“It is not much that I have done,” said she, “and I could be telling you the five-fifths of it in two-three words.  It is only a girl I am, and what can befall a girl, at all events?  But I went with the clan in the year ’45.  The men marched with swords and firelocks, and some of them in brigades in the same set of tartan; they were not backward at the marching, I can tell you.  And there were gentlemen from the Low Country, with their tenants mounted and trumpets to sound, and there was a grand skirling of war-pipes.  I rode on a little Highland horse on the right hand of my father, James More, and of Glengyle himself.  And here is one fine thing that I remember, that Glengyle kissed me in the face, because (says he) ’my kinswoman, you are the only lady of the clan that has come out,’ and me a little maid of maybe twelve years old!  I saw Prince Charlie too, and the blue eyes of him; he was pretty indeed!  I had his hand to kiss in the front of the army.  O, well, these were the good days, but it is all like a dream that I have seen and then awakened.  It went what way you very well know; and these were the worst days of all, when the red-coat soldiers were out, and my father and my uncles lay in the hill, and I was to be carrying them their meat in the middle night, or at the short side of day when the cocks crow.  Yes, I have walked in the night, many’s the time, and my heart great in me for terror of the darkness.  It is a strange thing I will never have been meddled with a bogle; but they say a maid goes safe.  Next there was my uncle’s marriage, and that was a dreadful affair beyond all.  Jean Kay was that woman’s name; and she had me in the room with her that night 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.”