together. I could
not honestly deny but what I liked him; I soon saw that he liked me; and
indeed, from the first I had set myself out to capture his goodwill. An
odd circumstance (to be told presently) effected this beyond my
expectation; but even in early days we made a friendly pair to be a
prisoner and his gaoler.

I should trifle with my conscience if I pretended my stay upon the Bass
was wholly disagreeable. It seemed to me a safe place, as though I was
escaped there out of my troubles. No harm was to be offered me; a
material impossibility, rock and the deep sea, prevented me from fresh
attempts; I felt I had my life safe and my honour safe, and there were
times when I allowed myself to gloat on them like stolen waters. At
other times my thoughts were very different. I recalled how strong I had
expressed myself both to Rankeillor and to Stewart; I reflected that my
captivity upon the Bass, in view of a great part of the coasts of Fife
and Lothian, was a thing I should be thought more likely to have
invented than endured; and in the eyes of these two gentlemen, at least,
I must pass for a boaster and a coward. Now I would take this lightly
enough; tell myself that so long as I stood well with Catriona Drummond,
the opinion of the rest of man was but moonshine and spilled water; and
thence pass off into those meditations of a lover which are so
delightful to himself and must always appear so surprisingly idle to a
reader. But anon the fear would take me otherwise; I would be shaken
with a perfect panic of self-esteem, and these supposed hard judgments
appear an injustice impossible to be supported. With that another train
of thought would be presented, and I had scarce begun to be concerned
about men's judgments of myself, than I was haunted with the remembrance
of James Stewart in his dungeon and the lamentations of his wife. Then,
indeed, passion began to work in me; I could not forgive myself to sit
there idle; it seemed (if I were a man at all) that I could fly or swim
out of my place of safety; and it was in such humours and to amuse my
self-reproaches, that I would set the more particularly to win the good
side of Andie Dale.

At last, when we two were alone on the summit of the rock on a bright
morning, I put in some hint about a bribe. He looked at me, cast back
his head, and laughed out loud.

"Ay, you're funny, Mr. Dale," said I, "but perhaps if you'll glance an
eye upon that paper you may change your