in the look-back, I take no
shame for it."

"But how did you feel, then--after it?" she asked.

"'Deed, I sat down and grat like a bairn," said I.

"I know that, too," she cried. "I feel where these tears should come
from. And at any rate, I would not wish to kill, only to be Catherine
Douglas that put her arm through the staples of the bolt, where it was
broken. That is my chief hero. Would you not love to die so--for your
king?" she asked.

"Troth," said I, "my affection for my king, God bless the puggy face of
him, is under more control; and I thought I saw death so near to me this
day already, that I am rather taken up with the notion of living."

"Right," she said, "the right mind of a man! Only you must learn arms; I
would not like to have a friend that cannot strike. But it will not have
been with the sword that you killed these two?"

"Indeed, no," said I, "but with a pair of pistols. And a fortunate thing
it was the men were so near-hand to me, for I am about as clever with
the pistols as I am with the sword."

So then she drew from me the story of our battle in the brig, which I
had omitted in my first account of my affairs.

"Yes," said she, "you are brave. And your friend, I admire and love
him."

"Well, and I think any one would!" said I. "He has his faults like other
folk; but he is brave and staunch and kind, God bless him! That will be
a strange day when I forget Alan." And the thought of him, and that it
was within my choice to speak with him that night, had almost overcome
me.

"And where will my head be gone that I have not told my news!" she
cried, and spoke of a letter from her father, bearing that she might
visit him to-morrow in the castle whither he was now transferred, and
that his affairs were mending. "You do not like to hear it," said she.
"Will you judge my father and not know him?"

"I am a thousand miles from judging," I replied. "And I give you my word
I do rejoice to know your heart is lightened. If my face fell at all, as
I suppose it must, you will allow this is rather an ill day for
compositions, and the people in power extremely ill persons to be
compounding with. I have Symon Fraser extremely heavy on my stomach
still."

"Ah!" she cried, "you will not be evening these two; and you should bear
in mind that Prestongrange and James More, my father, are of the one
blood."

"I never heard tell of that," said I.

"It is rather singular how little you are acquainted with