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"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.
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.
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.
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.
It was not till all was over, and our healths drunk, that he told us James was in that city, whither he had preceded us some days, and where he now lay sick, and like to die. I thought I saw by my wife's face what way her inclination pointed. "And let us go see him, then," said I. "If it is your pleasure," said Catriona. These were early days.
The red-gabled houses made a handsome show on either hand of a canal; the servant lasses were out slaistering 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 bawbees?" "Are you wanting it?" said she, and passed me her purse.
"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.
"I'm vexed about that too," says Alan, with his funny face, "but now, ye see, it's mine's." And then with more gravity, "Be you advised, James More, you leave this house." With which he was gone. At the same time a spell was lifted from me. "Catriona," I cried, "it was me it was my sword. O, are ye much hurt?"
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.
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. "Ah," says she, "but here are no glens or mountains!
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