orning, whether ale or wine?"

"To be frank with you, sir," says I, "I drink nothing else but spare,
cold water."

"Tut-tut," says he, "that is fair destruction to the stomach, take an
old campaigner's word for it. Our country spirit at home is perhaps the
most entirely wholesome; but as that is not come-at-able, Rhenish or a
white wine of Burgundy will be next best."

"I shall make it my business to see you are supplied," said I.

"Why, very good," said he, "and we shall make a man of you yet, Mr.
David."

By this time I can hardly say that I was minding him at all, beyond an
odd thought of the kind of father-in-law that he was like to prove; and
all my cares centred about the lass his daughter, to whom I determined
to convey some warning of her visitor. I stepped to the door
accordingly, and cried through the panels, knocking thereon at the same
time: "Miss Drummond, here is your father come at last."

With that I went forth upon my errand, having (by two words)
extraordinarily damaged my affairs.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE THREESOME

Whether or not I was to be so much blamed, or rather perhaps pitied, I
must leave others to judge. My shrewdness (of which I have a good deal
too) seems not so great with the ladies. No doubt, at the moment when I
awakened her, I was thinking a good deal of the effect upon James More;
and similarly when I returned and we were all sat down to breakfast, I
continued to behave to the young lady with deference and distance; as I
still think to have been most wise. Her father had cast doubts upon the
innocence of my friendship; and these, it was my first business to
allay. But there is a kind of an excuse for Catriona also. We had shared
in a scene of some tenderness and passion, and given and received
caresses; I had thrust her from me with violence; I had called aloud
upon her in the night from the one room to the other: she had passed
hours of wakefulness and weeping; and it is not to be supposed I had
been absent from her pillow thoughts. Upon the back of this, to be
awaked with unaccustomed formality, under the name of Miss Drummond, and
to be thenceforth used with a great deal of distance and respect, led
her entirely in error on my private sentiments; and she was indeed so
incredibly abused as to imagine me repentant and trying to draw off!

The trouble betwixt us seems to have been this: that whereas I (since I
had first set eyes on his great hat) thought singly of James M