“In the name of heaven, what ails you now?” she cried.

“I gave my honour,” I groaned, “I gave my honour and now I have broke it.  O, Catriona!”

“I am asking you what it is,” she said; “was it these things you should not have spoken?  And do you think I have no honour, then? or that I am one that would betray a friend?  I hold up my right hand to you and swear.”

“O, I knew you would be true!” said I.  “It’s me—­it’s here.  I that stood but this morning and out-faced them, that risked rather to die disgraced upon the gallows than do wrong—­and a few hours after I throw my honour away by the roadside in common talk!  ’There is one thing clear upon our interview,’ says he, ‘that I can rely on your pledged word.’  Where is my word now?  Who could believe me now? You could not believe me.  I am clean fallen down; I had best die!” All this I said with a weeping voice, but I had no tears in my body.

“My heart is sore for you,” said she, “but be sure you are too nice.  I would not believe you, do you say?  I would trust you with anything.  And these men?  I would not be thinking of them!  Men who go about to entrap and to destroy you!  Fy! this is no time to crouch.  Look up!  Do you not think I will be admiring you like a great hero of the good—­and you a boy not much older than myself?  And because you said a word too much in a friend’s ear, that would die ere she betrayed you—­to make such a matter!  It is one thing that we must both forget.”

“Catriona,” said I, looking at her, hang-dog, “is this true of it?  Would ye trust me yet?”

“Will you not believe the tears upon my face?” she cried.  “It is the world I am thinking of you, Mr. David Balfour.  Let them hang you; I will never forget, I will grow old and still remember you.  I think it is great to die so; I will envy you that gallows.”

“And maybe all this while I am but a child frighted with bogles,” said I.  “Maybe they but make a mock of me.”

“It is what I must know,” she said.  “I must hear the whole.  The harm is done at all events, and I must hear the whole.”

I had sat down on the wayside, where she took a place beside me, and I told her all that matter much as I have written it, my thoughts about her father’s dealing being alone omitted.

“Well,” she said, when I had finished, “you are a hero, surely, and I never would have thought that same!  And I think you are in peril, too.  O, Symon Fraser! to think upon that man!  For his life and the dirty money, to be dealing in such traffic!” And just then she called out aloud with a queer word that was common with her, and belongs, I believe, to her own language.  “My torture!” says she, “look at the sun!”

Indeed, it was already dipping towards the mountains.

She bid me come again soon, gave me her hand, and left me in a turmoil of glad spirits.  I delayed to go home to my lodging, for I had a terror of immediate arrest; but got some supper at a change house, and the better part of that night walked by myself in the barley-fields, and had such a sense of Catriona’s presence that I seemed to bear her in my arms.