learned to be more patient. And I believe you forget that I have
yet to see my daughter."

I began to be a little relieved upon this speech and a change in the
man's manner that I spied in him as soon as the name of money fell
between us.

"I was thinking it would be more fit--if you will excuse the plainness
of my dressing in your presence--that I should go forth and leave you to
encounter her alone?" said I.

"What I would have looked for at your hands!" says he; and there was no
mistake but what he said it civilly.

I thought this better and better still, and as I began to pull on my
hose, recalling the man's impudent mendicancy at Prestongrange's, I
determined to pursue what seemed to be my victory.

"If you have any mind to stay some while in Leyden," said I, "this room
is very much at your disposal, and I can easy find another for myself:
in which way we shall have the least amount of flitting possible, there
being only one to change."

"Why, sir," said he, making his bosom big, "I think no shame of a
poverty I have come by in the service of my king; I make no secret that
my affairs are quite involved: and, for the moment, it would be even
impossible for me to undertake a journey."

"Until you have occasion to communicate with your friends," said I,
"perhaps it might be convenient for you (as of course it would be
honourable to myself) if you were to regard yourself in the light of my
guest?"

"Sir," said he, "when an offer is frankly made, I think I honour myself
most to imitate that frankness. Your hand, Mr. David; you have the
character that I respect the most; you are one of those from whom a
gentleman can take a favour and no more words about it. I am an old
soldier," he went on, looking rather disgusted-like around my chamber,
"and you need not fear I shall prove burthensome. I have ate too often
at a dyke-side, drank of the ditch, and had no roof but the rain."

"I should be telling you," said I, "that our breakfasts are sent
customarily in about this time of morning. I propose I should go now to
the tavern, and bid them add a cover for yourself, and delay the meal
the matter of an hour, which will give you an interval to meet your
daughter in."

Methought his nostrils wagged at this. "O, an hour?" says he. "That is
perhaps superfluous. Half an hour, Mr. David, or say twenty minutes; I
shall do very well in that. And by the way," he adds, detaining me by
the coat, "what is it you drink in the m