alk slower and to reflect
more reasonably on my employment. I saw I had made but a fool's bargain
with Catriona. It was not to be supposed that Neil was sent alone upon
his errand, but perhaps he was the only man belonging to James More; in
which case, I should have done all I could to hang Catriona's father,
and nothing the least material to help myself. To tell the truth, I
fancied neither one of these ideas. Suppose, by holding back Neil, the
girl should have helped to hang her father, I thought she would never
forgive herself this side of time. And suppose there were others
pursuing me that moment, what kind of a gift was I come bringing to
Alan? and how would I like that?

I was up with the west end of that wood when these two considerations
struck me like a cudgel. My feet stopped of themselves and my heart
along with them. "What wild game is this that I have been playing?"
thought I; and turned instantly upon my heels to go elsewhere.

This brought my face to Silvermills; the path came past the village with
a crook, but all plainly visible; and, Highland or Lowland, there was
nobody stirring. Here was my advantage, here was just such a conjuncture
as Stewart had counselled me to profit by, and I ran by the side of the
mill-lade, fetched about beyond the east corner of the wood, threaded
through the midst of it, and returned to the west selvage, whence I
could again command the path, and yet be myself unseen. Again it was all
empty, and my heart began to rise.

For more than an hour I sat close in the border of the trees, and no
hare or eagle could have kept a more particular watch. When that hour
began the sun was already set, but the sky still all golden and the
daylight clear; before the hour was done it had fallen to be half mirk,
the images and distances of things were mingled, and observation began
to be difficult. All that time not a foot of man had come east from
Silvermills, and the few that had gone west were honest countryfolk and
their wives upon the road to bed. If I were tracked by the most cunning
spies in Europe, I judged it was beyond the course of nature they could
have any jealousy of where I was; and going a little further home into
the wood I lay down to wait for Alan.

The strain of my attention had been great, for I had watched not the
path only, but every bush and field within my vision. That was now at an
end. The moon, which was in her first quarter, glinted a little in the
wood; all