ht at
Inversnaid, the night we took her from her friends in the old, ancient
manner. She would and she wouldn't; she was for marrying Rob the one
minute, and the next she would be for none of him. I will never have
seen such a feckless creature of a woman; surely all there was of her
would tell her ay or no. Well, she was a widow, and I can never be
thinking a widow a good woman."

"Catriona!" says I, "how do you make out that?"

"I do not know," said she; "I am only telling you the seeming in my
heart. And then to marry a new man! Fy! But that was her; and she was
married again upon my Uncle Robin, and went with him awhile to kirk and
market; and then wearied, or else her friends got claught of her and
talked her round, or maybe she turned ashamed; at the least of it, she
ran away, and went back to her own folk, and said we had held her in the
lake, and I will never tell you all what. I have never thought much of
any females since that day. And so in the end my father, James More,
came to be cast in prison, and you know the rest of it as well as me."

"And through all you had no friends?" said I.

"No," said she; "I have been pretty chief with two-three lasses on the
braes, but not to call it friends."

"Well, mine is a plain tale," said I. "I never had a friend to my name
till I met in with you."

"And that brave Mr. Stewart?" she asked.

"O, yes, I was forgetting him," I said. "But he is a man, and that is
very different."

"I would think so," said she. "O, yes, it is quite different."

"And then there was one other," said I. "I once thought I had a friend,
but it proved a disappointment."

She asked me who she was?

"It was a he, then," said I. "We were the two best lads at my father's
school, and we thought we loved each other dearly. Well, the time came
when he went to Glasgow to a merchant's house, that was his second
cousin once removed; and wrote me two-three times by the carrier; and
then he found new friends, and I might write till I was tired, he took
no notice. Eh, Catriona, it took me a long while to forgive the world.
There is not anything more bitter than to lose a fancied friend."

Then she began to question me close upon his looks and character, for we
were each a great deal concerned in all that touched the other; till at
last, in a very evil hour, I minded of his letters and went and fetched
the bundle from the cabin.

"Here are his letters," said I, "and all the letters that ever I g