I came forth, I vow I know not how, on the Lang Dykes.[12] This is a rural road which runs on the north side over against the city.  Thence I could see the whole black length of it tail down, from where the castle stands upon its crags above the loch in a long line of spires and gable ends, and smoking chimneys, and at the sight my heart swelled in my bosom.  My youth, as I have told, was already inured to dangers; but such danger as I had seen the face of but that morning, in the midst of what they call the safety of a town, shook me beyond experience.  Peril of slavery, peril of shipwreck, peril of sword and shot, I had stood all of these without discredit; but the peril there was in the sharp voice and the fat face of Symon, properly Lord Lovat, daunted me wholly.

I sat by the lake side in a place where the rushes went down into the water, and there steeped my wrists and laved my temples.  If I could have done so with any remains of self-esteem I would now have fled from my foolhardy enterprise.  But (call it courage or cowardice, and I believe it was both the one and the other) I decided I was ventured out beyond the possibility of a retreat.  I had outfaced these men, I would continue to outface them; come what might, I would stand by the word spoken.

The sense of my own constancy somewhat uplifted my spirits, but not much.  At the best of it there was an icy place about my heart, and life seemed a black business to be at all engaged in.  For two souls in particular my pity flowed.  The one was myself, to be so friendless and lost among dangers.  The other was the girl, the daughter of James More.  I had seen but little of her; yet my view was taken and my judgment made.  I thought her a lass of a clean honour, like a man’s; I thought her one to die of a disgrace; and now I believed her father to be at that moment bargaining his vile life for mine.  It made a bond in my thoughts betwixt the girl and me.  I had seen her before only as a wayside appearance, though one that pleased me strangely; I saw her now in a sudden nearness of relation, as the daughter of my blood foe, and I might say, my murderer.  I reflected it was hard I should be so plagued and persecuted all my days for other folk’s affairs, and have no manner of pleasure myself.  I got meals and a bed to sleep in when my concerns would suffer it; beyond that my wealth was of no help to me.  If I was to hang, my days were like to be short; if I was not to hang but to escape out of this trouble, they might yet seem long to me ere I was done with them.  Of a sudden her face appeared in my memory, the way I had first seen it, with the parted lips; at that, weakness came in my bosom and strength into my legs; and I set resolutely forward on the way to Dean.  If I was to hang to-morrow, and it was sure enough I might very likely sleep that night in a dungeon, I determined I should hear and speak once more with Catriona.