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 any one?"

"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 any one 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 ha