Catriona

by Robert Louis Stevenson
DEDICATION.

TO CHARLES BAXTER, WRITER TO THE SIGNET.
MY DEAR CHARLES,

It is the fate of sequels to disappoint those who have waited for them;
and my David, having been left to kick his heels for more than a lustre

in the British Linen Company's office, must expect his late re-
appearance to be greeted with hoots, if not with missiles. Yet, when I

remember the days of our explorations, I am not without hope. There
should be left in our native city some seed of the elect; some long-

legged, hot-headed youth must repeat to-day our dreams and wanderings
of so many years ago; he will relish the pleasure, which should have

been ours, to follow among named streets and numbered houses the
country walks of David Balfour, to identify Dean, and Silvermills, and

Broughton, and Hope Park, and Pilrig, and poor old Lochend - if it
still be standing, and the Figgate Whins - if there be any of them

left; or to push (on a long holiday) so far afield as Gillane or the
Bass. So, perhaps, his eye shall be opened to behold the series of the

generations, and he shall weigh with surprise his momentous and
nugatory gift of life.

You are still - as when first I saw, as when I last addressed you - in
the venerable city which I must always think of as my home. And I have

come so far; and the sights and thoughts of my youth pursue me; and I
see like a vision the youth of my father, and of his father, and the

whole stream of lives flowing down there far in the north, with the
sound of laughter and tears, to cast me out in the end, as by a sudden

freshet, on these ultimate islands. And I admire and bow my head
before the romance of destiny.

R. L. S.
Vailima, Upolu,

Samoa, 1892.
CATRIONA - Part I - THE LORD ADVOCATE

CHAPTER I - A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK
THE 25th day of August, 1751, about two in the afternoon, I, David

Balfour, came forth of the British Linen Company, a porter attending me
with a bag of money, and some of the chief of these merchants bowing me

from their doors. Two days before, and even so late as yestermorning,
I was like a beggar-man by the wayside, clad in rags, brought down to

my last shillings, my companion a condemned traitor, a price set on my
own head for a crime with the news of which the country rang. To-day I

was served heir to my position in life, a landed laird, a bank porter
by me carrying my gold, recommendations in my pocket, and (in the words

of the saying) the ball directly at my foot.
There were two circumstances that served me as ballast to so much sail.

The first was the very difficult and deadly business I had still to
handle; the second, the place that I was in. The tall, black city, and

the numbers and movement and noise of so many folk, made a new world
for me, after the moorland braes, the sea-sands and the still country-

sides that I had frequented up to then. The throng of the citizens in
particular abashed me. Rankeillor's son was short and small in the

girth; his clothes scarce held on me; and it was plain I was ill
qualified to strut in the front of a bank-porter. It was plain, if I

did so, I should but set folk laughing, and (what was worse in my case)
set them asking questions. So that I behooved to come by some clothes

of my own, and in the meanwhile to walk by the porter's side, and put
my hand on his arm as though we were a pair of friends.

At a merchant's in the Luckenbooths I had myself fitted out: none too
fine, for I had no idea to appear like a beggar on horseback; but

comely and responsible, so that servants should respect me. Thence to
an armourer's, where I got a plain sword, to suit with my degree in

life. I felt safer with the weapon, though (for one so ignorant of
defence) it might be called an added danger. The porter, who was

naturally a man of some experience, judged my accoutrement to be well
chosen.

"Naething kenspeckle," said he; "plain, dacent claes. As for the
rapier, nae doubt it sits wi' your degree; but an I had been you, I

would has waired my siller better-gates than that." And he proposed I
should buy winter-hosen from a wife in the Cowgate-back, that was a

cousin of his own, and made them "extraordinar endurable."
But I had other matters on my hand more pressing. Here I was in this

old, black city, which was for all the world like a rabbit-warren, not
only by the number of its indwellers, but the complication of its

passages and holes. It was, indeed, a place where no stranger had a
chance to find a friend, let be another stranger. Suppose him even to

hit on the right close, people dwelt so thronged in these tall houses,
he might very well seek a day before he chanced on the right door. The

ordinary course was to hire a lad they called a CADDIE, who was like a
guide or pilot, led you where you had occasion, and (your errands being

done) brought you again where you were lodging. But these caddies,
being always employed in the same sort of services, and having it for

obligation to be well informed of every house and person in the city,
had grown to form a brotherhood of spies; and I knew from tales of Mr.

Campbell's how they communicated one with another, what a rage of
curiosity they conceived as to their employer's business, and how they

were like eyes and fingers to the police. It would be a piece of
little wisdom, the way I was now placed, to take such a ferret to my

tails. I had three visits to make, all immediately needful: to my
kinsman Mr. Balfour of Pilrig, to Stewart the Writer that was Appin's

agent, and to William Grant Esquire of Prestongrange, Lord Advocate of
Scotland. Mr. Balfour's was a non-committal visit; and besides (Pilrig

being in the country) I made bold to find the way to it myself, with
the help of my two legs and a Scots tongue. But the rest were in a

different case. Not only was the visit to Appin's agent, in the midst
of the cry about the Appin murder, dangerous in itself, but it was

highly inconsistent with the other. I was like to have a bad enough
time of it with my Lord Advocate Grant, the best of ways; but to go to

him hot-foot from Appin's agent, was little likely to mend my own
affairs, and might prove the mere ruin of friend Alan's. The whole

thing, besides, gave me a look of running with the hare and hunting
with the hounds that was little to my fancy. I determined, therefore,

to be done at once with Mr. Stewart and the whole Jacobitical side of
my business, and to profit for that purpose by the guidance of the

porter at my side. But it chanced I had scarce given him the address,
when there came a sprinkle of rain - nothing to hurt, only for my new

clothes - and we took shelter under a pend at the head of a close or
alley.

Being strange to what I saw, I stepped a little farther in. The narrow
paved way descended swiftly. Prodigious tall houses sprang upon each

side and bulged out, one storey beyond another, as they rose. At the
top only a ribbon of sky showed in. By what I could spy in the

windows, and by the respectable persons that passed out and in, I saw
the houses to be very well occupied; and the whole appearance of the

place interested me like a tale.
I was still gazing, when there came a sudden brisk tramp of feet in

time and clash of steel behind me. Turning quickly, I was aware of a
party of armed soldiers, and, in their midst, a tall man in a great

coat. He walked with a stoop that was like a piece of courtesy,
genteel and insinuating: he waved his hands plausibly as he went, and

his face was sly and handsome. I thought his eye took me in, but could
not meet it. This procession went by to a door in the close, which a

serving-man in a fine livery set open; and two of the soldier-lads
carried the prisoner within, the rest lingering with their firelocks by

the door.
There can nothing pass in the streets of a city without some following

of idle folk and children. It was so now; but the more part melted