at 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 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 in to 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
n