aware of a long, lean, bony-like Lothian man of a very swarthy
countenance, that came towards us among the bents on a farm horse.
“Lads,” cried he, “has ye a paper like this?” and held up one in his hand.
Neil produced a second, which the newcomer studied through a pair of horn
spectacles, and saying all was right and we were the folk he was seeking,
immediately dismounted. I was then set in his place, my feet tied under the
horse’s belly, and we set forth under the guidance of the Lowlander. His
path must have been very well chosen, for we met but one pair—a pair of

lovers—the whole way, and these, perhaps taking us to be free-traders, fled
on our approach. We were at one time close at the foot of Berwick Law on
the south side; at another, as we passed over some open hills, I spied the
lights of a clachan and the old tower of a church among some trees not far
off, but too far to cry for help, if I had dreamed of it. At last we came again
within sound of the sea. There was moonlight, though not much; and by this
I could see the three huge towers and broken battlements of Tantallon, that
old chief place of the Red Douglases. The horse was picketed in the bottom
of the ditch to graze, and I was led within, and forth into the court, and
thence into the tumble-down stone hall. Here my conductors built a brisk
fire in the midst of the pavement, for there was a chill in the night. My
hands were loosed, I was set by the wall in the inner end, and (the
Lowlander having produced provisions) I was given oatmeal bread and a
pitcher of French brandy. This done, I was left once more alone with my
three Highlandmen. They sat close by the fire drinking and talking; the
wind blew in by the breaches, cast about the smoke and flames, and sang in
the tops of the towers; I could hear the sea under the cliffs, and, my mind
being reassured as to my life, and my body and spirits wearied with the
day’s employment, I turned upon one side and slumbered.
I had no means of guessing at what hour I was wakened, only the moon
was down and the fire was low. My feet were now loosed, and I was carried
through the ruins and down the cliff-side by a precipitous path to where I
found a fisher’s boat in a haven of the rocks. This I was had on board of,
and we began to put forth from the shore in a fine starlight.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE BASS

I had no thought where they were taking me; only looked here and there
for the appearance of a ship; and there ran the while in my head a word of
Ransome’s—the twenty-pounders. If I were to be exposed a second time to
that same former danger of the plantations, I judged it must turn ill with me;
there was no second Alan; and no second shipwreck and spare yard to be
expected now; and I saw myself hoe tobacco under the whip’s lash. The
thought chilled me; the air was sharp upon the water, the stretchers of the
boat drenched with a cold dew: and I shivered in my place beside the
steersman. This was the dark man whom I have called hitherto the
Lowlander; his name was Dale, ordinarily called Black Andie. Feeling the
thrill of my shiver, he very kindly handed me a rough jacket full of fish-
scales, with which I was glad to cover myself.
“I thank you for this kindness,” said I, “and will make so free as to repay
it with a warning. You take a high responsibility in this affair. You are not
like these ignorant, barbarous Highlanders, but know what the law is and
the risks of those that break it.”
“I am no just exactly what ye would ca’ an extremist for the law,” says
he, “at the best of times; but in this business I act with a good warranty.”
“What are you going to do with me?” I asked.
“Nae harm,” said he, “nae harm ava’. Ye’ll have strong freens, I’m
thinking. Ye’ll be richt eneuch yet.”
There began to fall a greyness on the face of the sea; little dabs of pink
and red, like coals of slow fire, came in the east; and at the same time the
geese awakened, and began crying about the top of the Bass. It is just the
one crag of rock, as everybody knows, but great enough to carve a city
from. The sea was extremely little, but there went a hollow plowter round

the base of it. With the growing of the dawn I could see it clearer and
clearer; the straight crags painted with sea-birds’ droppings like a morning
frost, the sloping top of it green with grass, the clan of white geese that
cried about the sides, and the black, broken buildings of the prison sitting
close on the sea’s edge.
At the sight the truth came in upon me in a clap.
“It’s there you’re taking me!” I cried.
“Just to the Bass, mannie,” said he: “Whaur the auld saints were afore ye,
and I misdoubt if ye have come so fairly by your preeson.”
“But none dwells there now,” I cried; “the place is long a ruin.”
“It’ll be the mair pleisand a change for the solan geese, then,” quoth
Andie dryly.
The day coming slowly brighter I observed on the bilge, among the big
stones with which fisherfolk ballast their boats, several kegs and baskets,
and a provision of fuel. All these were discharged upon the crag. Andie,
myself, and my three Highlanders (I call them mine, although it was the
other way about), landed along with them. The sun was not yet up when the
boat moved away again, the noise of the oars on the thole-pins echoing
from the cliffs, and left us in our singular reclusion:
Andie Dale was the Prefect (as I would jocularly call him) of the Bass,
being at once the shepherd and the gamekeeper of that small and rich estate.
He had to mind the dozen or so of sheep that fed and fattened on the grass
of the sloping part of it, like beasts grazing the roof of a cathedral. He had
charge besides of the solan geese that roosted in the crags; and from these
an extraordinary income is derived. The young are dainty eating, as much as
two shillings a-piece being a common price, and paid willingly by epicures;
even the grown birds are valuable for their oil and feathers; and a part of the
minister’s stipend of North Berwick is paid to this day in solan geese, which
makes it (in some folks’ eyes) a parish to be coveted. To perform these
several businesses, as well as to protect the geese from poachers, Andie had
frequent occasion to sleep and pass days together on the crag; and we found
the man at home there like a farmer in his steading. Bidding us all shoulder
some of the packages, a matter in which I made haste to bear a hand, he led
us in by a locked gate, which was the only admission to the island, and
through the ruins of the fortress, to the governor’s house. There we saw by

the ashes in the chimney and a standing bed-place in one corner, that he
made his usual occupation.
This bed he now offered me to use, saying he supposed I would set up to
be gentry.
“My gentrice has nothing to do with where I lie,” said I. “I bless God I
have lain hard ere now, and can do the same again with thankfulness. While
I am here, Mr. Andie, if that be your name, I will do my part and take my
place beside the rest of you; and I ask you on the other hand to spare me
your mockery, which I own I like ill.”
He grumbled a little at this speech, but seemed upon reflection to approve
it. Indeed, he was a long-headed, sensible man, and a good Whig and
Presbyterian; read daily in a pocket Bible, and was both able and eager to
converse seriously on religion, leaning more than a little towards the
Cameronian extremes. His morals were of a more doubtful colour. I found
he was deep in the free trade, and used the ruins of Tantallon for a magazine
of smuggled merchandise. As for a gauger, I do not believe he valued the
life of one at half-a-farthing. But that part of the coast of Lothian is to this
day as wild a place, and the commons there as rough a crew, as any in
Scotland.
One incident of my imprisonment is made memorable by a consequence
it had long after. There was a warship at this time stationed in the Firth, the
Seahorse, Captain Palliser. It chanced she was cruising in the month of
September, plying between Fife and Lothian, and sounding for sunk
dangers. Early one fine morning she was seen about two miles to east of us,
where she lowered a boat, and seemed to examine the Wildfire Rocks and
Satan’s Bush, famous dangers of that coast. And presently after having got
her boat again, she came before the wind and was headed directly for the
Bass. This was very troublesome to Andie and the Highlanders; the whole
business of my sequestration was designed for privacy, and here, with a
navy captain perhaps blundering ashore, it looked to become public enough,
if it were nothing worse. I was in a minority of one, I am no Alan to fall
upon so many, and I was far from sure that a warship was the least likely to
improve my condition. All which considered, I gave Andie my parole of
good behaviour and obedience, and was had briskly to the summit of the
rock, where we all lay down, at the cliff’s edge, in different places of
observation and concealment. The Seahorse came straight on till I thought

she would have struck, and we (looking giddily down) could see the ship’s
company at their quarters and hear the leadsman singing at the lead. Then
she suddenly wore and let fly a volley of I know not how many great guns.
The rock was shaken with the thunder of the sound, the smoke flowed over
our heads, and the geese rose in number beyond computation or belief. To
hear their screaming and to see the twinkling of their wings, made a most
inimitable curiosity; and I suppose it was after this somewhat childish
pleasure that Captain Palliser had come so near the Bass. He was to pay
dear for it in time. During his approach I had the opportunity to make a
remark upon the rigging of that ship by which I ever after knew it miles
away; and this was a means (under Providence) of my averting from a
friend a great calamity, and inflicting on Captain Palliser himself a sensible
disappointment.
All the time of my stay on the rock we lived well. We had small ale and
brandy, and oatmeal, of which we made our porridge night and morning. At
times a boat came from the Castleton and brought us a quarter of mutton,
for the sheep upon the rock we must not touch, these being specially fed to
market. The geese were unfortunately out of season, and we let them be. We
fished ourselves, and yet more often made the geese to fish for us:
observing one when he had made a capture and scaring him from his prey
ere he had swallowed it.
The strange nature of this place, and the curiosities with which it
abounded, held me busy and amused. Escape being impossible, I was
allowed my entire liberty, and continually explored the surface of the isle
wherever it might support the foot of man. The old garden of the prison was
still to be observed, with flowers and pot-herbs running wild, and some ripe
cherries on a bush. A little lower stood a chapel or a hermit’s cell; who built
or dwelt in it, none may know, and the thought of its age made a ground of
many meditations. The prison, too, where I now bivouacked with Highland
cattle-thieves, was a place full of history, both human and divine. I thought
it strange so many saints and martyrs should have gone by there so recently,
and left not so much as a leaf out of their Bibles, or a name carved upon the
wall, while the rough soldier lads that mounted guard upon the battlements
had filled the neighbourhood with their mementoes—broken tobacco-pipes
for the most part, and that in a surprising plenty, but also metal buttons from
their coats. There were times when I thought I could have heard the pious
sound of psalms out of the martyr’s dungeons, and seen the soldiers tramp

the ramparts with their glinting pipes, and the dawn rising behind them out
of the North Sea.
No doubt it was a good deal Andie and his tales that put these fancies in
my head. He was extraordinarily well acquainted with the story of the rock
in all particulars, down to the names of private soldiers, his father having
served there in that same capacity. He was gifted besides with a natural
genius for narration, so that the people seemed to speak and the things to be
done before your face. This gift of his and my assiduity to listen brought us
the more close together. I could not honestly deny but what I liked him; I
soon saw that he liked me; and indeed, from the first I had set myself out to
capture his good-will. An odd circumstance (to be told presently) effected
this beyond my expectation; but even in early days we made a friendly pair
to be a prisoner and his gaoler.
I should trifle with my conscience if I pretended my stay upon the Bass
was wholly disagreeable. It seemed to me a safe place, as though I was
escaped there out of my troubles. No harm was to be offered me; a material
impossibility, rock and the deep sea, prevented me from fresh attempts; I
felt I had my life safe and my honour safe, and there were times when I
allowed myself to gloat on them like stolen waters. At other times my
thoughts were very different, I recalled how strong I had expressed myself
both to Rankeillor and to Stewart; I reflected that my captivity upon the
Bass, in view of a great part of the coasts of Fife and Lothian, was a thing I
should be thought more likely to have invented than endured; and in the
eyes of these two gentlemen, at least, I must pass for a boaster and a
coward. Now I would take this lightly enough; tell myself that so long as I
stood well with Catriona Drummond, the opinion of the rest of man was but
moonshine and spilled water; and thence pass off into those meditations of a
lover which are so delightful to himself and must always appear so
surprisingly idle to a reader. But anon the fear would take me otherwise; I
would be shaken with a perfect panic of self-esteem, and these supposed
hard judgments appear an injustice impossible to be supported. With that
another train of thought would he presented, and I had scarce begun to be
concerned about men’s judgments of myself, than I was haunted with the
remembrance of James Stewart in his dungeon and the lamentations of his
wife. Then, indeed, passion began to work in me; I could not forgive myself
to sit there idle: it seemed (if I were a man at all) that I could fly or swim
out of my place of safety; and it was in such humours and to amuse my self-

reproaches that I would set the more particularly to win the good side of
Andie Dale.
At last, when we two were alone on the summit of the rock on a bright
morning, I put in some hint about a bribe. He looked at me, cast back his
head, and laughed out loud.
“Ay, you’re funny, Mr. Dale,” said I, “but perhaps if you’ll glance an eye
upon that paper you may change your note.”
The stupid Highlanders had taken from me at the time of my seizure
nothing but hard money, and the paper I now showed Andie was an
acknowledgment from the British Linen Company for a considerable sum.
He read it. “Troth, and ye’re nane sae ill aff,” said he.
“I thought that would maybe vary your opinions,” said I.
“Hout!” said he. “It shows me ye can bribe; but I’m no to be bribit.”
“We’ll see about that yet a while,” says I. “And first, I’ll show you that I
know what I am talking. You have orders to detain me here till after
Thursday, 21st September.”
“Ye’re no a’thegether wrong either,” says Andie. “I’m to let you gang,
bar orders contrair, on Saturday, the 23rd.”
I could not but feel there was something extremely insidious in this
arrangement. That I was to re-appear precisely in time to be too late would
cast the more discredit on my tale, if I were minded to tell one; and this
screwed me to fighting point.
“Now then, Andie, you that kens the world, listen to me, and think while
ye listen,” said I. “I know there are great folks in the business, and I make
no doubt you have their names to go upon. I have seen some of them myself
since this affair began, and said my say into their faces too. But what kind
of a crime would this be that I had committed? or what kind of a process is
this that I am fallen under? To be apprehended by some ragged John-
Hielandman on August 30th, carried to a rickle of old stones that is now
neither fort nor gaol (whatever it once was) but just the gamekeeper’s lodge
of the Bass Rock, and set free again, September 23rd, as secretly as I was
first arrested—does that sound like law to you? or does it sound like
justice? or does it not sound honestly like a piece of some low dirty
intrigue, of which the very folk that meddle with it are ashamed?”

“I canna gainsay ye, Shaws. It looks unco underhand,” says Andie. “And
werenae the folk guid sound Whigs and true-blue Presbyterians I would has
seen them ayont Jordan and Jeroozlem or I would have set hand to it.”
“The Master of Lovat’ll be a braw Whig,” says I, “and a grand
Presbyterian.”
“I ken naething by him,” said he. “I hae nae trokings wi’ Lovats.”
“No, it’ll be Prestongrange that you’ll be dealing with,” said I.
“Ah, but I’ll no tell ye that,” said Andie.
“Little need when I ken,” was my retort.
“There’s just the ae thing ye can be fairly sure of, Shaws,” says Andie.
“And that is that (try as ye please) I’m no dealing wi’ yoursel’; nor yet I
amnae goin’ to,” he added.
“Well, Andie, I see I’ll have to be speak out plain with you,” I replied.
And told him so much as I thought needful of the facts.
He heard me out with some serious interest, and when I had done,
seemed to consider a little with himself.
“Shaws,” said he at last, “I’ll deal with the naked hand. It’s a queer tale,
and no very creditable, the way you tell it; and I’m far frae minting that is
other than the way that ye believe it. As for yoursel’, ye seem to me rather a
dacent-like young man. But me, that’s aulder and mair judeecious, see
perhaps a wee bit further forrit in the job than what ye can dae. And here the
maitter clear and plain to ye. There’ll be nae skaith to yoursel’ if I keep ye
here; far free that, I think ye’ll be a hantle better by it. There’ll be nae skaith
to the kintry—just ae mair Hielantman hangit—Gude kens, a guid riddance!
On the ither hand, it would be considerable skaith to me if I would let you
free. Sae, speakin’ as a guid Whig, an honest freen’ to you, and an anxious
freen’ to my ainsel’, the plain fact is that I think ye’ll just have to bide here
wi’ Andie an’ the solans.”
“Andie,” said I, laying my hand upon his knee, “this Hielantman’s
innocent.”
“Ay, it’s a peety about that,” said he. “But ye see, in this warld, the way
God made it, we cannae just get a’thing that we want.”

CHAPTER XV.
BLACK ANDIE’S TALE OF TOD LAPRAIK

I have yet said little of the Highlanders. They were all three of the
followers of James More, which bound the accusation very tight about their
master’s neck. All understood a word or two of English, but Neil was the
only one who judged he had enough of it for general converse, in which
(when once he got embarked) his company was often tempted to the
contrary opinion. They were tractable, simple creatures; showed much more
courtesy than might have been expected from their raggedness and their
uncouth appearance, and fell spontaneously to be like three servants for
Andie and myself.
Dwelling in that isolated place, in the old falling ruins of a prison, and
among endless strange sounds of the sea and the sea-birds, I thought I
perceived in them early the effects of superstitious fear. When there was
nothing doing they would either lie and sleep, for which their appetite
appeared insatiable, or Neil would entertain the others with stories which
seemed always of a terrifying strain. If neither of these delights were within
reach—if perhaps two were sleeping and the third could find no means to
follow their example—I would see him sit and listen and look about him in
a progression of uneasiness, starting, his face blenching, his hands clutched,
a man strung like a bow. The nature of these fears I had never an occasion
to find out, but the sight of them was catching, and the nature of the place
that we were in favourable to alarms. I can find no word for it in the
English, but Andie had an expression for it in the Scots from which he
never varied.
“Ay,” he would say, “it’s an unco place, the Bass.”
It is so I always think of it. It was an unco place by night, unco by day;
and these were unco sounds, of the calling of the solans, and the plash of
the sea and the rock echoes, that hung continually in our ears. It was chiefly

so in moderate weather. When the waves were anyway great they roared
about the rock like thunder and the drums of armies, dreadful but merry to
hear; and it was in the calm days that a man could daunt himself with
listening—not a Highlandman only, as I several times experimented on
myself, so many still, hollow noises haunted and reverberated in the
porches of the rock.
This brings me to a story I heard, and a scene I took part in, which quite
changed our terms of living, and had a great effect on my departure. It
chanced one night I fell in a muse beside the fire and (that little air of Alan’s
coming back to my memory) began to whistle. A hand was laid upon my
arm, and the voice of Neil bade me to stop, for it was not “canny musics.”
“Not canny?” I asked. “How can that be?”
“Na,” said he; “it will be made by a bogle and her wanting ta heid upon
his body.” [13]
“Well,” said I, “there can be no bogles here, Neil; for it’s not likely they
would fash themselves to frighten geese.”
“Ay?” says Andie, “is that what ye think of it! But I’ll can tell ye there’s
been waur nor bogles here.”
“What’s waur than bogles, Andie?” said I.
“Warlocks,” said he. “Or a warlock at the least of it. And that’s a queer
tale, too,” he added. “And if ye would like, I’ll tell it ye.”
To be sure we were all of the one mind, and even the Highlander that had
the least English of the three set himself to listen with all his might.

The Tale of Tod Lapraik
My faither, Tam Dale, peace to his banes, was a wild, sploring lad in his
young days, wi’ little wisdom and little grace. He was fond of a lass and
fond of a glass, and fond of a ran-dan; but I could never hear tell that he
was muckle use for honest employment. Frae ae thing to anither, he listed at
last for a sodger and was in the garrison of this fort, which was the first way
that ony of the Dales cam to set foot upon the Bass. Sorrow upon that
service! The governor brewed his ain ale; it seems it was the warst
conceivable. The rock was proveesioned free the shore with vivers, the
thing was ill-guided, and there were whiles when they but to fish and shoot
solans for their diet. To crown a’, thir was the Days of the Persecution. The

perishin’ cauld chalmers were all occupeed wi’ sants and martyrs, the saut
of the yearth, of which it wasnae worthy. And though Tam Dale carried a
firelock there, a single sodger, and liked a lass and a glass, as I was sayin,’
the mind of the man was mair just than set with his position. He had glints
of the glory of the kirk; there were whiles when his dander rase to see the
Lord’s sants misguided, and shame covered him that he should be haulding
a can’le (or carrying a firelock) in so black a business. There were nights of
it when he was here on sentry, the place a’ wheesht, the frosts o’ winter
maybe riving in the wa’s, and he would hear ane o’ the prisoners strike up a
psalm, and the rest join in, and the blessed sounds rising from the different
chalmers—or dungeons, I would raither say—so that this auld craig in the
sea was like a pairt of Heev’n. Black shame was on his saul; his sins hove
up before him muckle as the Bass, and above a’, that chief sin, that he
should have a hand in hagging and hashing at Christ’s Kirk. But the truth is
that he resisted the spirit. Day cam, there were the rousing compainions,
and his guid resolves depairtit.
In thir days, dwalled upon the Bass a man of God, Peden the Prophet was
his name. Ye’ll have heard tell of Prophet Peden. There was never the wale
of him sinsyne, and it’s a question wi’ mony if there ever was his like afore.
He was wild’s a peat-hag, fearsome to look at, fearsome to hear, his face
like the day of judgment. The voice of him was like a solan’s and dinnle’d
in folks’ lugs, and the words of him like coals of fire.
Now there was a lass on the rock, and I think she had little to do, for it
was nae place far decent weemen; but it seems she was bonny, and her and
Tam Dale were very well agreed. It befell that Peden was in the gairden his
lane at the praying when Tam and the lass cam by; and what should the
lassie do but mock with laughter at the sant’s devotions? He rose and lookit
at the twa o’ them, and Tam’s knees knoitered thegether at the look of him.
But whan he spak, it was mair in sorrow than in anger. “Poor thing, poor
thing!” says he, and it was the lass he lookit at, “I hear you skirl and laugh,”
he says, “but the Lord has a deid shot prepared for you, and at that
surprising judgment ye shall skirl but the ae time!” Shortly thereafter she
was daundering on the craigs wi’ twa-three sodgers, and it was a blawy day.
There cam a gowst of wind, claught her by the coats, and awa’ wi’ her bag
and baggage. And it was remarked by the sodgers that she gied but the ae
skirl.

Nae doubt this judgment had some weicht upon Tam Dale; but it passed
again and him none the better. Ae day he was flyting wi’ anither sodger-lad.
“Deil hae me!” quo’ Tam, for he was a profane swearer. And there was
Peden glowering at him, gash an’ waefu’; Peden wi’ his lang chafts an’
luntin’ een, the maud happed about his kist, and the hand of him held out
wi’ the black nails upon the finger-nebs—for he had nae care of the body.
“Fy, fy, poor man!” cries he, “the poor fool man! Deil hae me, quo’ he; an’ I
see the deil at his oxter.” The conviction of guilt and grace cam in on Tam
like the deep sea; he flang doun the pike that was in his hands—“I will nae
mair lift arms against the cause o’ Christ!” says he, and was as gude’s word.
There was a sair fyke in the beginning, but the governor, seeing him
resolved, gied him his discharge, and he went and dwallt and merried in
North Berwick, and had aye a gude name with honest folk free that day on.
It was in the year seeventeen hunner and sax that the Bass cam in the
hands o’ the Da’rymples, and there was twa men soucht the chairge of it.
Baith were weel qualified, for they had baith been sodgers in the garrison,
and kent the gate to handle solans, and the seasons and values of them.
Forby that they were baith—or they baith seemed—earnest professors and
men of comely conversation. The first of them was just Tam Dale, my
faither. The second was ane Lapraik, whom the folk ca’d Tod Lapraik
maistly, but whether for his name or his nature I could never hear tell. Weel,
Tam gaed to see Lapraik upon this business, and took me, that was a
toddlin’ laddie, by the hand. Tod had his dwallin’ in the lang loan benorth
the kirkyaird. It’s a dark uncanny loan, forby that the kirk has aye had an ill
name since the days o’ James the Saxt and the deevil’s cantrips played
therein when the Queen was on the seas; and as for Tod’s house, it was in
the mirkest end, and was little liked by some that kenned the best. The door
was on the sneck that day, and me and my faither gaed straucht in. Tod was
a wabster to his trade; his loom stood in the but. There he sat, a muckle fat,
white hash of a man like creish, wi’ a kind of a holy smile that gart me
scunner. The hand of him aye cawed the shuttle, but his een was steeked.
We cried to him by his name, we skirled in the deid lug of him, we shook
him by the shou’ther. Nae mainner o’ service! There he sat on his dowp, an’
cawed the shuttle and smiled like creish.
“God be guid to us,” says Tam Dale, “this is no canny?”
He had jimp said the word, when Tod Lapraik cam to himsel’.

“Is this you, Tam?” says he. “Haith, man! I’m blythe to see ye. I whiles
fa’ into a bit dwam like this,” he says; “its frae the stamach.”
Weel, they began to crack about the Bass and which of them twa was to
get the warding o’t, and little by little cam to very ill words, and twined in
anger. I mind weel that as my faither and me gaed hame again, he cam ower
and ower the same expression, how little he likit Tod Lapraik and his
dwams.
“Dwam!” says he. “I think folk hae brunt for dwams like yon.”
Aweel, my faither got the Bass and Tod had to go wantin’. It was
remembered sinsyne what way he had ta’en the thing. “Tam,” says he, “ye
hae gotten the better o’ me aince mair, and I hope,” says he, “ye’ll find at
least a’ that ye expeckit at the Bass.” Which have since been thought
remarkable expressions. At last the time came for Tam Dale to take young
solans. This was a business he was weel used wi’, he had been a craigsman
frae a laddie, and trustit nane but himsel’. So there was he hingin’ by a line
an’ speldering on the craig face, whaur its hieest and steighest. Fower tenty
lads were on the tap, hauldin’ the line and mindin’ for his signals. But
whaur Tam hung there was naething but the craig, and the sea belaw, and
the solans skirlin and flying. It was a braw spring morn, and Tam whustled
as he claught in the young geese. Mony’s the time I’ve heard him tell of this
experience, and aye the swat ran upon the man.
It chanced, ye see, that Tam keeked up, and he was awaur of a muckle
solan, and the solan pyking at the line. He thocht this by-ordinar and outside
the creature’s habits. He minded that ropes was unco saft things, and the
solan’s neb and the Bass Rock unco hard, and that twa hunner feet were
raither mair than he would care to fa’.
“Shoo!” says Tam. “Awa’, bird! Shoo, awa’ wi’ ye!” says he.
The solan keekit doon into Tam’s face, and there was something unco in
the creature’s ee. Just the ae keek it gied, and back to the rope. But now it
wroucht and warstl’t like a thing dementit. There never was the solan made
that wroucht as that solan wroucht; and it seemed to understand its employ
brawly, birzing the saft rope between the neb of it and a crunkled jag o’
stane.
There gaed a cauld stend o’ fear into Tam’s heart. “This thing is nae
bird,” thinks he. His een turnt backward in his heid and the day gaed black

aboot him. “If I get a dwam here,” he toucht, “it’s by wi’ Tam Dale.” And
he signalled for the lads to pu’ him up.
And it seemed the solan understood about signals. For nae sooner was the
signal made than he let be the rope, spried his wings, squawked out loud,
took a turn flying, and dashed straucht at Tam Dale’s een. Tam had a knife,
he gart the cauld steel glitter. And it seemed the solan understood about
knives, for nae suner did the steel glint in the sun than he gied the ae
squawk, but laighter, like a body disappointit, and flegged aff about the
roundness of the craig, and Tam saw him nae mair. And as sune as that
thing was gane, Tam’s heid drapt upon his shouther, and they pu’d him up
like a deid corp, dadding on the craig.
A dram of brandy (which he went never without) broucht him to his
mind, or what was left of it. Up he sat.
“Rin, Geordie, rin to the boat, mak’ sure of the boat, man—rin!” he cries,
“or yon solan’ll have it awa’,” says he.
The fower lads stared at ither, an’ tried to whilly-wha him to be quiet. But
naething would satisfy Tam Dale, till ane o’ them had startit on aheid to
stand sentry on the boat. The ithers askit if he was for down again.
“Na,” says he, “and niether you nor me,” says he, “and as sune as I can
win to stand on my twa feet we’ll be aff frae this craig o’ Sawtan.”
Sure eneuch, nae time was lost, and that was ower muckle; for before
they won to North Berwick Tam was in a crying fever. He lay a’ the
simmer; and wha was sae kind as come speiring for him, but Tod Lapraik!
Folk thocht afterwards that ilka time Tod cam near the house the fever had
worsened. I kenna for that; but what I ken the best, that was the end of it.
It was about this time o’ the year; my grandfaither was out at the white
fishing; and like a bairn, I but to gang wi’ him. We had a grand take, I mind,
and the way that the fish lay broucht us near in by the Bass, whaur we
foregaithered wi’ anither boat that belanged to a man Sandie Fletcher in
Castleton. He’s no lang deid neither, or ye could speir at himsel’. Weel,
Sandie hailed.
“What’s yon on the Bass?” says he.
“On the Bass?” says grandfaither.
“Ay,” says Sandie, “on the green side o’t.”

“Whatten kind of a thing?” says grandfaither. “There cannae be naething
on the Bass but just the sheep.”
“It looks unco like a body,” quo’ Sandie, who was nearer in.
“A body!” says we, and we none of us likit that. For there was nae boat
that could have brought a man, and the key o’ the prison yett hung ower my
faither’s at hame in the press bed.
We keept the twa boats close for company, and crap in nearer hand.
Grandfaither had a gless, for he had been a sailor, and the captain of a
smack, and had lost her on the sands of Tay. And when we took the glass to
it, sure eneuch there was a man. He was in a crunkle o’ green brae, a wee
below the chaipel, a’ by his lee lane, and lowped and flang and danced like
a daft quean at a waddin’.
“It’s Tod,” says grandfather, and passed the gless to Sandie.
“Ay, it’s him,” says Sandie.
“Or ane in the likeness o’ him,” says grandfaither.
“Sma’ is the differ,” quo’ Sandie. “De’il or warlock, I’ll try the gun at
him,” quo’ he, and broucht up a fowling-piece that he aye carried, for
Sandie was a notable famous shot in all that country.
“Haud your hand, Sandie,” says grandfaither; “we maun see clearer
first,” says he, “or this may be a dear day’s wark to the baith of us.”
“Hout!” says Sandie, “this is the Lord’s judgment surely, and be damned
to it,” says he.
“Maybe ay, and maybe no,” says my grandfaither, worthy man! “But
have you a mind of the Procurator Fiscal, that I think ye’ll have
foregaithered wi’ before,” says he.
This was ower true, and Sandie was a wee thing set ajee. “Aweel, Edie,”
says he, “and what would be your way of it?”
“Ou, just this,” says grandfaither. “Let me that has the fastest boat gang
back to North Berwick, and let you bide here and keep an eye on Thon. If I
cannae find Lapraik, I’ll join ye and the twa of us’ll have a crack wi’ him.
But if Lapraik’s at hame, I’ll rin up the flag at the harbour, and ye can try
Thon Thing wi’ the gun.”
Aweel, so it was agreed between them twa. I was just a bairn, an’ clum in
Sandie’s boat, whaur I thoucht I would see the best of the employ. My

grandsire gied Sandie a siller tester to pit in his gun wi’ the leid draps, bein
mair deidly again bogles. And then the as boat set aff for North Berwick,
an’ the tither lay whaur it was and watched the wanchancy thing on the
brae-side.
A’ the time we lay there it lowped and flang and capered and span like a
teetotum, and whiles we could hear it skelloch as it span. I hae seen lassies,
the daft queans, that would lowp and dance a winter’s nicht, and still be
lowping and dancing when the winter’s day cam in. But there would be
fowk there to hauld them company, and the lads to egg them on; and this
thing was its lee-lane. And there would be a fiddler diddling his elbock in
the chimney-side; and this thing had nae music but the skirling of the
solans. And the lassies were bits o’ young things wi’ the reid life dinnling
and stending in their members; and this was a muckle, fat, creishy man, and
him fa’n in the vale o’ years. Say what ye like, I maun say what I believe. It
was joy was in the creature’s heart, the joy o’ hell, I daursay: joy whatever.
Mony a time I have askit mysel’ why witches and warlocks should sell their
sauls (whilk are their maist dear possessions) and be auld, duddy, wrunkl’t
wives or auld, feckless, doddered men; and then I mind upon Tod Lapraik
dancing a’ the hours by his lane in the black glory of his heart. Nae doubt
they burn for it muckle in hell, but they have a grand time here of it,
whatever!—and the Lord forgie us!
Weel, at the hinder end, we saw the wee flag yirk up to the mast-heid
upon the harbour rocks. That was a’ Sandie waited for. He up wi’ the gun,
took a deleeberate aim, an’ pu’d the trigger. There cam’ a bang and then ae
waefu’ skirl frae the Bass. And there were we rubbin’ our een and lookin’ at
ither like daft folk. For wi’ the bang and the skirl the thing had clean
disappeared. The sun glintit, the wund blew, and there was the bare yaird
whaur the Wonder had been lowping and flinging but ae second syne.
The hale way hame I roared and grat wi’ the terror o’ that dispensation.
The grawn folk were nane sae muckle better; there was little said in
Sandie’s boat but just the name of God; and when we won in by the pier,
the harbour rocks were fair black wi’ the folk waitin’ us. It seems they had
fund Lapraik in ane of his dwams, cawing the shuttle and smiling. Ae lad
they sent to hoist the flag, and the rest abode there in the wabster’s house.
You may be sure they liked it little; but it was a means of grace to severals
that stood there praying in to themsel’s (for nane cared to pray out loud) and

looking on thon awesome thing as it cawed the shuttle. Syne, upon a
suddenty, and wi’ the ae dreidfu’ skelloch, Tod sprang up frae his
hinderlands and fell forrit on the wab, a bluidy corp.
When the corp was examined the leid draps hadnae played buff upon the
warlock’s body; sorrow a leid drap was to be fund! but there was
grandfaither’s siller tester in the puddock’s heart of him.

Andie had scarce done when there befell a mighty silly affair that had its
consequence. Neil, as I have said, was himself a great narrator. I have heard
since that he knew all the stories in the Highlands; and thought much of
himself, and was thought much of by others on the strength of it. Now
Andie’s tale reminded him of one he had already heard.
“She would ken that story afore,” he said. “She was the story of Uistean
More M’Gillie Phadrig and the Gavar Vore.”
“It is no sic a thing,” cried Andie. “It is the story of my faither (now wi’
God) and Tod Lapraik. And the same in your beard,” says he; “and keep the
tongue of ye inside your Hielant chafts!”
In dealing with Highlanders it will be found, and has been shown in
history, how well it goes with Lowland gentlefolk; but the thing appears
scarce feasible for Lowland commons. I had already remarked that Andie
was continually on the point of quarrelling with our three MacGregors, and
now, sure enough, it was to come.
“Thir will be no words to use to shentlemans,” says Neil.
“Shentlemans!” cries Andie. “Shentlemans, ye hielant stot! If God would
give ye the grace to see yoursel’ the way that ithers see ye, ye would throw
your denner up.”
There came some kind of a Gaelic oath from Neil, and the black knife
was in his hand that moment.
There was no time to think; and I caught the Highlander by the leg, and
had him down, and his armed hand pinned out, before I knew what I was
doing. His comrades sprang to rescue him, Andie and I were without
weapons, the Gregara three to two. It seemed we were beyond salvation,
when Neil screamed in his own tongue, ordering the others back, and made
his submission to myself in a manner the most abject, even giving me up his

knife which (upon a repetition of his promises) I returned to him on the
morrow.
Two things I saw plain: the first, that I must not build too high on Andie,
who had shrunk against the wall and stood there, as pale as death, till the
affair was over; the second, the strength of my own position with the
Highlanders, who must have received extraordinary charges to be tender of
my safety. But if I thought Andie came not very well out in courage, I had
no fault to find with him upon the account of gratitude. It was not so much
that he troubled me with thanks, as that his whole mind and manner
appeared changed; and as he preserved ever after a great timidity of our
companions, he and I were yet more constantly together.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE MISSING WITNESS

On the seventeenth, the day I was trysted with the Writer, I had much
rebellion against fate. The thought of him waiting in the King’s Arms, and of
what he would think, and what he would say when next we met, tormented
and oppressed me. The truth was unbelievable, so much I had to grant, and
it seemed cruel hard I should be posted as a liar and a coward, and have
never consciously omitted what it was possible that I should do. I repeated
this form of words with a kind of bitter relish, and re-examined in that light
the steps of my behaviour. It seemed I had behaved to James Stewart as a
brother might; all the past was a picture that I could be proud of, and there
was only the present to consider. I could not swim the sea, nor yet fly in the
air, but there was always Andie. I had done him a service, he liked me; I had
a lever there to work on; if it were just for decency, I must try once more
with Andie.
It was late afternoon; there was no sound in all the Bass but the lap and
bubble of a very quiet sea; and my four companions were all crept apart, the
three Macgregors higher on the rock, and Andie with his Bible to a sunny
place among the ruins; there I found him in deep sleep, and, as soon as he
was awake, appealed to him with some fervour of manner and a good show
of argument.
“If I thoucht it was to do guid to ye, Shaws!” said he, staring at me over
his spectacles.
“It’s to save another,” said I, “and to redeem my word. What would be
more good than that? Do ye no mind the scripture, Andie? And you with the
Book upon your lap! What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world?”
“Ay,” said he, “that’s grand for you. But where do I come in! I have my
word to redeem the same’s yoursel’. And what are ye asking me to do, but
just to sell it ye for siller?”

“Andie! have I named the name of siller?” cried I.
“Ou, the name’s naething”, said he; “the thing is there, whatever. It just
comes to this; if I am to service ye the way that you propose, I’ll lose my
lifelihood. Then it’s clear ye’ll have to make it up to me, and a pickle mair,
for your ain credit like. And what’s that but just a bribe? And if even I was
certain of the bribe! But by a’ that I can learn, it’s far frae that; and if you
were to hang, where would I be? Na: the thing’s no possible. And just awa’
wi’ ye like a bonny lad! and let Andie read his chapter.”
I remember I was at bottom a good deal gratified with this result; and the
next humour I fell into was one (I had near said) of gratitude to
Prestongrange, who had saved me, in this violent, illegal manner, out of the
midst of my dangers, temptations, and perplexities. But this was both too
flimsy and too cowardly to last me long, and the remembrance of James
began to succeed to the possession of my spirits. The 21st, the day set for
the trial, I passed in such misery of mind as I can scarce recall to have
endured, save perhaps upon Isle Earraid only. Much of the time I lay on a
brae-side betwixt sleep and waking, my body motionless, my mind full of
violent thoughts. Sometimes I slept indeed; but the court-house of Inverary
and the prisoner glancing on all sides to find his missing witness, followed
me in slumber; and I would wake again with a start to darkness of spirit and
distress of body. I thought Andie seemed to observe me, but I paid him little
heed. Verily, my bread was bitter to me, and my days a burthen.
Early the next morning (Friday, 22nd) a boat came with provisions, and
Andie placed a packet in my hand. The cover was without address but
sealed with a Government seal. It enclosed two notes. “Mr. Balfour can now
see for himself it is too late to meddle. His conduct will be observed and his
discretion rewarded.” So ran the first, which seemed to be laboriously writ
with the left hand. There was certainly nothing in these expressions to
compromise the writer, even if that person could be found; the seal, which
formidably served instead of signature, was affixed to a separate sheet on
which there was no scratch of writing; and I had to confess that (so far) my
adversaries knew what they were doing, and to digest as well as I was able
the threat that peeped under the promise.
But the second enclosure was by far the more surprising. It was in a
lady’s hand of writ. “Maister Dauvit Balfour is informed a friend was
speiring for him and her eyes were of the grey,” it ran—and seemed so

extraordinary a piece to come to my hands at such a moment and under
cover of a Government seal, that I stood stupid. Catriona’s grey eyes shone
in my remembrance. I thought, with a bound of pleasure, she must be the
friend. But who should the writer be, to have her billet thus enclosed with
Prestongrange’s? And of all wonders, why was it thought needful to give
me this pleasing but most inconsequent intelligence upon the Bass? For the
writer, I could hit upon none possible except Miss Grant. Her family, I
remembered, had remarked on Catriona’s eyes and even named her for their
colour; and she herself had been much in the habit to address me with a
broad pronunciation, by way of a sniff, I supposed, at my rusticity. No
doubt, besides, but she lived in the same house as this letter came from. So
there remained but one step to be accounted for; and that was how
Prestongrange should have permitted her at all in an affair so secret, or let
her daft-like billet go in the same cover with his own. But even here I had a
glimmering. For, first of all, there was something rather alarming about the
young lady, and papa might be more under her domination than I knew.
And, second, there was the man’s continual policy to be remembered, how
his conduct had been continually mingled with caresses, and he had scarce
ever, in the midst of so much contention, laid aside a mask of friendship. He
must conceive that my imprisonment had incensed me. Perhaps this little
jesting, friendly message was intended to disarm my rancour?
I will be honest—and I think it did. I felt a sudden warmth towards that
beautiful Miss Grant, that she should stoop to so much interest in my
affairs. The summoning up of Catriona moved me of itself to milder and
more cowardly counsels. If the Advocate knew of her and our acquaintance
—if I should please him by some of that “discretion” at which his letter
pointed—to what might not this lead! In vain is the net prepared in the sight
of any fowl, the Scripture says. Well, fowls must be wiser than folk! For I
thought I perceived the policy, and yet fell in with it.
I was in this frame, my heart beating, the grey eyes plain before me like
two stars, when Andie broke in upon my musing.
“I see ye has gotten guid news,” said he.
I found him looking curiously in my face; with that there came before me
like a vision of James Stewart and the court of Inverary; and my mind
turned at once like a door upon its hinges. Trials, I reflected, sometimes
draw out longer than is looked for. Even if I came to Inverary just too late,

something might yet be attempted in the interests of James—and in those of
my own character, the best would be accomplished. In a moment, it seemed
without thought, I had a plan devised.
“Andie,” said I, “is it still to be to-morrow?”
He told me nothing was changed.
“Was anything said about the hour?” I asked.
He told me it was to be two o’clock afternoon.
“And about the place?” I pursued.
“Whatten place?” says Andie.
“The place I am to be landed at?” said I.
He owned there was nothing as to that.
“Very well, then,” I said, “this shall be mine to arrange. The wind is in
the east, my road lies westward: keep your boat, I hire it; let us work up the
Forth all day; and land me at two o’clock to-morrow at the westmost we’ll
can have reached.”
“Ye daft callant!” he cried; “ye would try for Inverary after a’!”
“Just that, Andie,” says I.
“Weel, ye’re ill to beat!” says he. “And I was a kind o’ sorry for ye a’ day
yesterday,” he added. “Ye see, I was never entirely sure till then, which way
of it ye really wantit.”
Here was a spur to a lame horse!
“A word in your ear, Andie,” said I. “This plan of mine has another
advantage yet. We can leave these Hielandman behind us on the rock, and
one of your boats from the Castleton can bring them off to-morrow. Yon
Neil has a queer eye when he regards you; maybe, if I was once out of the
gate there might be knives again; these red-shanks are unco grudgeful. And
if there should come to be any question, here is your excuse. Our lives were
in danger by these savages; being answerable for my safety, you chose the
part to bring me from their neighbourhood and detain me the rest of the
time on board your boat: and do you know, Andie?” says I, with a smile, “I
think it was very wisely chosen.”
“The truth is I have nae goo for Neil,” says Andie, “nor he for me, I’m
thinking; and I would like ill to come to my hands wi’ the man. Tam Anster
will make a better hand of it with the cattle onyway.” (For this man, Anster,

came from Fife, where the Gaelic is still spoken.) “Ay, ay!” says Andie,
“Tam’ll can deal with them the best. And troth! the mair I think of it, the
less I see we would be required. The place—ay, feggs! they had forgot the
place. Eh, Shaws, ye’re a lang-heided chield when ye like! Forby that I’m
awing ye my life,” he added, with more solemnity, and offered me his hand
upon the bargain.
Whereupon, with scarce more words, we stepped suddenly on board the
boat, cast off, and set the lug. The Gregara were then busy upon breakfast,
for the cookery was their usual part; but, one of them stepping to the
battlements, our flight was observed before we were twenty fathoms from
the rock; and the three of them ran about the ruins and the landing-shelf, for
all the world like ants about a broken nest, hailing and crying on us to
return. We were still in both the lee and the shadow of the rock, which last
lay broad upon the waters, but presently came forth in almost the same
moment into the wind and sunshine; the sail filled, the boat heeled to the
gunwale, and we swept immediately beyond sound of the men’s voices. To
what terrors they endured upon the rock, where they were now deserted
without the countenance of any civilised person or so much as the
protection of a Bible, no limit can be set; nor had they any brandy left to be
their consolation, for even in the haste and secrecy of our departure Andie
had managed to remove it.
It was our first care to set Anster ashore in a cove by the Glenteithy
Rocks, so that the deliverance of our maroons might be duly seen to the
next day. Thence we kept away up Firth. The breeze, which was then so
spirited, swiftly declined, but never wholly failed us. All day we kept
moving, though often not much more; and it was after dark ere we were up
with the Queensferry. To keep the letter of Andie’s engagement (or what
was left of it) I must remain on board, but I thought no harm to
communicate with the shore in writing. On Prestongrange’s cover, where
the Government seal must have a good deal surprised my correspondent, I
writ, by the boat’s lantern, a few necessary words, aboard and Andie carried
them to Rankeillor. In about an hour he came again, with a purse of money
and the assurance that a good horse should be standing saddled for me by
two to-morrow at Clackmannan Pool. This done, and the boat riding by her
stone anchor, we lay down to sleep under the sail.

We were in the Pool the next day long ere two; and there was nothing left
for me but to sit and wait. I felt little alacrity upon my errand. I would have
been glad of any passable excuse to lay it down; but none being to be
found, my uneasiness was no less great than if I had been running to some
desired pleasure. By shortly after one the horse was at the waterside, and I
could see a man walking it to and fro till I should land, which vastly
swelled my impatience. Andie ran the moment of my liberation very fine,
showing himself a man of his bare word, but scarce serving his employers
with a heaped measure; and by about fifty seconds after two I was in the
saddle and on the full stretch for Stirling. In a little more than an hour I had
passed that town, and was already mounting Alan Water side, when the
weather broke in a small tempest. The rain blinded me, the wind had nearly
beat me from the saddle, and the first darkness of the night surprised me in
a wilderness still some way east of Balwhidder, not very sure of my
direction and mounted on a horse that began already to be weary.
In the press of my hurry, and to be spared the delay and annoyance of a
guide, I had followed (so far as it was possible for any horseman) the line of
my journey with Alan. This I did with open eyes, foreseeing a great risk in
it, which the tempest had now brought to a reality. The last that I knew of
where I was, I think it must have been about Uam Var; the hour perhaps six
at night. I must still think it great good fortune that I got about eleven to my
destination, the house of Duncan Dhu. Where I had wandered in the interval
perhaps the horse could tell. I know we were twice down, and once over the
saddle and for a moment carried away in a roaring burn. Steed and rider
were bemired up to the eyes.
From Duncan I had news of the trial. It was followed in all these
Highland regions with religious interest; news of it spread from Inverary as
swift as men could travel; and I was rejoiced to learn that, up to a late hour
that Saturday it was not yet concluded; and all men began to suppose it
must spread over the Monday. Under the spur of this intelligence I would
not sit to eat; but, Duncan having agreed to be my guide, took the road
again on foot, with the piece in my hand and munching as I went. Duncan
brought with him a flask of usquebaugh and a hand-lantern; which last
enlightened us just so long as we could find houses where to rekindle it, for
the thing leaked outrageously and blew out with every gust. The more part
of the night we walked blindfold among sheets of rain, and day found us
aimless on the mountains. Hard by we struck a hut on a burn-side, where

we got bite and a direction; and, a little before the end of the sermon, came
to the kirk doors of Inverary.
The rain had somewhat washed the upper parts of me, but I was still
bogged as high as to the knees; I streamed water; I was so weary I could
hardly limp, and my face was like a ghost’s. I stood certainly more in need
of a change of raiment and a bed to lie on, than of all the benefits in
Christianity. For all which (being persuaded the chief point for me was to
make myself immediately public) I set the door of the church with the dirty
Duncan at my tails, and finding a vacant place sat down.
“Thirteently, my brethren, and in parenthesis, the law itself must be
regarded as a means of grace,” the minister was saying, in the voice of one
delighting to pursue an argument.
The sermon was in English on account of the assize. The judges were
present with their armed attendants, the halberts glittered in a corner by the
door, and the seats were thronged beyond custom with the array of lawyers.
The text was in Romans 5th and 13th—the minister a skilled hand; and the
whole of that able churchful—from Argyle, and my Lords Elchies and
Kilkerran, down to the halbertmen that came in their attendance—was sunk
with gathered brows in a profound critical attention. The minister himself
and a sprinkling of those about the door observed our entrance at the
moment and immediately forgot the same; the rest either did not hear or
would not hear or would not be heard; and I sat amongst my friends and
enemies unremarked.
The first that I singled out was Prestongrange. He sat well forward, like
an eager horseman in the saddle, his lips moving with relish, his eyes glued
on the minister; the doctrine was clearly to his mind. Charles Stewart, on
the other hand, was half asleep, and looked harassed and pale. As for Simon
Fraser, he appeared like a blot, and almost a scandal, in the midst of that
attentive congregation, digging his hands in his pockets, shifting his legs,
clearing his throat, and rolling up his bald eyebrows and shooting out his
eyes to right and left, now with a yawn, now with a secret smile. At times,
too, he would take the Bible in front of him, run it through, seem to read a
bit, run it through again, and stop and yawn prodigiously: the whole as if
for exercise.
In the course of this restlessness his eye alighted on myself. He sat a
second stupefied, then tore a half-leaf out of the Bible, scrawled upon it

with a pencil, and passed it with a whispered word to his next neighbour.
The note came to Prestongrange, who gave me but the one look; thence it
voyaged to the hands of Mr. Erskine; thence again to Argyle, where he sat
between the other two lords of session, and his Grace turned and fixed me
with an arrogant eye. The last of those interested in my presence was
Charlie Stewart, and he too began to pencil and hand about dispatches, none
of which I was able to trace to their destination in the crowd.
But the passage of these notes had aroused notice; all who were in the
secret (or supposed themselves to be so) were whispering information—the
rest questions; and the minister himself seemed quite discountenanced by
the flutter in the church and sudden stir and whispering. His voice changed,
he plainly faltered, nor did he again recover the easy conviction and full
tones of his delivery. It would be a puzzle to him till his dying day, why a
sermon that had gone with triumph through four parts, should thus miscarry
in the fifth.
As for me, I continued to sit there, very wet and weary, and a good deal
anxious as to what should happen next, but greatly exulting in my success.

CHAPTER XVII.
THE MEMORIAL

The last word of the blessing was scarce out of the minister’s mouth
before Stewart had me by the arm. We were the first to be forth of the
church, and he made such extraordinary expedition that we were safe within
the four walls of a house before the street had begun to be thronged with the
home-going congregation.
“Am I yet in time?” I asked.
“Ay and no,” said he. “The case is over; the jury is enclosed, and will so
kind as let us ken their view of it to-morrow in the morning, the same as I
could have told it my own self three days ago before the play began. The
thing has been public from the start. The panel kent it, ‘Ye may do what ye
will for me,’ whispers he two days ago. ‘Ye ken my fate by what the Duke of
Argyle has just said to Mr. Macintosh.’ O, it’s been a scandal!
“The great Agyle he gaed before,
He gart the cannons and guns to roar,”

and the very macer cried ‘Cruachan!’ But now that I have got you again I’ll
never despair. The oak shall go over the myrtle yet; we’ll ding the
Campbells yet in their own town. Praise God that I should see the day!”
He was leaping with excitement, emptied out his mails upon the floor
that I might have a change of clothes, and incommoded me with his
assistance as I changed. What remained to be done, or how I was to do it,
was what he never told me nor, I believe, so much as thought of. “We’ll
ding the Campbells yet!” that was still his overcome. And it was forced
home upon my mind how this, that had the externals of a sober process of
law, was in its essence a clan battle between savage clans. I thought my
friend the Writer none of the least savage. Who that had only seen him at a
counsel’s back before the Lord Ordinary or following a golf ball and laying

down his clubs on Bruntsfield links, could have recognised for the same
person this voluble and violent clansman?
James Stewart’s counsel were four in number—Sheriffs Brown of
Colstoun and Miller, Mr. Robert Macintosh, and Mr. Stewart younger of
Stewart Hall. These were covenanted to dine with the Writer after sermon,
and I was very obligingly included of the party. No sooner the cloth lifted,
and the first bowl very artfully compounded by Sheriff Miller, than we fell
to the subject in hand. I made a short narration of my seizure and captivity,
and was then examined and re-examined upon the circumstances of the
murder. It will be remembered this was the first time I had had my say out,
or the matter at all handled, among lawyers; and the consequence was very
dispiriting to the others and (I must own) disappointing to myself.
“To sum up,” said Colstoun, “you prove that Alan was on the spot; you
have heard him proffer menaces against Glenure; and though you assure us
he was not the man who fired, you leave a strong impression that he was in
league with him, and consenting, perhaps immediately assisting, in the act.
You show him besides, at the risk of his own liberty, actively furthering the
criminal’s escape. And the rest of your testimony (so far as the least
material) depends on the bare word of Alan or of James, the two accused. In
short, you do not at all break, but only lengthen by one personage, the chain
that binds our client to the murderer; and I need scarcely say that the
introduction of a third accomplice rather aggravates that appearance of a
conspiracy which has been our stumbling block from the beginning.”
“I am of the same opinion,” said Sheriff Miller. “I think we may all be
very much obliged to Prestongrange for taking a most uncomfortable
witness out of our way. And chiefly, I think, Mr. Balfour himself might be
obliged. For you talk of a third accomplice, but Mr. Balfour (in my view)
has very much the appearance of a fourth.”
“Allow me, sirs!” interposed Stewart the Writer. “There is another view.
Here we have a witness—never fash whether material or not—a witness in
this cause, kidnapped by that old, lawless, bandit crew of the Glengyle
Macgregors, and sequestered for near upon a month in a bourock of old
ruins on the Bass. Move that and see what dirt you fling on the proceedings!
Sirs, this is a tale to make the world ring with! It would be strange, with
such a grip as this, if we couldnae squeeze out a pardon for my client.”

“And suppose we took up Mr. Balfour’s cause to-morrow?” said Stewart
Hall. “I am much deceived or we should find so many impediments thrown
in our path, as that James should have been hanged before we had found a
court to hear us. This is a great scandal, but I suppose we have none of us
forgot a greater still, I mean the matter of the Lady Grange. The woman was
still in durance; my friend Mr. Hope of Rankeillor did what was humanly
possible; and how did he speed? He never got a warrant! Well, it’ll be the
same now; the same weapons will be used. This is a scene, gentleman, of
clan animosity. The hatred of the name which I have the honour to bear,
rages in high quarters. There is nothing here to be viewed but naked
Campbell spite and scurvy Campbell intrigue.”
You may be sure this was to touch a welcome topic, and I sat for some
time in the midst of my learned counsel, almost deaved with their talk but
extremely little the wiser for its purport. The Writer was led into some hot
expressions; Colstoun must take him up and set him right; the rest joined in
on different sides, but all pretty noisy; the Duke of Argyle was beaten like a
blanket; King George came in for a few digs in the by-going and a great
deal of rather elaborate defence; and there was only one person that seemed
to be forgotten, and that was James of the Glens.
Through all this Mr. Miller sat quiet. He was a slip of an oldish
gentleman, ruddy and twinkling; he spoke in a smooth rich voice, with an
infinite effect of pawkiness, dealing out each word the way an actor does, to
give the most expression possible; and even now, when he was silent, and
sat there with his wig laid aside, his glass in both hands, his mouth funnily
pursed, and his chin out, he seemed the mere picture of a merry slyness. It
was plain he had a word to say, and waited for the fit occasion.
It came presently. Colstoun had wound up one of his speeches with some
expression of their duty to their client. His brother sheriff was pleased, I
suppose, with the transition. He took the table in his confidence with a
gesture and a look.
“That suggests to me a consideration which seems overlooked,” said he.
“The interest of our client goes certainly before all, but the world does not
come to an end with James Stewart.” Whereat he cocked his eye. “I might
condescend, exempli gratia, upon a Mr. George Brown, a Mr. Thomas
Miller, and a Mr. David Balfour. Mr. David Balfour has a very good ground

of complaint, and I think, gentlemen—if his story was properly redd out—I
think there would be a number of wigs on the green.”
The whole table turned to him with a common movement.
“Properly handled and carefully redd out, his is a story that could
scarcely fail to have some consequence,” he continued. “The whole
administration of justice, from its highest officer downward, would be
totally discredited; and it looks to me as if they would need to be replaced.”
He seemed to shine with cunning as he said it. “And I need not point out to
ye that this of Mr. Balfour’s would be a remarkable bonny cause to appear
in,” he added.
Well, there they all were started on another hare; Mr. Balfour’s cause, and
what kind of speeches could be there delivered, and what officials could be
thus turned out, and who would succeed to their positions. I shall give but
the two specimens. It was proposed to approach Simon Fraser, whose
testimony, if it could be obtained, would prove certainly fatal to Argyle and
to Prestongrange. Miller highly approved of the attempt. “We have here
before us a dreeping roast,” said he, “here is cut-and-come-again for all.”
And methought all licked their lips. The other was already near the end.
Stewart the Writer was out of the body with delight, smelling vengeance on
his chief enemy, the Duke.
“Gentlemen,” cried he, charging his glass, “here is to Sheriff Miller. His
legal abilities are known to all. His culinary, this bowl in front of us is here
to speak for. But when it comes to the poleetical!”—cries he, and drains the
glass.
“Ay, but it will hardly prove politics in your meaning, my friend,” said
the gratified Miller. “A revolution, if you like, and I think I can promise you
that historical writers shall date from Mr. Balfour’s cause. But properly
guided, Mr. Stewart, tenderly guided, it shall prove a peaceful revolution.”
“And if the damned Campbells get their ears rubbed, what care I?” cries
Stewart, smiting down his fist.
It will be thought I was not very well pleased with all this, though I could
scarce forbear smiling at a kind of innocency in these old intriguers. But it
was not my view to have undergone so many sorrows for the advancement
of Sheriff Miller or to make a revolution in the Parliament House: and I
interposed accordingly with as much simplicity of manner as I could
assume.

“I have to thank you, gentlemen, for your advice,” said I. “And now I
would like, by your leave, to set you two or three questions. There is one
thing that has fallen rather on one aide, for instance: Will this cause do any
good to our friend James of the Glens?”
They seemed all a hair set back, and gave various answers, but
concurring practically in one point, that James had now no hope but in the
King’s mercy.
“To proceed, then,” said I, “will it do any good to Scotland? We have a
saying that it is an ill bird that fouls his own nest. I remember hearing we
had a riot in Edinburgh when I was an infant child, which gave occasion to
the late Queen to call this country barbarous; and I always understood that
we had rather lost than gained by that. Then came the year ’Forty-five,
which made Scotland to be talked of everywhere; but I never heard it said
we had anyway gained by the ’Forty-five. And now we come to this cause
of Mr. Balfour’s, as you call it. Sheriff Miller tells us historical writers are
to date from it, and I would not wonder. It is only my fear they would date
from it as a period of calamity and public reproach.”
The nimble-witted Miller had already smelt where I was travelling to,
and made haste to get on the same road. “Forcibly put, Mr. Balfour,” says
he. “A weighty observe, sir.”
“We have next to ask ourselves if it will be good for King George,” I
pursued. “Sheriff Miller appears pretty easy upon this; but I doubt you will
scarce be able to pull down the house from under him, without his Majesty
coming by a knock or two, one of which might easily prove fatal.”
I gave them a chance to answer, but none volunteered.
“Of those for whom the case was to be profitable,” I went on, “Sheriff
Miller gave us the names of several, among the which he was good enough
to mention mine. I hope he will pardon me if I think otherwise. I believe I
hung not the least back in this affair while there was life to be saved; but I
own I thought myself extremely hazarded, and I own I think it would be a
pity for a young man, with some idea of coming to the Bar, to ingrain upon
himself the character of a turbulent, factious fellow before he was yet
twenty. As for James, it seems—at this date of the proceedings, with the
sentence as good as pronounced—he has no hope but in the King’s mercy.
May not his Majesty, then, be more pointedly addressed, the characters of

these high officers sheltered from the public, and myself kept out of a
position which I think spells ruin for me?”
They all sat and gazed into their glasses, and I could see they found my
attitude on the affair unpalatable. But Miller was ready at all events.
“If I may be allowed to put my young friend’s notion in more formal
shape,” says he, “I understand him to propose that we should embody the
fact of his sequestration, and perhaps some heads of the testimony he was
prepared to offer, in a memorial to the Crown. This plan has elements of
success. It is as likely as any other (and perhaps likelier) to help our client.
Perhaps his Majesty would have the goodness to feel a certain gratitude to
all concerned in such a memorial, which might be construed into an
expression of a very delicate loyalty; and I think, in the drafting of the
same, this view might be brought forward.”
They all nodded to each other, not without sighs, for the former
alternative was doubtless more after their inclination.
“Paper, then, Mr. Stewart, if you please,” pursued Miller; “and I think it
might very fittingly be signed by the five of us here present, as procurators
for the condemned man.”’
“It can do none of us any harm, at least,” says Colstoun, heaving another
sigh, for he had seen himself Lord Advocate the last ten minutes.
Thereupon they set themselves, not very enthusiastically, to draft the
memorial—a process in the course of which they soon caught fire; and I
had no more ado but to sit looking on and answer an occasional question.
The paper was very well expressed; beginning with a recitation of the facts
about myself, the reward offered for my apprehension, my surrender, the
pressure brought to bear upon me; my sequestration; and my arrival at
Inverary in time to be too late; going on to explain the reasons of loyalty
and public interest for which it was agreed to waive any right of action; and
winding up with a forcible appeal to the King’s mercy on behalf of James.
Methought I was a good deal sacrificed, and rather represented in the
light of a firebrand of a fellow whom my cloud of lawyers had restrained
with difficulty from extremes. But I let it pass, and made but the one
suggestion, that I should be described as ready to deliver my own evidence
and adduce that of others before any commission of inquiry—and the one
demand, that I should be immediately furnished with a copy.

Colstoun hummed and hawed. “This is a very confidential document,”
said he.
“And my position towards Prestongrange is highly peculiar,” I replied.
“No question but I must have touched his heart at our first interview, so that
he has since stood my friend consistently. But for him, gentlemen, I must
now be lying dead or awaiting my sentence alongside poor James. For
which reason I choose to communicate to him the fact of this memorial as
soon as it is copied. You are to consider also that this step will make for my
protection. I have enemies here accustomed to drive hard; his Grace is in
his own country, Lovat by his side; and if there should hang any ambiguity
over our proceedings I think I might very well awake in gaol.”
Not finding any very ready answer to these considerations, my company
of advisers were at the last persuaded to consent, and made only this
condition that I was to lay the paper before Prestongrange with the express
compliments of all concerned.
The Advocate was at the castle dining with his Grace. By the hand of one
of Colstoun’s servants I sent him a billet asking for an interview, and
received a summons to meet him at once in a private house of the town.
Here I found him alone in a chamber; from his face there was nothing to be
gleaned; yet I was not so unobservant but what I spied some halberts in the
hall, and not so stupid but what I could gather he was prepared to arrest me
there and then, should it appear advisable.
“So, Mr. David, this is you?” said he.
“Where I fear I am not overly welcome, my lord,” said I. “And I would
like before I go further to express my sense of your lordship’s good offices,
even should they now cease.”
“I have heard of your gratitude before,” he replied drily, “and I think this
can scarce be the matter you called me from my wine to listen to. I would
remember also, if I were you, that you still stand on a very boggy
foundation.”
“Not now, my lord, I think,” said I; “and if your lordship will but glance
an eye along this, you will perhaps think as I do.”
He read it sedulously through, frowning heavily; then turned back to one
part and another which he seemed to weigh and compare the effect of. His
face a little lightened.

“This is not so bad but what it might be worse,” said he; “though I am
still likely to pay dear for my acquaintance with Mr. David Balfour.”
“Rather for your indulgence to that unlucky young man, my lord,” said I.
He still skimmed the paper, and all the while his spirits seemed to mend.
“And to whom am I indebted for this?” he asked presently. “Other
counsels must have been discussed, I think. Who was it proposed this
private method? Was it Miller?”
“My lord, it was myself,” said I. “These gentlemen have shown me no
such consideration, as that I should deny myself any credit I can fairly
claim, or spare them any responsibility they should properly bear. And the
mere truth is, that they were all in favour of a process which should have
remarkable consequences in the Parliament House, and prove for them (in
one of their own expressions) a dripping roast. Before I intervened, I think
they were on the point of sharing out the different law appointments. Our
friend Mr. Simon was to be taken in upon some composition.”
Prestongrange smiled. “These are our friends,” said he. “And what were
your reasons for dissenting, Mr. David?”
I told them without concealment, expressing, however, with more force
and volume those which regarded Prestongrange himself.
“You do me no more than justice,” said he. “I have fought as hard in your
interest as you have fought against mine. And how came you here to-day?”
he asked. “As the case drew out, I began to grow uneasy that I had clipped
the period so fine, and I was even expecting you to-morrow. But to-day—I
never dreamed of it.”
I was not of course, going to betray Andie.
“I suspect there is some very weary cattle by the road,” said I.
“If I had known you were such a mosstrooper you should have tasted
longer of the Bass,” says he.
“Speaking of which, my lord, I return your letter.” And I gave him the
enclosure in the counterfeit hand.
“There was the cover also with the seal,” said he.
“I have it not,” said I. “It bore not even an address, and could not
compromise a cat. The second enclosure I have, and with your permission, I
desire to keep it.”

I thought he winced a little, but he said nothing to the point. “To-
morrow,” he resumed, “our business here is to be finished, and I proceed by
Glasgow. I would be very glad to have you of my party, Mr David.”
“My lord . . .” I began.
“I do not deny it will be of service to me,” he interrupted. “I desire even
that, when we shall come to Edinburgh, you should alight at my house. You
have very warm friends in the Miss Grants, who will be overjoyed to have
you to themselves. If you think I have been of use to you, you can thus
easily repay me, and so far from losing, may reap some advantage by the
way. It is not every strange young man who is presented in society by the
King’s Advocate.”
Often enough already (in our brief relations) this gentleman had caused
my head to spin; no doubt but what for a moment he did so again now. Here
was the old fiction still maintained of my particular favour with his
daughters, one of whom had been so good as to laugh at me, while the other
two had scarce deigned to remark the fact of my existence. And now I was
to ride with my lord to Glasgow; I was to dwell with him in Edinburgh; I
was to be brought into society under his protection! That he should have so
much good-nature as to forgive me was surprising enough; that he could
wish to take me up and serve me seemed impossible; and I began to seek
some ulterior meaning. One was plain. If I became his guest, repentance
was excluded; I could never think better of my present design and bring any
action. And besides, would not my presence in his house draw out the
whole pungency of the memorial? For that complaint could not be very
seriously regarded, if the person chiefly injured was the guest of the official
most incriminated. As I thought upon this I could not quite refrain from
smiling.
“This is in the nature of a countercheck to the memorial?” said I.
“You are cunning, Mr. David,” said he, “and you do not wholly guess
wrong the fact will be of use to me in my defence. Perhaps, however, you
underrate friendly sentiments, which are perfectly genuine. I have a respect
for you, David, mingled with awe,” says he, smiling.
“I am more than willing, I am earnestly desirous to meet your wishes,”
said I. “It is my design to be called to the Bar, where your lordship’s
countenance would be invaluable; and I am besides sincerely grateful to
yourself and family for different marks of interest and of indulgence. The

difficulty is here. There is one point in which we pull two ways. You are
trying to hang James Stewart, I am trying to save him. In so far as my riding
with you would better your lordship’s defence, I am at your lordships
orders; but in so far as it would help to hang James Stewart, you see me at a
stick.”
I thought he swore to himself. “You should certainly be called; the Bar is
the true scene for your talents,” says he, bitterly, and then fell a while silent.
“I will tell you,” he presently resumed, “there is no question of James
Stewart, for or against, James is a dead man; his life is given and taken—
bought (if you like it better) and sold; no memorial can help—no
defalcation of a faithful Mr. David hurt him. Blow high, blow low, there
will be no pardon for James Stewart: and take that for said! The question is
now of myself: am I to stand or fall? and I do not deny to you that I am in
some danger. But will Mr. David Balfour consider why? It is not because I
pushed the case unduly against James; for that, I am sure of condonation.
And it is not because I have sequestered Mr. David on a rock, though it will
pass under that colour; but because I did not take the ready and plain path,
to which I was pressed repeatedly, and send Mr. David to his grave or to the
gallows. Hence the scandal—hence this damned memorial,” striking the
paper on his leg. “My tenderness for you has brought me in this difficulty. I
wish to know if your tenderness to your own conscience is too great to let
you help me out of it.”
No doubt but there was much of the truth in what he said; if James was
past helping, whom was it more natural that I should turn to help than just
the man before me, who had helped myself so often, and was even now
setting me a pattern of patience? I was besides not only weary, but
beginning to be ashamed, of my perpetual attitude of suspicion and refusal.
“If you will name the time and place, I will be punctually ready to attend
your lordship,” said I.
He shook hands with me. “And I think my misses have some news for
you,” says he, dismissing me.
I came away, vastly pleased to have my peace made, yet a little
concerned in conscience; nor could I help wondering, as I went back,
whether, perhaps, I had not been a scruple too good-natured. But there was
the fact, that this was a man that might have been my father, an able man, a
great dignitary, and one that, in the hour of my need, had reached a hand to

my assistance. I was in the better humour to enjoy the remainder of that
evening, which I passed with the advocates, in excellent company no doubt,
but perhaps with rather more than a sufficiency of punch: for though I went
early to bed I have no clear mind of how I got there.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE TEE’D BALL

On the morrow, from the justices’ private room, where none could see
me, I heard the verdict given in and judgment rendered upon James. The
Duke’s words I am quite sure I have correctly; and since that famous
passage has been made a subject of dispute, I may as well commemorate
my version. Having referred to the year ’45, the chief of the Campbells,
sitting as Justice-General upon the bench, thus addressed the unfortunate
Stewart before him: “If you had been successful in that rebellion, you might
have been giving the law where you have now received the judgment of it;
we, who are this day your judges, might have been tried before one of your
mock courts of judicature; and then you might have been satiated with the
blood of any name or clan to which you had an aversion.”
“This is to let the cat out of the bag, indeed,” thought I. And that was the
general impression. It was extraordinary how the young advocate lads took
hold and made a mock of this speech, and how scarce a meal passed but
what someone would get in the words: “And then you might have been
satiated.” Many songs were made in time for the hour’s diversion, and are
near all forgot. I remember one began:
“What do ye want the bluid of, bluid of?
Is it a name, or is it a clan,
Or is it an aefauld Hielandman,
That ye want the bluid of, bluid of?”

Another went to my old favourite air, The House of Airlie, and began
thus:
“It fell on a day when Argyle was on the bench,
That they served him a Stewart for his denner.”

And one of the verses ran:

“Then up and spak’ the Duke, and flyted on his cook,
I regard it as a sensible aspersion,
That I would sup ava’, an’ satiate my maw,
With the bluid of ony clan of my aversion.”

James was as fairly murdered as though the Duke had got a fowling-
piece and stalked him. So much of course I knew: but others knew not so
much, and were more affected by the items of scandal that came to light in
the progress of the cause. One of the chief was certainly this sally of the
justice’s. It was run hard by another of a juryman, who had struck into the
midst of Coulston’s speech for the defence with a “Pray, sir, cut it short, we
are quite weary,” which seemed the very excess of impudence and
simplicity. But some of my new lawyer friends were still more staggered
with an innovation that had disgraced and even vitiated the proceedings.
One witness was never called. His name, indeed, was printed, where it may
still be seen on the fourth page of the list: “James Drummond, alias
Macgregor, alias James More, late tenant in Inveronachile”; and his
precognition had been taken, as the manner is, in writing. He had
remembered or invented (God help him) matter which was lead in James
Stewart’s shoes, and I saw was like to prove wings to his own. This
testimony it was highly desirable to bring to the notice of the jury, without
exposing the man himself to the perils of cross-examination; and the way it
was brought about was a matter of surprise to all. For the paper was handed
round (like a curiosity) in court; passed through the jury-box, where it did
its work; and disappeared again (as though by accident) before it reached
the counsel for the prisoner. This was counted a most insidious device; and
that the name of James More should be mingled up with it filled me with
shame for Catriona and concern for myself.
The following day, Prestongrange and I, with a considerable company,
set out for Glasgow, where (to my impatience) we continued to linger some
time in a mixture of pleasure and affairs. I lodged with my lord, with whom
I was encouraged to familiarity; had my place at entertainments; was
presented to the chief guests; and altogether made more of than I thought
accorded either with my parts or station; so that, on strangers being present,
I would often blush for Prestongrange. It must be owned the view I had
taken of the world in these last months was fit to cast a gloom upon my
character. I had met many men, some of them leaders in Israel whether by
their birth or talents; and who among them all had shown clean hands? As

for the Browns and Millers, I had seen their self-seeking, I could never
again respect them. Prestongrange was the best yet; he had saved me,
spared me rather, when others had it in their minds to murder me outright;
but the blood of James lay at his door; and I thought his present
dissimulation with myself a thing below pardon. That he should affect to
find pleasure in my discourse almost surprised me out of my patience. I
would sit and watch him with a kind of a slow fire of anger in my bowels.
“Ah, friend, friend,” I would think to myself, “if you were but through with
this affair of the memorial, would you not kick me in the streets?” Here I
did him, as events have proved, the most grave injustice; and I think he was
at once far more sincere, and a far more artful performer, than I supposed.
But I had some warrant for my incredulity in the behaviour of that court
of young advocates that hung about in the hope of patronage. The sudden
favour of a lad not previously heard of troubled them at first out of
measure; but two days were not gone by before I found myself surrounded
with flattery and attention. I was the same young man, and neither better
nor bonnier, that they had rejected a month before; and now there was no
civility too fine for me! The same, do I say? It was not so; and the by-name
by which I went behind my back confirmed it. Seeing me so firm with the
Advocate, and persuaded that I was to fly high and far, they had taken a
word from the golfing green, and called me the Tee’d Ball. [14] I was told I
was now “one of themselves”; I was to taste of their soft lining, who had
already made my own experience of the roughness of the outer husk; and
one, to whom I had been presented in Hope Park, was so aspired as even to
remind me of that meeting. I told him I had not the pleasure of
remembering it.
“Why” says he, “it was Miss Grant herself presented me! My name is so-
and-so.”
“It may very well be, sir,” said I; “but I have kept no mind of it.”
At which he desisted; and in the midst of the disgust that commonly
overflowed my spirits I had a glisk of pleasure.
But I have not patience to dwell upon that time at length. When I was in
company with these young politics I was borne down with shame for
myself and my own plain ways, and scorn for them and their duplicity. Of
the two evils, I thought Prestongrange to be the least; and while I was
always as stiff as buckram to the young bloods, I made rather a

dissimulation of my hard feelings towards the Advocate, and was (in old
Mr. Campbell’s word) “soople to the laird.” Himself commented on the
difference, and bid me be more of my age, and make friends with my young
comrades.
I told him I was slow of making friends.
“I will take the word back,” said he. “But there is such a thing as Fair
gude s’en and fair gude day, Mr. David. These are the same young men
with whom you are to pass your days and get through life: your
backwardness has a look of arrogance; and unless you can assume a little
more lightness of manner, I fear you will meet difficulties in the path.”
“It will be an ill job to make a silk purse of a sow’s ear,” said I.
On the morning of October 1st I was awakened by the clattering in of an
express; and getting to my window almost before he had dismounted, I saw
the messenger had ridden hard. Somewhile after I was called to
Prestongrange, where he was sitting in his bedgown and nightcap, with his
letters round him.
“Mr. David,” add he, “I have a piece of news for you. It concerns some
friends of yours, of whom I sometimes think you are a little ashamed, for
you have never referred to their existence.”
I suppose I blushed.
“See you understand, since you make the answering signal,” said he.
“And I must compliment you on your excellent taste in beauty. But do you
know, Mr. David? this seems to me a very enterprising lass. She crops up
from every side. The Government of Scotland appears unable to proceed for
Mistress Katrine Drummond, which was somewhat the case (no great while
back) with a certain Mr. David Balfour. Should not these make a good
match? Her first intromission in politics—but I must not tell you that story,
the authorities have decided you are to hear it otherwise and from a livelier
narrator. This new example is more serious, however; and I am afraid I
must alarm you with the intelligence that she is now in prison.”
I cried out.
“Yes,” said he, “the little lady is in prison. But I would not have you to
despair. Unless you (with your friends and memorials) shall procure my
downfall, she is to suffer nothing.”
“But what has she done? What is her offence?” I cried.

“It might be almost construed a high treason,” he returned, “for she has
broke the king’s Castle of Edinburgh.”
“The lady is much my friend,” I said. “I know you would not mock me if
the thing were serious.”
“And yet it is serious in a sense,” said he; “for this rogue of a Katrine—
or Cateran, as we may call her—has set adrift again upon the world that
very doubtful character, her papa.”
Here was one of my previsions justified: James More was once again at
liberty. He had lent his men to keep me a prisoner; he had volunteered his
testimony in the Appin case, and the same (no matter by what subterfuge)
had been employed to influence the jury. Now came his reward, and he was
free. It might please the authorities to give to it the colour of an escape; but
I knew better—I knew it must be the fulfilment of a bargain. The same
course of thought relieved me of the least alarm for Catriona. She might be
thought to have broke prison for her father; she might have believed so
herself. But the chief hand in the whole business was that of Prestongrange;
and I was sure, so far from letting her come to punishment, he would not
suffer her to be even tried. Whereupon thus came out of me the not very
politic ejaculation:
“Ah! I was expecting that!”
“You have at times a great deal of discretion, too!” says Prestongrange.
“And what is my lord pleased to mean by that?” I asked.
“I was just marvelling”, he replied, “that being so clever as to draw these
inferences, you should not be clever enough to keep them to yourself. But I
think you would like to hear the details of the affair. I have received two
versions: and the least official is the more full and far the more entertaining,
being from the lively pen of my eldest daughter. ‘Here is all the town
bizzing with a fine piece of work,’ she writes, ‘and what would make the
thing more noted (if it were only known) the malefactor is a protégée of his
lordship my papa. I am sure your heart is too much in your duty (if it were
nothing else) to have forgotten Grey Eyes. What does she do, but get a
broad hat with the flaps open, a long hairy-like man’s greatcoat, and a big
gravatt; kilt her coats up to Gude kens whaur, clap two pair of boot-hose
upon her legs, take a pair of clouted brogues [15] in her hand, and off to the
Castle! Here she gives herself out to be a soutar [16] in the employ of James
More, and gets admitted to his cell, the lieutenant (who seems to have been

full of pleasantry) making sport among his soldiers of the soutar’s greatcoat.
Presently they hear disputation and the sound of blows inside. Out flies the
cobbler, his coat flying, the flaps of his hat beat about his face, and the
lieutenant and his soldiers mock at him as he runs off. They laughed no so
hearty the next time they had occasion to visit the cell and found nobody
but a tall, pretty, grey-eyed lass in the female habit! As for the cobbler, he
was ‘over the hills ayout Dumblane,’ and it’s thought that poor Scotland
will have to console herself without him. I drank Catriona’s health this night
in public. Indeed, the whole town admires her; and I think the beaux would
wear bits of her garters in their button-holes if they could only get them. I
would have gone to visit her in prison too, only I remembered in time I was
papa’s daughter; so I wrote her a billet instead, which I entrusted to the
faithful Doig, and I hope you will admit I can be political when I please.
The same faithful gomeral is to despatch this letter by the express along
with those of the wiseacres, so that you may hear Tom Fool in company
with Solomon. Talking of gomerals, do tell Dauvit Balfour. I would I could
see the face of him at the thought of a long-legged lass in such a
predicament; to say nothing of the levities of your affectionate daughter,
and his respectful friend.’ So my rascal signs herself!” continued
Prestongrange. “And you see, Mr. David, it is quite true what I tell you, that
my daughters regard you with the most affectionate playfulness.”
“The gomeral is much obliged,” said I.
“And was not this prettily done!” he went on. “Is not this Highland maid
a piece of a heroine?”
“I was always sure she had a great heart,” said I. “And I wager she
guessed nothing . . . But I beg your pardon, this is to tread upon forbidden
subjects.”
“I will go bail she did not,” he returned, quite openly. “I will go bail she
thought she was flying straight into King George’s face.”
Remembrance of Catriona and the thought of her lying in captivity,
moved me strangely. I could see that even Prestongrange admired, and
could not withhold his lips from smiling when he considered her behaviour.
As for Miss Grant, for all her ill habit of mockery, her admiration shone out
plain. A kind of a heat came on me.
“I am not your lordship’s daughter. . . ” I began.
“That I know of!” he put in, smiling.

“I speak like a fool,” said I; “or rather I began wrong. It would doubtless
be unwise in Mistress Grant to go to her in prison; but for me, I think I
would look like a half-hearted friend if I did not fly there instantly.”
“So-ho, Mr. David,” says he; “I thought that you and I were in a
bargain?”
“My lord,” I said, “when I made that bargain I was a good deal affected
by your goodness, but I’ll never can deny that I was moved besides by my
own interest. There was self-seeking in my heart, and I think shame of it
now. It may be for your lordship’s safety to say this fashious Davie Balfour
is your friend and housemate. Say it then; I’ll never contradict you. But as
for your patronage, I give it all back. I ask but the one thing—let me go, and
give me a pass to see her in her prison.”
He looked at me with a hard eye. “You put the cart before the horse, I
think,” says he. “That which I had given was a portion of my liking, which
your thankless nature does not seem to have remarked. But for my
patronage, it is not given, nor (to be exact) is it yet offered.” He paused a
bit. “And I warn you, you do not know yourself,” he added. “Youth is a
hasty season; you will think better of all this before a year.”
“Well, and I would like to be that kind of youth!” I cried. “I have seen too
much of the other party in these young advocates that fawn upon your
lordship and are even at the pains to fawn on me. And I have seen it in the
old ones also. They are all for by-ends, the whole clan of them! It’s this that
makes me seem to misdoubt your lordship’s liking. Why would I think that
you would like me? But ye told me yourself ye had an interest!”
I stopped at this, confounded that I had run so far; he was observing me
with an unfathomable face.
“My lord, I ask your pardon,” I resumed. “I have nothing in my chafts
but a rough country tongue. I think it would be only decent-like if I would
go to see my friend in her captivity; but I’m owing you my life—I’ll never
forget that; and if it’s for your lordship’s good, here I’ll stay. That’s barely
gratitude.”
“This might have been reached in fewer words,” says Prestongrange
grimly. “It is easy, and it is at times gracious, to say a plain Scots ‘ay’.”
“Ah, but, my lord, I think ye take me not yet entirely!” cried I. “For your
sake, for my life-safe, and the kindness that ye say ye bear to me—for

these, I’ll consent; but not for any good that might be coming to myself. If I
stand aside when this young maid is in her trial, it’s a thing I will be noways
advantaged by; I will lose by it, I will never gain. I would rather make a
shipwreck wholly than to build on that foundation.”
He was a minute serious, then smiled. “You mind me of the man with the
long nose,” said he; “was you to see the moon by a telescope you would see
David Balfour there! But you shall have your way of it. I will ask at you
one service, and then set you free: My clerks are overdriven; be so good as
copy me these few pages, and when that is done, I shall bid you God speed!
I would never charge myself with Mr. David’s conscience; and if you could
cast some part of it (as you went by) in a moss hag, you would find yourself
to ride much easier without it.”
“Perhaps not just entirely in the same direction though, my lord!” says I.
“And you shall have the last word, too!” cries he gaily.
Indeed, he had some cause for gaiety, having now found the means to
gain his purpose. To lessen the weight of the memorial, or to have a readier
answer at his hand, he desired I should appear publicly in the character of
his intimate. But if I were to appear with the same publicity as a visitor to
Catriona in her prison the world would scarce stint to draw conclusions, and
the true nature of James More’s escape must become evident to all. This
was the little problem I had to set him of a sudden, and to which he had so
briskly found an answer. I was to be tethered in Glasgow by that job of
copying, which in mere outward decency I could not well refuse; and
during these hours of employment Catriona was privately got rid of. I think
shame to write of this man that loaded me with so many goodnesses. He
was kind to me as any father, yet I ever thought him as false as a cracked
bell.

CHAPTER XIX.
I AM MUCH IN THE HANDS OF THE LADIES

The copying was a weary business, the more so as I perceived very early
there was no sort of urgency in the matters treated, and began very early to
consider my employment a pretext. I had no sooner finished than I got to
horse, used what remained of daylight to the best purpose, and being at last
fairly benighted, slept in a house by Almond-Water side. I was in the saddle
again before the day, and the Edinburgh booths were just opening when I
clattered in by the West Bow and drew up a smoking horse at my lord
Advocate’s door. I had a written word for Doig, my lord’s private hand that
was thought to be in all his secrets—a worthy little plain man, all fat and
snuff and self-sufficiency. Him I found already at his desk and already
bedabbled with maccabaw, in the same anteroom where I rencountered with
James More. He read the note scrupulously through like a chapter in his
Bible.
“H’m,” says he; “ye come a wee thing ahint-hand, Mr. Balfour. The
bird’s flaen—we hae letten her out.”
“Miss Drummond is set free?” I cried.
“Achy!” said he. “What would we keep her for, ye ken? To hae made a
steer about the bairn would has pleased naebody.”
“And where’ll she be now?” says I.
“Gude kens!” says Doig, with a shrug.
“She’ll have gone home to Lady Allardyce, I’m thinking,” said I.
“That’ll be it,” said he.
“Then I’ll gang there straight,” says I.
“But ye’ll be for a bite or ye go?” said he.
“Neither bite nor sup,” said I. “I had a good wauch of milk in by Ratho.”

“Aweel, aweel,” says Doig. “But ye’ll can leave your horse here and your
bags, for it seems we’re to have your up-put.”
“Na, na”, said I. “Tamson’s mear [17] would never be the thing for me this
day of all days.”
Doig speaking somewhat broad, I had been led by imitation into an
accent much more countrified than I was usually careful to affect a good
deal broader, indeed, than I have written it down; and I was the more
ashamed when another voice joined in behind me with a scrap of a ballad:
“Gae saddle me the bonny black,
Gae saddle sune and mak’ him ready
For I will down the Gatehope-slack,
And a’ to see my bonny leddy.”

The young lady, when I turned to her, stood in a morning gown, and her
hands muffled in the same, as if to hold me at a distance. Yet I could not but
think there was kindness in the eye with which she saw me.
“My best respects to you, Mistress Grant,” said I, bowing.
“The like to yourself, Mr. David,” she replied with a deep courtesy. “And
I beg to remind you of an old musty saw, that meat and mass never hindered
man. The mass I cannot afford you, for we are all good Protestants. But the
meat I press on your attention. And I would not wonder but I could find
something for your private ear that would be worth the stopping for.”
“Mistress Grant,” said I, “I believe I am already your debtor for some
merry words—and I think they were kind too—on a piece of unsigned
paper.”
“Unsigned paper?” says she, and made a droll face, which was likewise
wondrous beautiful, as of one trying to remember.
“Or else I am the more deceived,” I went on. “But to be sure, we shall
have the time to speak of these, since your father is so good as to make me
for a while your inmate; and the gomeral begs you at this time only for the
favour of his liberty.”
“You give yourself hard names,” said she.
“Mr. Doig and I would be blythe to take harder at your clever pen,” says
I.
“Once more I have to admire the discretion of all men-folk,” she replied.
“But if you will not eat, off with you at once; you will be back the sooner,

for you go on a fool’s errand. Off with you, Mr. David,” she continued,
opening the door.
“He has lowpen on his bonny grey,
He rade the richt gate and the ready
I trow he would neither stint nor stay,
For he was seeking his bonny leddy.”

I did not wait to be twice bidden, and did justice to Miss Grant’s citation
on the way to Dean.
Old Lady Allardyce walked there alone in the garden, in her hat and
mutch, and having a silver-mounted staff of some black wood to lean upon.
As I alighted from my horse, and drew near to her with congees, I could see
the blood come in her face, and her head fling into the air like what I had
conceived of empresses.
“What brings you to my poor door?” she cried, speaking high through her
nose. “I cannot bar it. The males of my house are dead and buried; I have
neither son nor husband to stand in the gate for me; any beggar can pluck
me by the baird [18]—and a baird there is, and that’s the worst of it yet!” she
added partly to herself.
I was extremely put out at this reception, and the last remark, which
seemed like a daft wife’s, left me near hand speechless.
“I see I have fallen under your displeasure, ma’am,” said I. “Yet I will
still be so bold as ask after Mistress Drummond.”
She considered me with a burning eye, her lips pressed close together
into twenty creases, her hand shaking on her staff. “This cows all!” she
cried. “Ye come to me to speir for her? Would God I knew!”
“She is not here?” I cried.
She threw up her chin and made a step and a cry at me, so that I fell back
incontinent.
“Out upon your leeing throat!” she cried. “What! ye come and speir at
me! She’s in jyle, whaur ye took her to—that’s all there is to it. And of a’
the beings ever I beheld in breeks, to think it should be to you! Ye timmer
scoun’rel, if I had a male left to my name I would have your jaicket dustit
till ye raired.”
I thought it not good to delay longer in that place, because I remarked her
passion to be rising. As I turned to the horse-post she even followed me;

and I make no shame to confess that I rode away with the one stirrup on and
scrambling for the other.
As I knew no other quarter where I could push my inquiries, there was
nothing left me but to return to the Advocate’s. I was well received by the
four ladies, who were now in company together, and must give the news of
Prestongrange and what word went in the west country, at the most
inordinate length and with great weariness to myself; while all the time that
young lady, with whom I so much desired to be alone again, observed me
quizzically and seemed to find pleasure in the sight of my impatience. At
last, after I had endured a meal with them, and was come very near the
point of appealing for an interview before her aunt, she went and stood by
the music-case, and picking out a tune, sang to it on a high key—“He that
will not when he may, When he will he shall have nay.” But this was the
end of her rigours, and presently, after making some excuse of which I have
no mind, she carried me away in private to her father’s library. I should not
fail to say she was dressed to the nines, and appeared extraordinary
handsome.
“Now, Mr. David, sit ye down here and let us have a two-handed crack,”
said she. “For I have much to tell you, and it appears besides that I have
been grossly unjust to your good taste.”
“In what manner, Mistress Grant?” I asked. “I trust I have never seemed
to fail in due respect.”
“I will be your surety, Mr. David,” said she. “Your respect, whether to
yourself or your poor neighbours, has been always and most fortunately
beyond imitation. But that is by the question. You got a note from me?” she
asked.
“I was so bold as to suppose so upon inference,” said I, “and it was
kindly thought upon.”
“It must have prodigiously surprised you,” said she. “But let us begin
with the beginning. You have not perhaps forgot a day when you were so
kind as to escort three very tedious misses to Hope Park? I have the less
cause to forget it myself, because you was so particular obliging as to
introduce me to some of the principles of the Latin grammar, a thing which
wrote itself profoundly on my gratitude.”
“I fear I was sadly pedantical,” said I, overcome with confusion at the
memory. “You are only to consider I am quite unused with the society of

ladies.”
“I will say the less about the grammar then,” she replied. “But how came
you to desert your charge? ‘He has thrown her out, overboard, his ain dear
Annie!’” she hummed; “and his ain dear Annie and her two sisters had to
taigle home by theirselves like a string of green geese! It seems you
returned to my papa’s, where you showed yourself excessively martial, and
then on to realms unknown, with an eye (it appears) to the Bass Rock; solan
geese being perhaps more to your mind than bonny lasses.”
Through all this raillery there was something indulgent in the lady’s eye
which made me suppose there might be better coming.
“You take a pleasure to torment me,” said I, “and I make a very feckless
plaything; but let me ask you to be more merciful. At this time there is but
the one thing that I care to hear of, and that will be news of Catriona.”
“Do you call her by that name to her face, Mr. Balfour?” she asked.
“In troth, and I am not very sure,” I stammered.
“I would not do so in any case to strangers,” said Miss Grant. “And why
are you so much immersed in the affairs of this young lady?”
“I heard she was in prison,” said I.
“Well, and now you hear that she is out of it,” she replied, “and what
more would you have? She has no need of any further champion.”
“I may have the greater need of her, ma’am,” said I.
“Come, this is better!” says Miss Grant. “But look me fairly in the face;
am I not bonnier than she?”
“I would be the last to be denying it,” said I. “There is not your marrow
in all Scotland.”
“Well, here you have the pick of the two at your hand, and must needs
speak of the other,” said she. “This is never the way to please the ladies, Mr.
Balfour.”
“But, mistress,” said I, “there are surely other things besides mere
beauty.”
“By which I am to understand that I am no better than I should be,
perhaps?” she asked.
“By which you will please understand that I am like the cock in the
midden in the fable book,” said I. “I see the braw jewel—and I like fine to

see it too—but I have more need of the pickle corn.”
“Bravissimo!” she cried. “There is a word well said at last, and I will
reward you for it with my story. That same night of your desertion I came
late from a friend’s house—where I was excessively admired, whatever you
may think of it—and what should I hear but that a lass in a tartan screen
desired to speak with me? She had been there an hour or better, said the
servant-lass, and she grat in to herself as she sat waiting. I went to her
direct; she rose as I came in, and I knew her at a look. ‘Grey Eyes!’ says I to
myself, but was more wise than to let on. You will be Miss Grant at last?
she says, rising and looking at me hard and pitiful. Ay, it was true he said,
you are bonny at all events.—The way God made me, my dear, I said, but I
would be gey and obliged if you could tell me what brought you here at
such a time of the night.—Lady, she said, we are kinsfolk, we are both come
of the blood of the sons of Alpin.—My dear, I replied, I think no more of
Alpin or his sons than what I do of a kalestock. You have a better argument
in these tears upon your bonny face. And at that I was so weak-minded as to
kiss her, which is what you would like to do dearly, and I wager will never
find the courage of. I say it was weak-minded of me, for I knew no more of
her than the outside; but it was the wisest stroke I could have hit upon. She
is a very staunch, brave nature, but I think she has been little used with
tenderness; and at that caress (though to say the truth, it was but lightly
given) her heart went out to me. I will never betray the secrets of my sex,
Mr. Davie; I will never tell you the way she turned me round her thumb,
because it is the same she will use to twist yourself. Ay, it is a fine lass! She
is as clean as hill well water.”
“She is e’en’t!” I cried.
“Well, then, she told me her concerns,” pursued Miss Grant, “and in what
a swither she was in about her papa, and what a taking about yourself, with
very little cause, and in what a perplexity she had found herself after you
was gone away. And then I minded at long last, says she, that we were
kinswomen, and that Mr. David should have given you the name of the
bonniest of the bonny, and I was thinking to myself ‘If she is so bonny she
will be good at all events’; and I took up my foot soles out of that. That was
when I forgave yourself, Mr. Davie. When you was in my society, you
seemed upon hot iron: by all marks, if ever I saw a young man that wanted
to be gone, it was yourself, and I and my two sisters were the ladies you

were so desirous to be gone from; and now it appeared you had given me
some notice in the by-going, and was so kind as to comment on my
attractions! From that hour you may date our friendship, and I began to
think with tenderness upon the Latin grammar.”
“You will have many hours to rally me in,” said I; “and I think besides
you do yourself injustice. I think it was Catriona turned your heart in my
direction. She is too simple to perceive as you do the stiffness of her
friend.”
“I would not like to wager upon that, Mr. David,” said she. “The lasses
have clear eyes. But at least she is your friend entirely, as I was to see. I
carried her in to his lordship my papa; and his Advocacy being in a
favourable stage of claret, was so good as to receive the pair of us. Here is
Grey Eyes that you have been deaved with these days past, said I, she is
come to prove that we spoke true, and I lay the prettiest lass in the three
Lothians at your feet—making a papistical reservation of myself. She suited
her action to my words: down she went upon her knees to him—I would not
like to swear but he saw two of her, which doubtless made her appeal the
more irresistible, for you are all a pack of Mahomedans—told him what had
passed that night, and how she had withheld her father’s man from
following of you, and what a case she was in about her father, and what a
flutter for yourself; and begged with weeping for the lives of both of you
(neither of which was in the slightest danger), till I vow I was proud of my
sex because it was done so pretty, and ashamed for it because of the
smallness of the occasion. She had not gone far, I assure you, before the
Advocate was wholly sober, to see his inmost politics ravelled out by a
young lass and discovered to the most unruly of his daughters. But we took
him in hand, the pair of us, and brought that matter straight. Properly
managed—and that means managed by me—there is no one to compare
with my papa.”
“He has been a good man to me,” said I.
“Well, he was a good man to Katrine, and I was there to see to it,” said
she.
“And she pled for me?” say I.
“She did that, and very movingly,” said Miss Grant. “I would not like to
tell you what she said—I find you vain enough already.”
“God reward her for it!” cried I.

“With Mr. David Balfour, I suppose?” says she.
“You do me too much injustice at the last!” I cried. “I would tremble to
think of her in such hard hands. Do you think I would presume, because she
begged my life? She would do that for a new whelped puppy! I have had
more than that to set me up, if you but ken’d. She kissed that hand of mine.
Ay, but she did. And why? because she thought I was playing a brave part
and might be going to my death. It was not for my sake—but I need not be
telling that to you, that cannot look at me without laughter. It was for the
love of what she thought was bravery. I believe there is none but me and
poor Prince Charlie had that honour done them. Was this not to make a god
of me? and do you not think my heart would quake when I remember it?”
“I do laugh at you a good deal, and a good deal more than is quite civil,”
said she; “but I will tell you one thing: if you speak to her like that, you
have some glimmerings of a chance.”
“Me?” I cried, “I would never dare. I can speak to you, Miss Grant,
because it’s a matter of indifference what ye think of me. But her? no fear!”
said I.
“I think you have the largest feet in all broad Scotland,” says she.
“Troth they are no very small,” said I, looking down.
“Ah, poor Catriona!” cries Miss Grant.
And I could but stare upon her; for though I now see very well what she
was driving at (and perhaps some justification for the same), I was never
swift at the uptake in such flimsy talk.
“Ah well, Mr. David,” she said, “it goes sore against my conscience, but I
see I shall have to be your speaking board. She shall know you came to her
straight upon the news of her imprisonment; she shall know you would not
pause to eat; and of our conversation she shall hear just so much as I think
convenient for a maid of her age and inexperience. Believe me, you will be
in that way much better served than you could serve yourself, for I will
keep the big feet out of the platter.”
“You know where she is, then?” I exclaimed.
“That I do, Mr. David, and will never tell,” said she.
“Why that?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “I am a good friend, as you will soon discover; and the
chief of those that I am friend to is my papa. I assure you, you will never
heat nor melt me out of that, so you may spare me your sheep’s eyes; and
adieu to your David-Balfourship for the now.”
“But there is yet one thing more,” I cried. “There is one thing that must
be stopped, being mere ruin to herself, and to me too.”
“Well,” she said, “be brief; I have spent half the day on you already.”
“My Lady Allardyce believes,” I began—“she supposes—she thinks that
I abducted her.”
The colour came into Miss Grant’s face, so that at first I was quite
abashed to find her ear so delicate, till I bethought me she was struggling
rather with mirth, a notion in which I was altogether confirmed by the
shaking of her voice as she replied—
“I will take up the defence of your reputation,” she said. “You may leave
it in my hands.”
And with that she withdrew out of the library.

CHAPTER XX.
I CONTINUE TO MOVE IN GOOD SOCIETY

For about exactly two months I remained a guest in Prestongrange’s
family, where I bettered my acquaintance with the bench, the bar, and the
flower of Edinburgh company. You are not to suppose my education was
neglected; on the contrary, I was kept extremely busy. I studied the French,
so as to be more prepared to go to Leyden; I set myself to the fencing, and
wrought hard, sometimes three hours in the day, with notable advancement;
at the suggestion of my cousin, Pilrig, who was an apt musician, I was put
to a singing class; and by the orders of my Miss Grant, to one for the
dancing, at which I must say I proved far from ornamental. However, all
were good enough to say it gave me an address a little more genteel; and
there is no question but I learned to manage my coat skirts and sword with
more dexterity, and to stand in a room as though the same belonged to me.
My clothes themselves were all earnestly re-ordered; and the most trifling
circumstance, such as where I should tie my hair, or the colour of my
ribbon, debated among the three misses like a thing of weight. One way
with another, no doubt I was a good deal improved to look at, and acquired
a bit of modest air that would have surprised the good folks at Essendean.
The two younger misses were very willing to discuss a point of my
habiliment, because that was in the line of their chief thoughts. I cannot say
that they appeared any other way conscious of my presence; and though
always more than civil, with a kind of heartless cordiality, could not hide
how much I wearied them. As for the aunt, she was a wonderful still
woman; and I think she gave me much the same attention as she gave the
rest of the family, which was little enough. The eldest daughter and the
Advocate himself were thus my principal friends, and our familiarity was
much increased by a pleasure that we took in common. Before the court met
we spent a day or two at the house of Grange, living very nobly with an

open table, and here it was that we three began to ride out together in the
fields, a practice afterwards maintained in Edinburgh, so far as the
Advocate’s continual affairs permitted. When we were put in a good frame
by the briskness of the exercise, the difficulties of the way, or the accidents
of bad weather, my shyness wore entirely off; we forgot that we were
strangers, and speech not being required, it flowed the more naturally on.
Then it was that they had my story from me, bit by bit, from the time that I
left Essendean, with my voyage and battle in the Covenant, wanderings in
the heather, etc.; and from the interest they found in my adventures sprung
the circumstance of a jaunt we made a little later on, on a day when the
courts were not sitting, and of which I will tell a trifle more at length.
We took horse early, and passed first by the house of Shaws, where it
stood smokeless in a great field of white frost, for it was yet early in the
day. Here Prestongrange alighted down, gave me his horse, an proceeded
alone to visit my uncle. My heart, I remember, swelled up bitter within me
at the sight of that bare house and the thought of the old miser sitting
chittering within in the cold kitchen!
“There is my home,” said I; “and my family.”
“Poor David Balfour!” said Miss Grant.
What passed during the visit I have never heard; but it would doubtless
not be very agreeable to Ebenezer, for when the Advocate came forth again
his face was dark.
“I think you will soon be the laird indeed, Mr. Davie,” says he, turning
half about with the one foot in the stirrup.
“I will never pretend sorrow,” said I; and, to say the truth, during his
absence Miss Grant and I had been embellishing the place in fancy with
plantations, parterres, and a terrace—much as I have since carried out in
fact.
Thence we pushed to the Queensferry, where Rankeillor gave us a good
welcome, being indeed out of the body to receive so great a visitor. Here the
Advocate was so unaffectedly good as to go quite fully over my affairs,
sitting perhaps two hours with the Writer in his study, and expressing (I was
told) a great esteem for myself and concern for my fortunes. To while this
time, Miss Grant and I and young Rankeillor took boat and passed the Hope
to Limekilns. Rankeillor made himself very ridiculous (and, I thought,
offensive) with his admiration for the young lady, and to my wonder (only it

is so common a weakness of her sex) she seemed, if anything, to be a little
gratified. One use it had: for when we were come to the other side, she laid
her commands on him to mind the boat, while she and I passed a little
further to the alehouse. This was her own thought, for she had been taken
with my account of Alison Hastie, and desired to see the lass herself. We
found her once more alone—indeed, I believe her father wrought all day in
the fields—and she curtsied dutifully to the gentry-folk and the beautiful
young lady in the riding-coat.
“Is this all the welcome I am to get?” said I, holding out my hand. “And
have you no more memory of old friends?”
“Keep me! wha’s this of it?” she cried, and then, “God’s truth, it’s the
tautit [19] laddie!”
“The very same,” says I.
“Mony’s the time I’ve thocht upon you and your freen, and blythe am I to
see in your braws,” [20] she cried. “Though I kent ye were come to your ain
folk by the grand present that ye sent me and that I thank ye for with a’ my
heart.”
“There,” said Miss Grant to me, “run out by with ye, like a guid bairn. I
didnae come here to stand and haud a candle; it’s her and me that are to
crack.”
I suppose she stayed ten minutes in the house, but when she came forth I
observed two things—that her eyes were reddened, and a silver brooch was
gone out of her bosom. This very much affected me.
“I never saw you so well adorned,” said I.
“O Davie man, dinna be a pompous gowk!” said she, and was more than
usually sharp to me the remainder of the day.
About candlelight we came home from this excursion.
For a good while I heard nothing further of Catriona—my Miss Grant
remaining quite impenetrable, and stopping my mouth with pleasantries. At
last, one day that she returned from walking and found me alone in the
parlour over my French, I thought there was something unusual in her
looks; the colour heightened, the eyes sparkling high, and a bit of a smile
continually bitten in as she regarded me. She seemed indeed like the very
spirit of mischief, and, walking briskly in the room, had soon involved me
in a kind of quarrel over nothing and (at the least) with nothing intended on

my side. I was like Christian in the slough—the more I tried to clamber out
upon the side, the deeper I became involved; until at last I heard her
declare, with a great deal of passion, that she would take that answer from
the hands of none, and I must down upon my knees for pardon.
The causelessness of all this fuff stirred my own bile. “I have said
nothing you can properly object to,” said I, “and as for my knees, that is an
attitude I keep for God.”
“And as a goddess I am to be served!” she cried, shaking her brown locks
at me and with a bright colour. “Every man that comes within waft of my
petticoats shall use me so!”
“I will go so far as ask your pardon for the fashion’s sake, although I vow
I know not why,” I replied. “But for these play-acting postures, you can go
to others.”
“O Davie!” she said. “Not if I was to beg you?”
I bethought me I was fighting with a woman, which is the same as to say
a child, and that upon a point entirely formal.
“I think it a bairnly thing,” I said, “not worthy in you to ask, or me to
render. Yet I will not refuse you, neither,” said I; “and the stain, if there be
any, rests with yourself.” And at that I kneeled fairly down.
“There!” she cried. “There is the proper station, there is where I have
been manoeuvring to bring you.” And then, suddenly, “Kep,” [21] said she,
flung me a folded billet, and ran from the apartment laughing.
The billet had neither place nor date. “Dear Mr. David,” it began, “I get
your news continually by my cousin, Miss Grant, and it is a pleisand
hearing. I am very well, in a good place, among good folk, but necessitated
to be quite private, though I am hoping that at long last we may meet again.
All your friendships have been told me by my loving cousin, who loves us
both. She bids me to send you this writing, and oversees the same. I will be
asking you to do all her commands, and rest your affectionate friend,
Catriona Macgregor-Drummond. P.S.—Will you not see my cousin,
Allardyce?”
I think it not the least brave of my campaigns (as the soldiers say) that I
should have done as I was here bidden and gone forthright to the house by
Dean. But the old lady was now entirely changed and supple as a glove. By
what means Miss Grant had brought this round I could never guess; I am

sure, at least, she dared not to appear openly in the affair, for her papa was
compromised in it pretty deep. It was he, indeed, who had persuaded
Catriona to leave, or rather, not to return, to her cousin’s, placing her instead
with a family of Gregorys—decent people, quite at the Advocate’s
disposition, and in whom she might have the more confidence because they
were of his own clan and family. These kept her private till all was ripe,
heated and helped her to attempt her father’s rescue, and after she was
discharged from prison received her again into the same secrecy. Thus
Prestongrange obtained and used his instrument; nor did there leak out the
smallest word of his acquaintance with the daughter of James More. There
was some whispering, of course, upon the escape of that discredited person;
but the Government replied by a show of rigour, one of the cell porters was
flogged, the lieutenant of the guard (my poor friend, Duncansby) was
broken of his rank, and as for Catriona, all men were well enough pleased
that her fault should be passed by in silence.
I could never induce Miss Grant to carry back an answer. “No,” she
would say, when I persisted, “I am going to keep the big feet out of the
platter.” This was the more hard to bear, as I was aware she saw my little
friend many times in the week, and carried her my news whenever (as she
said) I “had behaved myself.” At last she treated me to what she called an
indulgence, and I thought rather more of a banter. She was certainly a
strong, almost a violent, friend to all she liked, chief among whom was a
certain frail old gentlewoman, very blind and very witty, who dwelt on the
top of a tall land on a strait close, with a nest of linnets in a cage, and
thronged all day with visitors. Miss Grant was very fond to carry me there
and put me to entertain her friend with the narrative of my misfortunes: and
Miss Tibbie Ramsay (that was her name) was particular kind, and told me a
great deal that was worth knowledge of old folks and past affairs in
Scotland. I should say that from her chamber window, and not three feet
away, such is the straitness of that close, it was possible to look into a
barred loophole lighting the stairway of the opposite house.
Here, upon some pretext, Miss Grant left me one day alone with Miss
Ramsay. I mind I thought that lady inattentive and like one preoccupied. I
was besides very uncomfortable, for the window, contrary to custom, was
left open and the day was cold. All at once the voice of Miss Grant sounded
in my ears as from a distance.

“Here, Shaws!” she cried, “keek out of the window and see what I have
broughten you.”
I think it was the prettiest sight that ever I beheld. The well of the close
was all in clear shadow where a man could see distinctly, the walls very
black and dingy; and there from the barred loophole I saw two faces smiling
across at me—Miss Grant’s and Catriona’s.
“There!” says Miss Grant, “I wanted her to see you in your braws like the
lass of Limekilns. I wanted her to see what I could make of you, when I
buckled to the job in earnest!”
It came in my mind that she had been more than common particular that
day upon my dress; and I think that some of the same care had been
bestowed upon Catriona. For so merry and sensible a lady, Miss Grant was
certainly wonderful taken up with duds.
“Catriona!” was all I could get out.
As for her, she said nothing in the world, but only waved her hand and
smiled to me, and was suddenly carried away again from before the
loophole.
That vision was no sooner lost than I ran to the house door, where I found
I was locked in; thence back to Miss Ramsay, crying for the key, but might
as well have cried upon the castle rock. She had passed her word, she said,
and I must be a good lad. It was impossible to burst the door, even if it had
been mannerly; it was impossible I should leap from the window, being
seven storeys above ground. All I could do was to crane over the close and
watch for their reappearance from the stair. It was little to see, being no
more than the tops of their two heads each on a ridiculous bobbin of skirts,
like to a pair of pincushions. Nor did Catriona so much as look up for a
farewell; being prevented (as I heard afterwards) by Miss Grant, who told
her folk were never seen to less advantage than from above downward.
On the way home, as soon as I was set free, I upbraided Miss Grant with
her cruelty.
“I am sorry you was disappointed,” says she demurely. “For my part I
was very pleased. You looked better than I dreaded; you looked—if it will
not make you vain—a mighty pretty young man when you appeared in the
window. You are to remember that she could not see your feet,” says she,
with the manner of one reassuring me.

“O!” cried I, “leave my feet be—they are no bigger than my
neighbours’.”
“They are even smaller than some,” said she, “but I speak in parables like
a Hebrew prophet.”
“I marvel little they were sometimes stoned!” says I. “But, you miserable
girl, how could you do it? Why should you care to tantalise me with a
moment?”
“Love is like folk,” says she; “it needs some kind of vivers.” [22]
“Oh, Barbara, let me see her properly!” I pleaded. “You can—you see her
when you please; let me have half an hour.”
“Who is it that is managing this love affair! You! Or me?” she asked, and
as I continued to press her with my instances, fell back upon a deadly
expedient: that of imitating the tones of my voice when I called on Catriona
by name; with which, indeed, she held me in subjection for some days to
follow.
There was never the least word heard of the memorial, or none by me.
Prestongrange and his grace the Lord President may have heard of it (for
what I know) on the deafest sides of their heads; they kept it to themselves,
at least—the public was none the wiser; and in course of time, on
November 8th, and in the midst of a prodigious storm of wind and rain,
poor James of the Glens was duly hanged at Lettermore by Ballachulish.
So there was the final upshot of my politics! Innocent men have perished
before James, and are like to keep on perishing (in spite of all our wisdom)
till the end of time. And till the end of time young folk (who are not yet
used with the duplicity of life and men) will struggle as I did, and make
heroical resolves, and take long risks; and the course of events will push
them upon the one side and go on like a marching army. James was hanged;
and here was I dwelling in the house of Prestongrange, and grateful to him
for his fatherly attention. He was hanged; and behold! when I met Mr.
Simon in the causeway, I was fain to pull off my beaver to him like a good
little boy before his dominie. He had been hanged by fraud and violence,
and the world wagged along, and there was not a pennyweight of
difference; and the villains of that horrid plot were decent, kind, respectable
fathers of families, who went to kirk and took the sacrament!

But I had had my view of that detestable business they call politics—I
had seen it from behind, when it is all bones and blackness; and I was cured
for life of any temptations to take part in it again. A plain, quiet, private
path was that which I was ambitious to walk in, when I might keep my head
out of the way of dangers and my conscience out of the road of temptation.
For, upon a retrospect, it appeared I had not done so grandly, after all; but
with the greatest possible amount of big speech and preparation, had
accomplished nothing.
The 25th of the same month a ship was advertised to sail from Leith; and
I was suddenly recommended to make up my mails for Leyden. To
Prestongrange I could, of course, say nothing; for I had already been a long
while sorning on his house and table. But with his daughter I was more
open, bewailing my fate that I should be sent out of the country, and
assuring her, unless she should bring me to farewell with Catriona, I would
refuse at the last hour.
“Have I not given you my advice?” she asked.
“I know you have,” said I, “and I know how much I am beholden to you
already, and that I am bidden to obey your orders. But you must confess
you are something too merry a lass at times to lippen [23] to entirely.”
“I will tell you, then,” said she. “Be you on board by nine o’clock
forenoon; the ship does not sail before one; keep your boat alongside; and if
you are not pleased with my farewells when I shall send them, you can
come ashore again and seek Katrine for yourself.”
Since I could make no more of her, I was fain to be content with this.
The day came round at last when she and I were to separate. We had been
extremely intimate and familiar; I was much in her debt; and what way we
were to part was a thing that put me from my sleep, like the vails I was to
give to the domestic servants. I knew she considered me too backward, and
rather desired to rise in her opinion on that head. Besides which, after so
much affection shown and (I believe) felt upon both sides, it would have
looked cold-like to be anyways stiff. Accordingly, I got my courage up and
my words ready, and the last chance we were like to be alone, asked pretty
boldly to be allowed to salute her in farewell.
“You forget yourself strangely, Mr. Balfour,” said she. “I cannot call to
mind that I have given you any right to presume on our acquaintancy.”

I stood before her like a stopped clock, and knew not what to think, far
less to say, when of a sudden she cast her arms about my neck and kissed
me with the best will in the world.
“You inimitable bairn!” she cried. “Did you think that I would let us part
like strangers? Because I can never keep my gravity at you five minutes on
end, you must not dream I do not love you very well: I am all love and
laughter, every time I cast an eye on you! And now I will give you an
advice to conclude your education, which you will have need of before it’s
very long. Never ask womenfolk. They’re bound to answer ‘No’; God never
made 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 grand skirling of war-
pipes. I rode on a little Highland horse on the right hand of my father,
James More, and of Glengyle himself. And here is one fine thing that I
remember, that Glengyle kissed me in the face, because (says he) ‘my
kinswoman, you are the only lady of the clan that has come out,’ and me a
little maid of maybe twelve years old! I saw Prince Charlie too, and the blue
eyes of him; he was pretty indeed! I had his hand to kiss in front of the
army. O, well, these were the good days, but it is all like a dream that I have
seen and then awakened. It went what way you very well know; and these
were the worst days of all, when the red-coat soldiers were out, and my
father and uncles lay in the hill, and I was to be carrying them their meat in
the middle night, or at the short sight of day when the cocks crow. Yes, I
have walked in the night, many’s the time, and my heart great in me for
terror of the darkness. It is a strange thing I will never have been meddled
with by a bogle; but they say a maid goes safe. Next there was my uncle’s
marriage, and that was a dreadful affair beyond all. Jean Kay was that
woman’s name; and she had me in the room with her that night at
Inversnaid, the night we took her from her friends in the old, ancient
manner. She would and she wouldn’t; she was for marrying Rob the one
minute, and the next she would be for none of him. I will never have seen
such a feckless creature of a woman; surely all there was of her would tell
her ay or no. Well, she was a widow; and I can never be thinking a widow a
good woman.”
“Catriona!” says I, “how do you make out that?”
“I do not know,” said she; “I am only telling you the seeming in my
heart. And then to marry a new man! Fy! But that was her; and she was

married again upon my Uncle Robin, and went with him awhile to kirk and
market; and then wearied, or else her friends got claught of her and talked
her round, or maybe she turned ashamed; at the least of it, she ran away,
and went back to her own folk, and said we had held her in the lake, and I
will never tell you all what. I have never thought much of any females since
that day. And so in the end my father, James More, came to be cast in
prison, and you know the rest of it an well as me.”
“And through all you had no friends?” said I.
“No,” said she; “I have been pretty chief with two-three lasses on the
braes, but not to call it friends.”
“Well, mine is a plain tale,” said I. “I never had a friend to my name till I
met in with you.”
“And that brave Mr. Stewart?” she asked.
“O, yes, I was forgetting him,” I said. “But he is a man, and that is 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 to terror of James More.
It was some distance to that tavern. He talked all the way of matters
which did not interest me the smallest, and at the door dismissed me with
empty manners. Thence I walked to my new lodging, where I had not so
much as a chimney to hold me warm, and no society but my own thoughts.
These were still bright enough; I did not so much as dream that Catriona
was turned against me; I thought we were like folk pledged; I thought we
had been too near and spoke too warmly to be severed, least of all by what
were only steps in a most needful policy. And the chief of my concern was
only the kind of father-in-law that I was getting, which was not at all the
kind I would have chosen: and the matter of how soon I ought to speak to
him, which was a delicate point on several sides. In the first place, when I
thought how young I was I blushed all over, and could almost have found it
in my heart to have desisted; only that if once I let them go from Leyden
without explanation, I might lose her altogether. And in the second place,
there was our very irregular situation to be kept in view, and the rather scant
measure of satisfaction I had given James More that morning. I concluded,
on the whole, that delay would not hurt anything, yet I would not delay too
long neither; and got to my cold bed with a full heart.
The next day, as James More seemed a little on the complaining hand in
the matter of my chamber, I offered to have in more furniture; and coming
in the afternoon, with porters bringing chairs and tables, found the girl once
more left to herself. She greeted me on my admission civilly, but withdrew
at once to her own room, of which she shut the door. I made my disposition,

and paid and dismissed the men so that she might hear them go, when I
supposed she would at once come forth again to speak to me. I waited yet
awhile, then knocked upon her door.
“Catriona!” said I.
The door was opened so quickly, even before I had the word out, that I
thought she must have stood behind it listening. She remained there in the
interval quite still; but she had a look that I cannot put a name on, as of one
in a bitter trouble.
“Are we not to have our walk to-day either?” so I faltered.
“I am thanking you,” said she. “I will not be caring much to walk, now
that my father is come home.”
“But I think he has gone out himself and left you here alone,” said I.
“And do you think that was very kindly said?” she asked.
“It was not unkindly meant,” I replied. “What ails you, Catriona? What
have I done to you that you should turn from me like this?”
“I do not turn from you at all,” she said, speaking very carefully. “I will
ever be grateful to my friend that was good to me; I will ever be his friend
in all that I am able. But now that my father James More is come again,
there is a difference to be made, and I think there are some things said and
done that would be better to be forgotten. But I will ever be your friend in
all that I am able, and if that is not all that . . . . if it is not so much . . . . Not
that you will be caring! But I would not have you think of me too hard. It
was true what you said to me, that I was too young to be advised, and I am
hoping you will remember I was just a child. I would not like to lose your
friendship, at all events.”
She began this very pale; but before she was done, the blood was in her
face like scarlet, so that not her words only, but her face and the trembling
of her very hands, besought me to be gentle. I saw, for the first time, how
very wrong I had done to place the child in that position, where she had
been entrapped into a moment’s weakness, and now stood before me like a
person shamed.
“Miss Drummond,” I said, and stuck, and made the same beginning once
again, “I wish you could see into my heart,” I cried. “You would read there
that my respect is undiminished. If that were possible, I should say it was
increased. This is but the result of the mistake we made; and had to come;

and the less said of it now the better. Of all of our life here, I promise you it
shall never pass my lips; I would like to promise you too that I would never
think of it, but it’s a memory that will be always dear to me. And as for a
friend, you have one here that would die for you.”
“I am thanking you,” said she.
We stood awhile silent, and my sorrow for myself began to get the upper
hand; for here were all my dreams come to a sad tumble, and my love lost,
and myself alone again in the world as at the beginning.
“Well,” said I, “we shall be friends always, that’s a certain thing. But this
is a kind of farewell, too: it’s a kind of a farewell after all; I shall always
ken Miss Drummond, but this is a farewell to my Catriona.”
I looked at her; I could hardly say I saw her, but she seemed to grow
great and brighten in my eyes; and with that I suppose I must have lost my
head, for I called out her name again and made a step at her with my hands
reached forth.
She shrank back like a person struck, her face flamed; but the blood
sprang no faster up into her cheeks, than what it flowed back upon my own
heart, at sight of it, with penitence and concern. I found no words to excuse
myself, but bowed before her very deep, and went my ways out of the
house with death in my bosom.
I think it was about five days that followed without any change. I saw her
scarce ever but at meals, and then of course in the company of James More.
If we were alone even for a moment, I made it my devoir to behave the
more distantly and to multiply respectful attentions, having always in my
mind’s eye that picture of the girl shrinking and flaming in a blush, and in
my heart more pity for her than I could depict in words. I was sorry enough
for myself, I need not dwell on that, having fallen all my length and more
than all my height in a few seconds; but, indeed, I was near as sorry for the
girl, and sorry enough to be scarce angry with her save by fits and starts.
Her plea was good; she had been placed in an unfair position; if she had
deceived herself and me, it was no more than was to have been looked for.
And for another thing she was now very much alone. Her father, when he
was by, was rather a caressing parent; but he was very easy led away by his
affairs and pleasures, neglected her without compunction or remark, spent
his nights in taverns when he had the money, which was more often than I
could at all account for; and even in the course of these few days, failed

once to come to a meal, which Catriona and I were at last compelled to
partake of without him. It was the evening meal, and I left immediately that
I had eaten, observing I supposed she would prefer to be alone; to which
she agreed and (strange as it may seem) I quite believed her. Indeed, I
thought myself but an eyesore to the girl, and a reminder of a moment’s
weakness that she now abhorred to think of. So she must sit alone in that
room where she and I had been so merry, and in the blink of that chimney
whose light had shone upon our many difficult and tender moments. There
she must sit alone, and think of herself as of a maid who had most
unmaidenly proffered her affections and had the same rejected. And in the
meanwhile I would be alone some other place, and reading myself
(whenever I was tempted to be angry) lessons upon human frailty and
female delicacy. And altogether I suppose there were never two poor fools
made themselves more unhappy in a greater misconception.
As for James, he paid not so much heed to us, or to anything in nature but
his pocket, and his belly, and his own prating talk. Before twelve hours
were gone he had raised a small loan of me; before thirty, he had asked for a
second and been refused. Money and refusal he took with the same kind of
high good nature. Indeed, he had an outside air of magnanimity that was
very well fitted to impose upon a daughter; and the light in which he was
constantly presented in his talk, and the man’s fine presence and great ways
went together pretty harmoniously. So that a man that had no business with
him, and either very little penetration or a furious deal of prejudice, might
almost have been taken in. To me, after my first two interviews, he was as
plain as print; I saw him to be perfectly selfish, with a perfect innocency in
the same; and I would hearken to his swaggering talk (of arms, and “an old
soldier,” and “a poor Highland gentleman,” and “the strength of my country
and my friends”) as I might to the babbling of a parrot.
The odd thing was that I fancy he believed some part of it himself, or did
at times; I think he was so false all through that he scarce knew when he
was lying; and for one thing, his moments of dejection must have been
wholly genuine. There were times when he would be the most silent,
affectionate, clinging creature possible, holding Catriona’s hand like a big
baby, and begging of me not to leave if I had any love to him; of which,
indeed, I had none, but all the more to his daughter. He would press and
indeed beseech us to entertain him with our talk, a thing very difficult in the

state of our relations; and again break forth in pitiable regrets for his own
land and friends, or into Gaelic singing.
“This is one of the melancholy airs of my native land,” he would say.
“You may think it strange to see a soldier weep, and indeed it is to make a
near friend of you,” says he. “But the notes of this singing are in my blood,
and the words come out of my heart. And when I mind upon my red
mountains and the wild birds calling there, and the brave streams of water
running down, I would scarce think shame to weep before my enemies.”
Then he would sing again, and translate to me pieces of the song, with a
great deal of boggling and much expressed contempt against the English
language. “It says here,” he would say, “that the sun is gone down, and the
battle is at an end, and the brave chiefs are defeated. And it tells here how
the stars see them fleeing into strange countries or lying dead on the red
mountain; and they will never more shout the call of battle or wash their
feet in the streams of the valley. But if you had only some of this language,
you would weep also because the words of it are beyond all expression, and
it is mere mockery to tell you it in English.”
Well, I thought there was a good deal of mockery in the business, one
way and another; and yet, there was some feeling too, for which I hated
him, I think, the worst of all. And it used to cut me to the quick to see
Catriona so much concerned for the old rogue, and weeping herself to see
him weep, when I was sure one half of his distress flowed from his last
night’s drinking in some tavern. There were times when I was tempted to
lend him a round sum, and see the last of him for good; but this would have
been to see the last of Catriona as well, for which I was scarcely so
prepared; and besides, it went against my conscience to squander my good
money on one who was so little of a husband.

CHAPTER XXVII.
A TWOSOME

I believe it was about the fifth day, and I know at least that James was in
one of his fits of gloom, when I received three letters. The first was from
Alan, offering to visit me in Leyden; the other two were out of Scotland and
prompted by the same affair, which was the death of my uncle and my own
complete accession to my rights. Rankeillor’s was, of course, wholly in the
business view; Miss Grant’s was like herself, a little more witty than wise,
full of blame to me for not having written (though how was I to write with
such intelligence?) and of rallying talk about Catriona, which it cut me to
the quick to read in her very presence.
For it was of course in my own rooms that I found them, when I came to
dinner, so that I was surprised out of my news in the very first moment of
reading it. This made a welcome diversion for all three of us, nor could any
have foreseen the ill consequences that ensued. It was accident that brought
the three letters the same day, and that gave them into my hand in the same
room with James More; and of all the events that flowed from that accident,
and which I might have prevented if I had held my tongue, the truth is that
they were preordained before Agricola came into Scotland or Abraham set
out upon his travels.
The first that I opened was naturally Alan’s; and what more natural than
that I should comment on his design to visit me? but I observed James to sit
up with an air of immediate attention.
“Is that not Alan Breck that was suspected of the Appin accident?” he
inquired.
I told him, “Ay,” it was the same; and he withheld me some time from my
other letters, asking of our acquaintance, of Alan’s manner of life in France,
of which I knew very little, and further of his visit as now proposed.

“All we forfeited folk hang a little together,” he explained, “and besides I
know the gentleman: and though his descent is not the thing, and indeed he
has no true right to use the name of Stewart, he was very much admired in
the day of Drummossie. He did there like a soldier; if some that need not be
named had done as well, the upshot need not have been so melancholy to
remember. There were two that did their best that day, and it makes a bond
between the pair of us,” says he.
I could scarce refrain from shooting out my tongue at him, and could
almost have wished that Alan had been there to have inquired a little further
into that mention of his birth. Though, they tell me, the same was indeed
not wholly regular.
Meanwhile, I had opened Miss Grant’s, and could not withhold an
exclamation.
“Catriona,” I cried, forgetting, the first time since her father was arrived,
to address her by a handle, “I am come into my kingdom fairly, I am the
laird of Shaws indeed—my uncle is dead at last.”
She clapped her hands together leaping from her seat. The next moment
it must have come over both of us at once what little cause of joy was left to
either, and we stood opposite, staring on each other sadly.
But James showed himself a ready hypocrite. “My daughter,” says he, “is
this how my cousin learned you to behave? Mr. David has lost a new friend,
and we should first condole with him on his bereavement.”
“Troth, sir,” said I, turning to him in a kind of anger, “I can make no such
great faces. His death is as blithe news as ever I got.”
“It’s a good soldier’s philosophy,” says James. “’Tis the way of flesh, we
must all go, all go. And if the gentleman was so far from your favour, why,
very well! But we may at least congratulate you on your accession to your
estates.”
“Nor can I say that either,” I replied, with the same heat. “It is a good
estate; what matters that to a lone man that has enough already? I had a
good revenue before in my frugality; and but for the man’s death—which
gratifies me, shame to me that must confess it!—I see not how anyone is to
be bettered by this change.”
“Come, come,” said he, “you are more affected than you let on, or you
would never make yourself out so lonely. Here are three letters; that means

three that wish you well; and I could name two more, here in this very
chamber. I have known you not so very long, but Catriona, when we are
alone, is never done with the singing of your praises.”
She looked up at him, a little wild at that; and he slid off at once into
another matter, the extent of my estate, which (during the most of the dinner
time) he continued to dwell upon with interest. But it was to no purpose he
dissembled; he had touched the matter with too gross a hand: and I knew
what to expect. Dinner was scarce ate when he plainly discovered his
designs. He reminded Catriona of an errand, and bid her attend to it. “I do
not see you should be one beyond the hour,” he added, “and friend David
will be good enough to bear me company till you return.” She made haste to
obey him without words. I do not know if she understood, I believe not; but
I was completely satisfied, and sat strengthening my mind for what should
follow.
The door had scarce closed behind her departure, when the man leaned
back in his chair and addressed me with a good affectation of easiness. Only
the one thing betrayed him, and that was his face; which suddenly shone all
over with fine points of sweat.
“I am rather glad to have a word alone with you,” says he, “because in
our first interview there were some expressions you misapprehended and I
have long meant to set you right upon. My daughter stands beyond doubt.
So do you, and I would make that good with my sword against all
gainsayers. But, my dear David, this world is a censorious place—as who
should know it better than myself, who have lived ever since the days of my
late departed father, God sain him! in a perfect spate of calumnies? We have
to face to that; you and me have to consider of that; we have to consider of
that.” And he wagged his head like a minister in a pulpit.
“To what effect, Mr. Drummond?” said I. “I would be obliged to you if
you would approach your point.”
“Ay, ay,” said he, laughing, “like your character, indeed! and what I most
admire in it. But the point, my worthy fellow, is sometimes in a kittle bit.”
He filled a glass of wine. “Though between you and me, that are such fast
friends, it need not bother us long. The point, I need scarcely tell you, is my
daughter. And the first thing is that I have no thought in my mind of
blaming you. In the unfortunate circumstances, what could you do else?
’Deed, and I cannot tell.”

“I thank you for that,” said I, pretty close upon my guard.
“I have besides studied your character,” he went on; “your talents are
fair; you seem to have a moderate competence, which does no harm; and
one thing with another, I am very happy to have to announce to you that I
have decided on the latter of the two ways open.”
“I am afraid I am dull,” said I. “What ways are these?”
He bent his brows upon me formidably and uncrossed his legs. “Why,
sir,” says he, “I think I need scarce describe them to a gentleman of your
condition; either that I should cut your throat or that you should marry my
daughter.”
“You are pleased to be quite plain at last,” said I.
“And I believe I have been plain from the beginning!” cries he
robustiously. “I am a careful parent, Mr. Balfour; but I thank God, a patient
and deleeborate man. There is many a father, sir, that would have hirsled
you at once either to the altar or the field. My esteem for your character—”
“Mr. Drummond,” I interrupted, “if you have any esteem for me at all, I
will beg of you to moderate your voice. It is quite needless to rowt at a
gentleman in the same chamber with yourself and lending you his best
attention.”
“Why, very true,” says he, with an immediate change. “And you must
excuse the agitations of a parent.”
“I understand you then,” I continued—“for I will take no note of your
other alternative, which perhaps it was a pity you let fall—I understand you
rather to offer me encouragement in case I should desire to apply for your
daughter’s hand?”
“It is not possible to express my meaning better,” said he, “and I see we
shall do well together.”
“That remains to be yet seen,” said I. “But so much I need make no secret
of, that I bear the lady you refer to the most tender affection, and I could not
fancy, even in a dream, a better fortune than to get her.”
“I was sure of it, I felt certain of you, David,” he cried, and reached out
his hand to me.
I put it by. “You go too fast, Mr. Drummond,” said I. “There are
conditions to be made; and there is a difficulty in the path, which I see not

entirely how we shall come over. I have told you that, upon my side, there
is no objection to the marriage, but I have good reason to believe there will
be much on the young lady’s.”
“This is all beside the mark,” says he. “I will engage for her acceptance.”
“I think you forget, Mr. Drummond,” said I, “that, even in dealing with
myself, you have been betrayed into two-three unpalatable expressions. I
will have none such employed to the young lady. I am here to speak and
think for the two of us; and I give you to understand that I would no more
let a wife be forced upon myself, than what I would let a husband be forced
on the young lady.”
He sat and glowered at me like one in doubt and a good deal of temper.
“So that is to be the way of it,” I concluded. “I will marry Miss
Drummond, and that blithely, if she is entirely willing. But if there be the
least unwillingness, as I have reason to fear—marry her will I never.”
“Well well,” said he, “this is a small affair. As soon as she returns I will
sound her a bit, and hope to reassure you—”
But I cut in again. “Not a finger of you, Mr. Drummond, or I cry off, and
you can seek a husband to your daughter somewhere else,” said I. “It is I
that am to be the only dealer and the only judge. I shall satisfy myself
exactly; and none else shall anyways meddle—you the least of all.”
“Upon my word, sir!” he exclaimed, “and who are you to be the judge?”
“The bridegroom, I believe,” said I.
“This is to quibble,” he cried. “You turn your back upon the fact. The
girl, my daughter, has no choice left to exercise. Her character is gone.”
“And I ask your pardon,” said I, “but while this matter lies between her
and you and me, that is not so.”
“What security have I!” he cried. “Am I to let my daughter’s reputation
depend upon a chance?”
“You should have thought of all this long ago,” said I, “before you were
so misguided as to lose her; and not afterwards when it is quite too late. I
refuse to regard myself as any way accountable for your neglect, and I will
be browbeat by no man living. My mind is quite made up, and come what
may, I will not depart from it a hair’s breadth. You and me are to sit here in
company till her return: upon which, without either word or look from you,

she and I are to go forth again to hold our talk. If she can satisfy me that she
is willing to this step, I will then make it; and if she cannot, I will not.”
He leaped out of his chair like a man stung. “I can spy your manœuvre,”
he cried; “you would work upon her to refuse!”
“Maybe ay, and maybe no,” said I. “That is the way it is to be, whatever.”
“And if I refuse?” cries he.
“Then, Mr. Drummond, it will have to come to the throat-cutting,” said I.
What with the size of the man, his great length of arm in which he came
near rivalling his father, and his reputed skill at weapons, I did not use this
word without trepidation, to say nothing at all of the circumstance that he
was Catriona’s father. But I might have spared myself alarms. From the
poorness of my lodging—he does not seem to have remarked his daughter’s
dresses, which were indeed all equally new to him—and from the fact that I
had shown myself averse to lend, he had embraced a strong idea of my
poverty. The sudden news of my estate convinced him of his error, and he
had made but the one bound of it on this fresh venture, to which he was
now so wedded, that I believe he would have suffered anything rather than
fall to the alternative of fighting.
A little while longer he continued to dispute with me, until I hit upon a
word that silenced him.
“If I find you so averse to let me see the lady by herself,” said I, “I must
suppose you have very good grounds to think me in the right about her
unwillingness.”
He gabbled some kind of an excuse.
“But all this is very exhausting to both of our tempers,” I added, “and I
think we would do better to preserve a judicious silence.”
The which we did until the girl returned, and I must suppose would have
cut a very ridiculous figure had there been any there to view us.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
IN WHICH I AM LEFT ALONE

I opened the door to Catriona and stopped her on the threshold.
“Your father wishes us to take our walk,” said I.
She looked to James More, who nodded, and at that, like a trained
soldier, she turned to go with me.
We took one of our old ways, where we had gone often together, and
been more happy than I can tell of in the past. I came a half a step behind,
so that I could watch her unobserved. The knocking of her little shoes upon
the way sounded extraordinary pretty and sad; and I thought it a strange
moment that I should be so near both ends of it at once, and walk in the
midst between two destinies, and could not tell whether I was hearing these
steps for the last time, or whether the sound of them was to go in and out
with me till death should part us.
She avoided even to look at me, only walked before her, like one who
had a guess of what was coming. I saw I must speak soon before my
courage was run out, but where to begin I knew not. In this painful
situation, when the girl was as good as forced into my arms and had already
besought my forbearance, any excess of pressure must have seemed
indecent; yet to avoid it wholly would have a very cold-like appearance.
Between these extremes I stood helpless, and could have bit my fingers; so
that, when at last I managed to speak at all, it may be said I spoke at
random.
“Catriona,” said I, “I am in a very painful situation; or rather, so we are
both; and I would be a good deal obliged to you if you would promise to let
me speak through first of all, and not to interrupt me till I have done.”
She promised me that simply.

“Well,” said I, “this that I have got to say is very difficult, and I know
very well I have no right to be saying it. After what passed between the two
of us last Friday, I have no manner of right. We have got so ravelled up (and
all by my fault) that I know very well the least I could do is just to hold my
tongue, which was what I intended fully, and there was nothing further from
my thoughts than to have troubled you again. But, my dear, it has become
merely necessary, and no way by it. You see, this estate of mine has fallen
in, which makes of me rather a better match; and the—the business would
not have quite the same ridiculous-like appearance that it would before.
Besides which, it’s supposed that our affairs have got so much ravelled up
(as I was saying) that it would be better to let them be the way they are. In
my view, this part of the thing is vastly exagerate, and if I were you I would
not wear two thoughts on it. Only it’s right I should mention the same,
because there’s no doubt it has some influence on James More. Then I think
we were none so unhappy when we dwelt together in this town before. I
think we did pretty well together. If you would look back, my dear—”
“I will look neither back nor forward,” she interrupted. “Tell me the one
thing: this is my father’s doing?”
“He approves of it,” said I. “He approved I that I should ask your hand in
marriage,” and was going on again with somewhat more of an appeal upon
her feelings; but she marked me not, and struck into the midst.
“He told you to!” she cried. “It is no sense denying it, you said yourself
that there was nothing farther from your thoughts. He told you to.”
“He spoke of it the first, if that is what you mean,” I began.
She was walking ever the faster, and looking fain in front of her; but at
this she made a little noise in her head, and I thought she would have run.
“Without which,” I went on, “after what you said last Friday, I would
never have been so troublesome as make the offer. But when he as good as
asked me, what was I to do?”
She stopped and turned round upon me.
“Well, it is refused at all events,” she cried, “and there will be an end of
that.”
And she began again to walk forward.
“I suppose I could expect no better,” said I, “but I think you might try to
be a little kind to me for the last end of it. I see not why you should be

harsh. I have loved you very well, Catriona—no harm that I should call you
so for the last time. I have done the best that I could manage, I am trying the
same still, and only vexed that I can do no better. It is a strange thing to me
that you can take any pleasure to be hard to me.”
“I am not thinking of you,” she said, “I am thinking of that man, my
father.”
“Well, and that way, too!” said I. “I can be of use to you that way, too; I
will have to be. It is very needful, my dear, that we should consult about
your father; for the way this talk has gone, an angry man will be James
More.”
She stopped again. “It is because I am disgraced?” she asked.
“That is what he is thinking,” I replied, “but I have told you already to
make nought of it.”
“It will be all one to me,” she cried. “I prefer to be disgraced!”
I did not know very well what to answer, and stood silent.
There seemed to be something working in her bosom after that last cry;
presently she broke out, “And what is the meaning of all this? Why is all
this shame loundered on my head? How could you dare it, David Balfour?”
“My dear,” said I, “what else was I to do?”
“I am not your dear,” she said, “and I defy you to be calling me these
words.”
“I am not thinking of my words,” said I. “My heart bleeds for you, Miss
Drummond. Whatever I may say, be sure you have my pity in your difficult
position. But there is just the one thing that I wish you would bear in view,
if it was only long enough to discuss it quietly; for there is going to be a
collieshangie when we two get home. Take my word for it, it will need the
two of us to make this matter end in peace.”
“Ay,” said she. There sprang a patch of red in either of her cheeks. “Was
he for fighting you?” said she.
“Well, he was that,” said I.
She gave a dreadful kind of laugh. “At all events, it is complete!” she
cried. And then turning on me. “My father and I are a fine pair,” said she,
“but I am thanking the good God there will be somebody worse than what

we are. I am thanking the good God that he has let me see you so. There
will never be the girl made that will not scorn you.”
I had borne a good deal pretty patiently, but this was over the mark.
“You have no right to speak to me like that,” said I. “What have I done
but to be good to you, or try to be? And here is my repayment! O, it is too
much.”
She kept looking at me with a hateful smile. “Coward!” said she.
“The word in your throat and in your father’s!” I cried. “I have dared him
this day already in your interest. I will dare him again, the nasty pole-cat;
little I care which of us should fall! Come,” said I, “back to the house with
us; let us be done with it, let me be done with the whole Hieland crew of
you! You will see what you think when I am dead.”
She shook her head at me with that same smile I could have struck her
for.
“O, smile away!” I cried. “I have seen your bonny father smile on the
wrong side this day. Not that I mean he was afraid, of course,” I added
hastily, “but he preferred the other way of it.”
“What is this?” she asked.
“When I offered to draw with him,” said I.
“You offered to draw upon James More!” she cried.
“And I did so,” said I, “and found him backward enough, or how would
we be here?”
“There is a meaning upon this,” said she. “What is it you are meaning?”
“He was to make you take me,” I replied, “and I would not have it. I said
you should be free, and I must speak with you alone; little I supposed it
would be such a speaking! ‘And what if I refuse?’ said he.—‘Then it must
come to the throat-cutting,’ says I, ‘for I will no more have a husband
forced on that young lady, than what I would have a wife forced upon
myself.’ These were my words, they were a friend’s words; bonnily have I
paid for them! Now you have refused me of your own clear free will, and
there lives no father in the Highlands, or out of them, that can force on this
marriage. I will see that your wishes are respected; I will make the same my
business, as I have all through. But I think you might have that decency as
to affect some gratitude. ’Deed, and I thought you knew me better! I have

not behaved quite well to you, but that was weakness. And to think me a
coward, and such a coward as that—O, my lass, there was a stab for the last
of it!”
“Davie, how would I guess?” she cried. “O, this is a dreadful business!
Me and mine,”—she gave a kind of a wretched cry at the word—“me and
mine are not fit to speak to you. O, I could be kneeling down to you in the
street, I could be kissing your hands for forgiveness!”
“I will keep the kisses I have got from you already,” cried I. “I will keep
the ones I wanted and that were something worth; I will not be kissed in
penitence.”
“What can you be thinking of this miserable girl?” says she.
“What I am trying to tell you all this while!” said I, “that you had best
leave me alone, whom you can make no more unhappy if you tried, and
turn your attention to James More, your father, with whom you are like to
have a queer pirn to wind.”
“O, that I must be going out into the world alone with such a man!” she
cried, and seemed to catch herself in with a great effort. “But trouble
yourself no more for that,” said she. “He does not know what kind of nature
is in my heart. He will pay me dear for this day of it; dear, dear, will he
pay.”
She turned, and began to go home and I to accompany her. At which she
stopped.
“I will be going alone,” she said. “It is alone I must be seeing him.”
Some little time I raged about the streets, and told myself I was the worst
used lad in Christendom. Anger choked me; it was all very well for me to
breathe deep; it seemed there was not air enough about Leyden to supply
me, and I thought I would have burst like a man at the bottom of the sea. I
stopped and laughed at myself at a street corner a minute together, laughing
out loud, so that a passenger looked at me, which brought me to myself.
“Well,” I thought, “I have been a gull and a ninny and a soft Tommy long
enough. Time it was done. Here is a good lesson to have nothing to do with
that accursed sex, that was the ruin of the man in the beginning and will be
so to the end. God knows I was happy enough before ever I saw her; God
knows I can be happy enough again when I have seen the last of her.”

That seemed to me the chief affair: to see them go. I dwelled upon the
idea fiercely; and presently slipped on, in a kind of malevolence, to
consider how very poorly they were likely to fare when Davie Balfour was
no longer by to be their milk-cow; at which, to my very own great surprise,
the disposition of my mind turned bottom up. I was still angry; I still hated
her; and yet I thought I owed it to myself that she should suffer nothing.
This carried me home again at once, where I found the mails drawn out
and ready fastened by the door, and the father and daughter with every mark
upon them of a recent disagreement. Catriona was like a wooden doll;
James More breathed hard, his face was dotted with white spots, and his
nose upon one side. As soon as I came in, the girl looked at him with a
steady, clear, dark look that might have been followed by a blow. It was a
hint that was more contemptuous than a command, and I was surprised to
see James More accept it. It was plain he had had a master talking-to; and I
could see there must be more of the devil in the girl than I had guessed, and
more good humour about the man than I had given him the credit of.
He began, at least, calling me Mr. Balfour, and plainly speaking from a
lesson; but he got not very far, for at the first pompous swell of his voice,
Catriona cut in.
“I will tell you what James More is meaning,” said she. “He means we
have come to you, beggar-folk, and have not behaved to you very well, and
we are ashamed of our ingratitude and ill-behaviour. Now we are wanting to
go away and be forgotten; and my father will have guided his gear so ill,
that we cannot even do that unless you will give us some more alms. For
that is what we are, at an events, beggar-folk and sorners.”
“By your leave, Miss Drummond,” said I, “I must speak to your father by
myself.”
She went into her own room and shut the door, without a word or a look.
“You must excuse her, Mr. Balfour,” says James More. “She has no
delicacy.”
“I am not here to discuss that with you,” said I, “but to be quit of you.
And to that end I must talk of your position. Now, Mr. Drummond, I have
kept the run of your affairs more closely than you bargained for. I know you
had money of your own when you were borrowing mine. I know you have
had more since you were here in Leyden, though you concealed it even
from your daughter.”

“I bid you beware. I will stand no more baiting,” he broke out. “I am sick
of her and you. What kind of a damned trade is this to be a parent! I have
had expressions used to me—” There he broke off. “Sir, this is the heart of a
soldier and a parent,” he went on again, laying his hand on his bosom,
“outraged in both characters—and I bid you beware.”
“If you would have let me finish,” says I, “you would have found I spoke
for your advantage.”
“My dear friend,” he cried, “I know I might have relied upon the
generosity of your character.”
“Man! will you let me speak?” said I. “The fact is that I cannot win to
find out if you are rich or poor. But it is my idea that your means, as they
are mysterious in their source, so they are something insufficient in amount;
and I do not choose your daughter to be lacking. If I durst speak to herself,
you may be certain I would never dream of trusting it to you; because I
know you like the back of my hand, and all your blustering talk is that
much wind to me. However, I believe in your way you do still care
something for your daughter after all; and I must just be doing with that
ground of confidence, such as it is.”
Whereupon, I arranged with him that he was to communicate with me, as
to his whereabouts and Catriona’s welfare, in consideration of which I was
to serve him a small stipend.
He heard the business out with a great deal of eagerness; and when it was
done, “My dear fellow, my dear son,” he cried out, “this is more like
yourself than any of it yet! I will serve you with a soldier’s faithfulness—”
“Let me hear no more of it!” says I. “You have got me to that pitch that
the bare name of soldier rises on my stomach. Our traffic is settled; I am
now going forth and will return in one half-hour, when I expect to find my
chambers purged of you.”
I gave them good measure of time; it was my one fear that I might see
Catriona again, because tears and weakness were ready in my heart, and I
cherished my anger like a piece of dignity. Perhaps an hour went by; the sun
had gone down, a little wisp of a new moon was following it across a
scarlet sunset; already there were stars in the east, and in my chambers,
when at last I entered them, the night lay blue. I lit a taper and reviewed the
rooms; in the first there remained nothing so much as to awake a memory
of those who were gone; but in the second, in a corner of the floor, I spied a

little heap that brought my heart into my mouth. She had left behind at her
departure all that she had ever had of me. It was the blow that I felt sorest,
perhaps because it was the last; and I fell upon that pile of clothing and
behaved myself more foolish than I care to tell of.
Late in the night, in a strict frost, and my teeth chattering, I came again
by some portion of my manhood and considered with myself. The sight of
these poor frocks and ribbons, and her shifts, and the clocked stockings,
was not to be endured; and if I were to recover any constancy of mind, I
saw I must be rid of them ere the morning. It was my first thought to have
made a fire and burned them; but my disposition has always been opposed
to wastery, for one thing; and for another, to have burned these things that
she had worn so close upon her body seemed in the nature of a cruelty.
There was a corner cupboard in that chamber; there I determined to bestow
them. The which I did and made it a long business, folding them with very
little skill indeed but the more care; and sometimes dropping them with my
tears. All the heart was gone out of me, I was weary as though I had run
miles, and sore like one beaten; when, as I was folding a kerchief that she
wore often at her neck, I observed there was a corner neatly cut from it. It
was a kerchief of a very pretty hue, on which I had frequently remarked;
and once that she had it on, I remembered telling her (by way of a banter)
that she wore my colours. There came a glow of hope and like a tide of
sweetness in my bosom; and the next moment I was plunged back in a fresh
despair. For there was the corner crumpled in a knot and cast down by itself
in another part of the floor.
But when I argued with myself, I grew more hopeful. She had cut that
corner off in some childish freak that was manifestly tender; that she had
cast it away again was little to be wondered at; and I was inclined to dwell
more upon the first than upon the second, and to be more pleased that she
had ever conceived the idea of that keepsake, than concerned because she
had flung it from her in an hour of natural resentment.

CHAPTER XXIX.
WE MEET IN DUNKIRK

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

“My dear Sir,—Your esteemed favour came to hand duly,
and I have to acknowledge the inclosure according to
agreement. It shall be all faithfully expended on my
daughter, who is well, and desires to be remembered to her
dear friend. I find her in rather a melancholy disposition, but
trust in the mercy of God to see her re-established. Our
manner of life is very much alone, but we solace ourselves
with the melancholy tunes of our native mountains, and by
walking up the margin of the sea that lies next to Scotland. It
was better days with me when I lay with five wounds upon
my body on the field of Gladsmuir. I have found
employment here in the haras of a French nobleman, where

my experience is valued. But, my dear Sir, the wages are so
exceedingly unsuitable that I would be ashamed to mention
them, which makes your remittances the more necessary to
my daughter’s comfort, though I daresay the sight of old
friends would be still better.

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

Below it began again in the hand of Catriona:—

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

Not only did she add this postscript, but I think she must have come near
suppressing the letter; for it came long after date, and was closely followed
by the third. In the time betwixt them, Alan had arrived, and made another
life to me with his merry conversation; I had been presented to his cousin of
the Scots-Dutch, a man that drank more than I could have thought possible
and was not otherwise of interest; I had been entertained to many jovial
dinners and given some myself, all with no great change upon my sorrow;
and we two (by which I mean Alan and myself, and not at all the cousin)
had discussed a good deal the nature of my relations with James More and
his daughter. I was naturally diffident to give particulars; and this
disposition was not anyway lessened by the nature of Alan’s commentary
upon those I gave.
“I cannae make heed nor tail of it,” he would say, “but it sticks in my
mind ye’ve made a gowk of yourself. There’s few people that has had more
experience than Alan Breck: and I can never call to mind to have heard tell
of a lassie like this one of yours. The way that you tell it, the thing’s fair
impossible. Ye must have made a terrible hash of the business, David.”
“There are whiles that I am of the same mind,” said I.
“The strange thing is that ye seem to have a kind of fancy for her too!”
said Alan.
“The biggest kind, Alan,” said I, “and I think I’ll take it to my grave with
me.”
“Well, ye beat me, whatever!” he would conclude.

I showed him the letter with Catriona’s postscript. “And here again!” he
cried. “Impossible to deny a kind of decency to this Catriona, and sense
forby! As for James More, the man’s as boss as a drum; he’s just a wame
and a wheen words; though I’ll can never deny that he fought reasonably
well at Gladsmuir, and it’s true what he says here about the five wounds.
But the loss of him is that the man’s boss.”
“Ye see, Alan,” said I, “it goes against the grain with me to leave the
maid in such poor hands.”
“Ye couldnae weel find poorer,” he admitted. “But what are ye to do with
it? It’s this way about a man and a woman, ye see, Davie: The weemenfolk
have got no kind of reason to them. Either they like the man, and then a’
goes fine; or else they just detest him, and ye may spare your breath—ye
can do naething. There’s just the two sets of them—them that would sell
their coats for ye, and them that never look the road ye’re on. That’s a’ that
there is to women; and you seem to be such a gomeral that ye cannae tell
the tane frae the tither.”
“Well, and I’m afraid that’s true for me,” said I.
“And yet there’s naething easier!” cried Alan. “I could easy learn ye the
science of the thing; but ye seem to me to be born blind, and there’s where
the deefficulty comes in.”
“And can you no help me?” I asked, “you that are so clever at the trade?”
“Ye see, David, I wasnae here,” said he. “I’m like a field officer that has
naebody but blind men for scouts and éclaireurs; and what would he ken?
But it sticks in my mind that ye’ll have made some kind of bauchle; and if I
was you I would have a try at her again.”
“Would ye so, man Alan?” said I.
“I would e’en’t,” says he.
The third letter came to my hand while we were deep in some such talk:
and it will be seen how pat it fell to the occasion. James professed to be in
some concern upon his daughter’s health, which I believe was never better;
abounded in kind expressions to myself; and finally proposed that I should
visit them at Dunkirk.
“You will now be enjoying the society of my old comrade Mr. Stewart,”
he wrote. “Why not accompany him so far in his return to France? I have
something very particular for Mr. Stewart’s ear; and, at any rate, I would be