have no pardon to give," said she; and the words seemed to come out
of her throat like marbles. "I will be very much obliged for all your
friendships." And she made me an eight part of a curtsey.

But I had schooled myself beforehand to say more, and I was going to say
it too.

"There is one thing," said I. "If I have shocked your particularity by
the showing of that letter, it cannot touch Miss Grant. She wrote not to
you, but to a poor, common, ordinary lad, who might have had more sense
than show it. If you are to blame me--"

"I will advise you to say no more about that girl, at all events!" said
Catriona. "It is her I will never look the road of, not if she lay
dying." She turned away from me, and suddenly back. "Will you swear you
will have no more to deal with her?" she cried.

"Indeed, and I will never be so unjust then," said I; "nor yet so
ungrateful."

And now it was I that turned away.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXII

HELVOETSLUYS

The weather in the end considerably worsened; the wind sang in the
shrouds, the sea swelled higher, and the ship began to labour and cry
out among the billows. The song of the leadsman in the chains was now
scarce ceasing, for we thrid all the way among shoals. About nine in the
morning, in a burst of wintry sun between two squalls of hail, I had my
first look of Holland--a line of windmills birling in the breeze. It was
besides my first knowledge of these daft-like contrivances, which gave
me a near sense of foreign travel and a new world and life. We came to
an anchor about half-past eleven, outside the harbour of Helvoetsluys,
in a place where the sea sometimes broke and the ship pitched
outrageously. You may be sure we were all on deck save Mrs. Gebbie, some
of us in cloaks, others mantled in the ship's tarpaulins, all clinging
on by ropes, and jesting the most like old sailor-folk that we could
imitate.

Presently a boat, that was backed like a partan-crab, came gingerly
alongside, and the skipper of it hailed our master in the Dutch. Thence
Captain Sang turned, very troubled like, to Catriona; and the rest of us
crowding about, the nature of the difficulty was made plain to all. The
_Rose_ was bound to the port of Rotterdam, whither the other passengers
were in a great impatience to arrive, in view of a conveyance due to
leave that very evening in the direction of the Upper Germany. This,
with the present half-gale of wind, the ca