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 outfaced these men, I would continue
to outface 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