s together to entrap me,
and at that I sat and gloomed betwixt them like the very image of
ill-will. At last the matchmaker had a better device, which was to leave
the pair of us alone. When my suspicions are anyway roused it is
sometimes a little the wrong side of easy to allay them. But though I
knew what breed she was of, and that was a breed of thieves, I could
never look in Catriona's face and disbelieve her.

"I must not ask?" says she, eagerly, the same moment we were left alone.

"Ah, but to-day I can talk with a free conscience," I replied. "I am
lightened of my pledge, and indeed (after what has come and gone since
morning) I would not have renewed it were it asked."

"Tell me," she said. "My cousin will not be so long."

So I told her the tale of the lieutenant from the first step to the last
of it, making it as mirthful as I could, and, indeed, there was matter
of mirth in that absurdity.

"And I think you will be as little fitted for the rudas men as for the
pretty ladies, after all!" says she, when I had done. "But what was your
father that he could not learn you to draw the sword? It is most
ungentle; I have not heard the match of that in anyone."

"It is most misconvenient at least," said I; "and I think my father
(honest man!) must have been wool-gathering to learn me Latin in the
place of it. But you see I do the best I can, and just stand up like
Lot's wife and let them hammer at me."

"Do you know what makes me smile?" said she. "Well, it is this. I am
made this way, that I should have been a man child. In my own thoughts
it is so I am always; and I go on telling myself about this thing that
is to befall and that. Then it comes to the place of the fighting, and
it comes over me that I am only a girl at all events, and cannot hold a
sword or give one good blow; and then I have to twist my story round
about, so that the fighting is to stop, and yet me have the best of it,
just like you and the lieutenant; and I am the boy that makes the fine
speeches all through, like Mr. David Balfour."

"You are a bloodthirsty maid," said I.

"Well, I know it is good to sew and spin, and to make samplers," she
said, "but if you were to do nothing else in the great world, I think
you will say yourself it is a driech business; and it is not that I want
to kill, I think. Did ever you kill anyone?"

"That I have, as it chances. Two, no less, and me still a lad that
should be at the college," said I. "But yet,