“Ah, but, my lord, I think ye take me not yet entirely!” cried I. “For your sake, for my life-safe, and the kindness that ye say ye bear to me—for these I’ll consent; but not for any good that might be coming to myself. If I stand aside when this young maid is in her trial, it’s a thing I will be noways advantaged by; I will lose by it, I will never gain. I would rather make a shipwreck wholly than to build on that foundation.”
He was a minute serious, then smiled. “You mind me of the man with the long nose,” said he; “was you to look at the moon by a telescope, you would see David Balfour there! But you shall have your way of it. I will ask at you one service, and then set you free. My clerks are over-driven; be so good as copy me these few pages,” says he, visibly swithering among some huge rolls of manuscripts, “and when that is done, I shall bid you God-speed! I would never charge myself with Mr. David’s conscience; and if you could cast some part of it (as you went by) in a moss-hag, you would find yourself to ride much easier without it.”
“Perhaps not just entirely in the same direction though, my lord!” says I.
“And you shall have the last word too!” cries he gaily.
Indeed he had some cause for gaiety, having now found the means to gain his purpose. To lessen the weight of the memorial, or to have a readier answer at his hand, he desired I should appear publicly in the character of his intimate. But if I were to appear with the same publicity as a visitor to Catriona in her prison the world would scarce stint to draw conclusions, and the true nature of James More’s escape must become evident to all. This was the little problem I had set him of a sudden, and to which he had so briskly found an answer. I was to be tethered in Glasgow by that job of copying, which in mere outward decency I could not well refuse; and during these hours of my employment Catriona was to be privately got rid of. I think shame to write of this man that loaded me with so many goodnesses. He was kind to me as any father, yet I ever thought him as false as a cracked bell.
[14] A ball placed upon a little mound for convenience of striking.
[15] Patched shoes.
[16] Shoemaker.