. 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