u were caring for poor me? O, Davie, Davie!"

With that she wept also, and our tears were commingled in a perfect
gladness.

It might have been ten in the day before I came to a clear sense of what
a mercy had befallen me; and sitting over against her, with her hands in
mine, gazed in her face, and laughed out loud for pleasure like a child,
and called her foolish and kind names. I have never seen the place that
looked so pretty as these bents by Dunkirk; and the windmill sails, as
they bobbed over the knowe, were like a tune of music.

I know not how much longer we might have continued to forget all else
besides ourselves, had I not chanced upon a reference to her father,
which brought us to reality.

"My little friend," I was calling her again and again, rejoicing to
summon up the past by the sound of it, and to gaze across on her, and to
be a little distant--"My little friend, now you are mine altogether;
mine for good, my little friend; and that man's no longer at all."

There came a sudden whiteness in her face, she plucked her hands from
mine.

"Davie, take me away from him!" she cried. "There's something wrong;
he's not true. There will be something wrong; I have a dreadful terror
here at my heart. What will he be wanting at all events with that King's
ship? What will this word be saying?" And she held the letter forth. "My
mind misgives me, it will be some ill to Alan. Open it, Davie--open it
and see."

I took it, and looked at it, and shook my head.

"No," said I, "it goes against me, I cannot open a man's letter."

"Not to save your friend?" she cried.

"I canna tell," said I. "I think not. If I was only sure!"

"And you have but to break the seal!" said she.

"I know it," said I, "but the thing goes against me."

"Give it here," said she, "and I will open it myself."

"Nor you neither," said I. "You least of all. It concerns your father,
and his honour, dear, which we are both misdoubting. No question but the
place is dangerous-like, and the English ship being here, and your
father having word from it, and yon officer that stayed ashore! He would
not be alone either; there must be more along with him; I daresay we are
spied upon this minute. Ay, no doubt, the letter should be opened; but
somehow, not by you nor me."

I was about thus far with it, and my spirit very much overcome with a
sense of danger and hidden enemies, when I spied Alan, come back again
from following James, and walking by