"Ah, then, that will be why the soldiers at the castle took me up!" she cried.
"Barbara has been teaching you to catch me," said I.
"She will have taught me more than that at all events. She will have taught me a great deal about Mr. David--all the ill of him, and a little that was not so ill either now and then," she said, smiling. "She will have told me all there was of Mr. David, only just that he would sail upon this very same ship. And why is it you go?"
I told her.
"Ah, well," said she, "we will be some days in company and then (I suppose) good-bye for altogether! I go to meet my father at a place of the name of Helvoetsluys, and from there to France, to be exiles by the side of our chieftain."
I could say no more than just "O!" the name of James More always drying up my very voice.
She was quick to perceive it, and to guess some portion of my thought.
"There is one thing I must be saying first of all, Mr. David," said she. "I think two of my kinsfolk have not behaved to you altogether very well. And the one of them two is James More, my father, and the other is the Laird of Prestongrange. Prestongrange will have spoken by himself, or his daughter in the place of him. But for James More, my father, I have this much to say: he lay shackled in a prison; he is a plain honest soldier and a plain Highland gentleman; what they would be after, he never would be guessing; but if he had understood it was to be some prejudice to a young gentleman like yourself, he would have died first. And for the sake of all your friendships, I will be asking you to pardon my father and family for that same mistake."
"Catriona," said I, "what that mistake was I do not care to know. I know but the one thing, that you went to Prestongrange and begged my life upon your knees. O, I ken well it was for your father that you went, but when you were there you pleaded for me also. It is a thing I cannot speak of. There are two things I cannot think of in to myself; and the one is your good words when you called yourself my little friend, and the other that you pleaded for my life. Let us never speak more, we two, of pardon or offence."
We stood after that silent, Catriona looking on the deck and I on her; and before there was more speech, a little wind having sprung up, in the nor'-west, they began to shake out the sails and heave in upon the anchor.