hat
like, and the auld Glover will be as mad as if I could withhold her,
will she nill she, flyte she fling she. This is a brave morning for an
Ash Wednesday! What's to be done? If I were to seek my master among the
multitude, I were like to be crushed beneath their feet, and little moan
made for the old woman. And am I to run after Catharine, who ere this is
out of sight, and far lighter of foot than I am? so I will just down the
gate to Nicol Barber's, and tell him a' about it."

While the trusty Dorothy was putting her prudent resolve into execution,
Catharine ran through the streets of Perth in a manner which at another
moment would have brought on her the attention of every one who saw her
hurrying on with a reckless impetuosity wildly and widely different from
the ordinary decency and composure of her step and manner, and without
the plaid, scarf, or mantle which "women of good," of fair character
and decent rank, universally carried around them, when they went abroad.
But, distracted as the people were, every one inquiring or telling
the cause of the tumult, and most recounting it different ways,
the negligence of her dress and discomposure of her manner made no
impression on any one; and she was suffered to press forward on the path
she had chosen without attracting more notice than the other females
who, stirred by anxious curiosity or fear, had come out to inquire the
cause of an alarm so general--it might be to seek for friends for whose
safety they were interested.

As Catharine passed along, she felt all the wild influence of the
agitating scene, and it was with difficulty she forbore from repeating
the cries of lamentation and alarm which were echoed around her. In the
mean time, she rushed rapidly on, embarrassed like one in a dream, with
a strange sense of dreadful calamity, the precise nature of which she
was unable to define, but which implied the terrible consciousness that
the man who loved her so fondly, whose good qualities she so highly
esteemed, and whom she now felt to be dearer than perhaps she would
before have acknowledged to her own bosom, was murdered, and most
probably by her means. The connexion betwixt Henry's supposed death and
the descent of Conachar and his followers, though adopted by her in a
moment of extreme and engrossing emotion, was sufficiently probable
to have been received for truth, even if her understanding had been
at leisure to examine its credibility. Without knowing w