re hard
beset, just utter the name of Christ down in your heart, and see how
much harder it is to sin."

CHAPTER IX.

The arrangement had been a very pleasant one, every way, but somehow
John did not feel as if David had as much outside help as he needed.
The young man was not imaginative; an ideal, however high, was a far
less real thing to David than to old John. He pondered during many
sleepless hours the advisability of having David sign the pledge.
David had always refused to do it hitherto. He had a keen sense of
shame in breaking a verbal promise on this subject; but he had an
almost superstitious feeling regarding the obligation of anything he
put his name to; and this very feeling made John hesitate to press the
matter. For, he argued, and not unwisely, "if David should break this
written obligation, his condition would seem to himself irremediable,
and he would become quite reckless."

In the morning this anxiety was solved. When John came down to
breakfast, he found David walking about the room with a newspaper in
his hand, and in a fever heat of martial enthusiasm. "Uncle," he
cried, "O Uncle John, such glorious news! The Alamo is taken. Colin
Campbell and his Highlanders were first at the ramparts, and Roy and
Hector Callendar were with them. Listen?" and he threw the passion and
fervor of all his military instincts into the glowing words which
told, how in a storm of fire and shot, Sir Colin and his Highland
regiment had pushed up the hill; and how when the Life Guards were
struggling to reach their side, the brave old commander turned round
and shouted, "We'll hae nane but Hieland bonnets here!" "O Uncle John,
what would I not have given to have marched with Roy and Hector behind
him? With such a leader I would not turn my back on any foe."

"David, you have a far harder fight before you, and a far grander
Captain."

"Uncle, uncle, if I could see my foe; if I could meet him face to face
in a real fight; but he steals into my heart, even by my nostrils, and
unmans me, before I am aware."

John rang the bell sharply, and when Jenny came, he amazed her by
saying, "Bring me here from the cellar three bottles of whiskey." He
spoke so curt and determined that for once Jenny only wondered, and
obeyed.

"That will do, my woman." Then he turned to David, and putting one
bottle on the table said, "There is your foe! Face your enemy, sir!
Sit down before him morning, noon, and night. Dare him to mast