Catriona, Robert Louis Stevenson [the gingerbread man read aloud txt] 📗

This was on the summit of a brae; the place was windy and conspicuous, we were to be seen there even from the English ship; but I kneeled down before her in the sand, and embraced her knees, and burst into that storm of weeping that I thought it must have broken me. All thought was wholly beaten from my mind by the vehemency of my discomposure. I knew not where I was, I had forgot why I was happy; only I knew she stooped, and I felt her cherish me to her face and bosom, and heard her words out of a whirl.

“Davie,” she was saying, “O, Davie, is this what you think of me? Is it so that you were caring for poor me? O, Davie, Davie!”

With that she wept also, and our tears were commingled in a perfect gladness.

It might have been ten in the day before I came to a clear sense of what a mercy had befallen me; and sitting over against her, with her hands in mine, gazed in her face, and laughed out loud for pleasure like a child, and called her foolish and kind names. I have never seen the place look so pretty as these bents by Dunkirk; and the windmill sails, as they bobbed over the knowe, were like a tune of music.

I know not how much longer we might have continued to forget all else besides ourselves, had I not chanced upon a reference to her father, which brought us to reality.

“My little friend,” I was calling her again and again, rejoicing to summon up the past by the sound of it, and to gaze across on her, and to be a little distant⁠—“My little friend, now you are mine altogether; mine for good, my little friend; and that man’s no longer at all.”

There came a sudden whiteness in her face, she plucked her hands from mine.

“Davie, take me away from him!” she cried. “There’s something wrong; he’s not true. There will be something wrong; I have a dreadful terror here at my heart. What will he be wanting at all events with that King’s ship? What will this word be saying?” And she held the letter forth. “My mind misgives me, it will be some ill to Alan. Open it, Davie⁠—open it and see.”

I took it, and looked at it, and shook my head.

“No,” said I, “it goes against me, I cannot open a man’s letter.”

“Not to save your friend?” she cried.

“I cannae tell,” said I. “I think not. If I was only sure!”

“And you have but to break the seal!” said she.

“I know it,” said I, “but the thing goes against me.”

“Give it here,” said she, “and I will open it myself.”

“Nor you neither,” said I. “You least of all. It concerns your father, and his honour, dear, which we are both misdoubting. No question but the place is dangerous-like, and the English ship being here, and your father having word of it, and yon officer that stayed ashore! He would not be alone either; there must be more along with him; I daresay we are spied upon this minute. Ay, no doubt, the letter should be opened; but somehow, not by you nor me.”

I was about this far with it, and my spirit very much overcome with a sense of danger and hidden enemies, when I spied Alan, come back again from following James and walking by himself among the sand hills. He was in his soldier’s coat, of course, and mighty fine; but I could not avoid to shudder when I thought how little that jacket would avail him, if he were once caught and flung in a skiff, and carried on board of the Seahorse, a deserter, a rebel, and now a condemned murderer.

“There,” said I, “there is the man that has the best right to open it: or not, as he thinks fit.”

With which I called upon his name, and we both stood up to be a mark for him.

“If it is so⁠—if it be more disgrace⁠—will you can bear it?” she asked, looking upon me with a burning eye.

“I was asked something of the same question when I had seen you but the once,” said I. “What do you think I answered? That if I liked you as I thought I did⁠—and O, but I like you better!⁠—I would marry you at his gallows’ foot.”

The blood rose in her face; she came close up and pressed upon me, holding my hand: and it was so that we awaited Alan.

He came with one of his queer smiles. “What was I telling ye, David?” says he.

“There is a time for all things, Alan,” said I, “and this time is serious. How have you sped? You can speak out plain before this friend of ours.”

“I have been upon a fool’s errand,” said he.

“I doubt we have done better than you, then,” said I; “and, at least, here is a great deal of matter that you must judge of. Do you see that?” I went on, pointing to the ship. “That is the Seahorse, Captain Palliser.”

“I should ken her, too,” says Alan. “I had fyke enough with her when she was stationed in the Forth. But what ails the man to come so close?”

“I will tell you why he came there first,” said I. “It was to bring this letter to James More. Why he stops here now that it’s delivered, what it’s likely to be about, why there’s an officer hiding in the bents, and whether or not it’s probable that he’s alone⁠—I would rather you considered for yourself.”

“A letter to James More?” said he.

“The same,” said I.

“Well, and I can tell ye more than that,” said Alan. “For last night when you were fast asleep, I heard the man colloquing with someone in the French, and then the door of that inn to be opened and shut.”

“Alan!” cried I, “you slept all night, and I am here to prove it.”

“Ay, but I