t: and I was about to ask her to repeat the same,
when I heard the sound of some one bursting through the bushes below on
the braeside. I pointed in that direction with a smile, and presently
Neil leaped into the garden. His eyes burned, and he had a black knife
(as they call it on the Highland side) naked in his hand; but, seeing me
beside his mistress, stood like a man struck.

"He has come to your call," said I; "judge how near he was to Edinburgh,
or what was the nature of your father's errands. Ask himself. If I am to
lose my life, or the lives of those that hang by me, through the means
of your clan, let me go where I have to go with my eyes open."

She addressed him tremulously in the Gaelic. Remembering Alan's anxious
civility in that particular, I could have laughed out loud for
bitterness; here, sure, in the midst of these suspicions, was the hour
she should have stuck by English.

Twice or thrice they spoke together, and I could make out that Neil (for
all his obsequiousness) was an angry man.

Then she turned to me. "He swears it is not," she said.

"Catriona," said I, "do you believe the man yourself?"

She made a gesture like wringing the hands.

"How will I can know?" she cried.

"But I must find some means to know," said I. "I cannot continue to go
dovering round in the black night with two men's lives at my girdle!
Catriona, try to put yourself in my place, as I vow to God I try hard to
put myself in yours. This is no kind of talk that should ever have
fallen between me and you; no kind of talk; my heart is sick with it.
See, keep him here till two of the morning, and I care not. Try him with
that."

They spoke together once more in the Gaelic.

"He says he has James More my father's errand," said she. She was whiter
than ever, and her voice faltered as she said it.

"It is pretty plain now," said I, "and may God forgive the wicked!"

She said never anything to that, but continued gazing at me with the
same white face.

"This is a fine business," said I again. "Am I to fall, then, and those
two along with me?"

"Oh, what am I to do?" she cried. "Could I go against my father's
orders, and him in prison, in the danger of his life?"

"But perhaps we go too fast," said I. "This may be a lie too. He may
have no right orders; all may be contrived by Simon, and your father
knowing nothing."

She burst out weeping between the pair of us; and my heart smote me
hard, for I thought this girl wa