free as she
had come to me.

Down I sat before the fire, and reflected, and repented, and beat my
brains in vain for any means of escape. About two of the morning, there
were three red embers left and the house and all the city was asleep,
when I was aware of a small sound of weeping in the next room. She
thought that I slept, the poor soul; she regretted her weakness--and
what perhaps (God help her!) she called her forwardness--and in the dead
of the night solaced herself with tears. Tender and bitter feelings,
love and penitence and pity struggled in my soul; it seemed I was under
bond to heal that weeping.

"O, try to forgive me!" I cried out, "try, try to forgive me. Let us
forget it all, let us try if we'll no can forget it!"

There came no answer, but the sobbing ceased. I stood a long while with
my hands still clasped as I had spoken; then the cold of the night laid
hold upon me with a shudder, and I think my reason reawakened.

"You can make no hand of this, Davie," thinks I. "To bed with you like a
wise lad, and try if you can sleep. To-morrow you may see your way."

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXV

THE RETURN OF JAMES MORE

I was called on the morrow out of a late and troubled slumber by a
knocking on my door, ran to open it, and had almost swooned with the
contrariety of my feelings, mostly painful; for on the threshold, in a
rough wrapraseal and an extraordinary big laced hat, there stood James
More.

I ought to have been glad perhaps without admixture, for there was a
sense in which the man came like an answer to prayer. I had been saying
till my head was weary that Catriona and I must separate, and looking
till my head ached for any possible means of separation. Here were the
means come to me upon two legs, and joy was the hindmost of my thoughts.
It is to be considered, however, that even if the weight of the future
were lifted off me by the man's arrival, the present heaved up the more
black and menacing; so that, as I first stood before him in my shirt and
breeches, I believe I took a leaping step backward like a person shot.

"Ah," said he, "I have found you, Mr. Balfour." And offered me his
large, fine hand, the which (recovering at the same time my post in the
doorway, as if with some thought of resistance) I took him by
doubtfully. "It is a remarkable circumstance how our affairs appear to
intermingle," he continued. "I am owing you an apology for an
unfort