I have not the Scottish faculty for analysing my motives, and I hardly knew what to say. Was I a penitent, ashamed and sorry for the evil things in which I had played a part, or did I desert merely to escape punishment for my part in the drunken brawl in the tavern? I had not yet made a serious attempt to assess the matter; and here, taken at unawares in the stillness of the night among the silent hills, I was conscious of the near presence of God before whose bar I was arraigned by this quiet interlocutor.
"I am wet to the skin and chilled to the bone, for only an hour ago I foundered in a bog, but if you will walk with me," I said, "I will tell you the story and you shall judge."
"It is not for man to judge, for he cannot read the heart aright, but if you will tell me your story I will know as much of you as you seem already to know of me," he said, as he took me by the arm. "Like you," he continued, "I am a fugitive; and if you are likely to stop for long in this hiding-place, it were well that we should understand each other."
As we paced up and down, I told him the whole shameful tale.
When I had finished he sat down on the hill-side and, burying his face in his hands, was silent for a space. Then he rose, and laying a hand upon my shoulder peered into my face. The darkness was yet too great for us to see each other clearly, but his eyes were glistening.
"It is not," he said, "for me to judge. God knows! but I am thinking that your desertion was more than a whim, though I would not go the length of saying that you have repented with tears for the evil you have done. May God forgive you, and may grace be given you to turn ere it is too late from the paths of the wicked."
As I told him my story I had feared that when he heard it he would have nothing more to do with me: but I had misjudged his charity. Suddenly he held his hand out to me, saying:
"Providence has cast us together, mayhap that your soul may be saved, and mine kept from withering. I am ready to be your friend if you will be mine."
I took his outstretched hand. I had longed for his friendship for my own selfish ends, and he, who had nothing to gain from my friendship, offered me his freely.
The night had worn thin as we talked, and now in the growing light I could see my companion more clearly. He seemed a man well past middle life; before long I was to learn that he was more than three score years and ten, but neither at this moment nor later should I have imagined it. He was straight as a ramrod, spare of body and pallid of face, save where on his high cheek-bones the moorland wind and the rays of the summer sun had burned him brown. The hair of his head was black, streaked here and there by a few scanty threads of silver. His forehead was broad and high, his nose was well-formed and somewhat aquiline, and his brown eyes were full of light. It was to his eyes and to his mouth, around which there seemed to lurk some wistful playfulness, that his face owed its attraction. He was without doubt a handsome man--I have rarely seen a handsomer.