David Balfour

“ By what I have read in books, I think few that have held a pen were ever really wearied, or they would write of it more strongly. I had no care of my life, neither past nor future, and I scarce remembered there was such a lad as David Balfour. I did not think of myself, but just of each fresh step which I was sure would be my last, with despair—and of Alan, who was the cause of it, with hatred. Alan was in the right trade as a soldier; ”

“ Symon, "here is enough evidence to hang a bullock, let be a David Balfour! I shall be upon that trial; my voice shall be raised; I shall then speak much otherwise from what I do to-day, and far less to your gratification, little as you like it now! Ah, you look white!" cries he. "I have [pg 68] found the key of your impudent heart. You look pale, your eyes waver, Mr. David! You see the grave and the gallows nearer by than you had fancied."
"I own to a natural weakness," said I. "I think no shame for that. Shame . . ." I was going on.
"Shame waits for you on the gibbet," he broke in. ”

“ If my haunters had let slip that fair occasion I could but judge they aimed at something more than David Balfour. The lives of Alan and James weighed upon my spirit with the weight of two grown bullocks.
Catriona was yet in the garden walking by herself.
"Catriona," said I, "you see me back again."
"With a changed face," said she.
"I carry two men's lives besides my own," said I. "It would be a sin and a shame not to walk carefully. I was doubtful whether I did right to come here. ”

“ To add to my grief—but that’s politics. Before I sleep to-night I have a confession to make. When I was sick I tried to get to work to finish that Samoa thing; wouldn’t go; and at last, in the colic time, I slid off into David Balfour,35 some 50 pages of which are drafted, and like me well. Really I think it is spirited; and there’s a heroine that (up to now) seems to have attractions: absit omen! David, on the whole, seems excellent. Alan does not come in till the tenth chapter, and I am only at the eighth, so I don’t know if I can find him again ”

“ I have had my little holiday outing in my kick at The Young Chevalier, and I guess I can settle to David Balfour, to-morrow or Friday like a little man. I wonder if any one had ever more energy upon so little strength? ”

“ David, this seems to me a very enterprising lass? She crops up from every side. The Government of Scotland appears unable to proceed for Mistress Katrine Drummond, which was somewhat the case (no great while back) with a certain Mr. David Balfour. Should not these make a good match? ”

“ My Lord,—This is to bring to your notice my namesake and cousin, David Balfour, Esquire of Shaws, a young gentleman of unblemished descent and good estate. He has enjoyed besides the more valuable advantages of a godly training, and his political principles are all that your lordship can desire. ”

“ He took the table in his confidence with a gesture and a look.
"That suggests to me a consideration which seems overlooked," said he. "The interest of our client goes certainly before all, but the world does not come to an end with James Stewart." Whereat he cocked his eye. [pg 211] "I might condescend, exempli gratia, upon a Mr. George Brown, a Mr. Thomas Miller, and a Mr. David Balfour. Mr. David Balfour has a very good ground of complaint, and I think, gentlemen--if his story was properly red out--I think there would be a number of wigs on the green." ”

“ To hang on a gallows, that seemed a hard case; and whether a man came to hang there for two shillings Scots, or (as Mr. Stewart had it) from the sense of duty, once he was tarred and shackled and hung up, the difference seemed small. There might David Balfour hang, and other lads pass on their errands and think light of him; and old daft limmers sit at leg-foot and spae their fortunes; and the clean genty maids go by, and look to the other side, and hold a nose. I saw them plain, and they had grey eyes, and their screens upon their heads were of the Drummond colours. ”

“ David Balfour. Let them hang you; I will never forget, I will grow old and still remember you. I think it is great to die so; I will envy you that gallows."
"And maybe all this while I am but a child frighted with bogles," said I. "Maybe they but make a mock of me."
[pg 89] "It is what I must know," she said. "I must hear the whole. The harm is done at all events, and I must hear the whole."
I had sat down on the wayside, where she took a place beside me, and I told her all that matter much as I have written it, my thoughts about her father's dealing being alone omitted. ”

“ Blow high, blow low, there will be no pardon for James Stewart: and take that for said! The question is now [pg 222] of myself: am I to stand or fall? and I do not deny to you that I am in some danger. But will Mr. David Balfour consider why? It is not because I have pushed the case unduly against James; for that, I am sure of condonation. And it is not because I have sequestered Mr. David on a rock, though it will pass under that colour; but because I did not take the ready and plain path, to which I was pressed repeatedly, and send Mr. David to his grave or to the gallows. ”

“ 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 ”

“ I remember acknowledging with rapture the — of the Master, and I remember receiving Marbot: was that our last relation?
Hey, well! anyway, as you may have probably gathered from the papers, I have been in devilish hot water, and (what may be new to you) devilish hard at work. In twelve calendar months I finished The Wrecker, wrote all of Falesà but the first chapter (well, much of) , the History of Samoa, did something here and there to my Life of my Grandfather, and began And Finished David Balfour. ”

“ David; you have the character that I respect the most; you are one of those from whom a gentleman can take a favour and no more words about it. I am an old soldier," he went on, looking rather disgusted-like around my chamber, "and you need not fear I shall prove burthensome. ”

“ Balfour (described by his grandson in the essay called ‘The Manse’) was of the stock of the Balfours of Pilrig, and grandson to that James Balfour, professor first of moral philosophy, and afterwards of the law of nature and of nations, who was held in particular esteem as a philosophical controversialist by David Hume. His wife, Henrietta Smith, a daughter of the Rev. George Smith of Galston, to whose gift as a preacher Burns refers scoffingly in the Holy Fair, is said to have been a woman of uncommon beauty and charm of manner. ”

“ Yet the male line is now extinct, and, with the exception of the two subjects of Sibbald's memoir and their brother David, who became a judge, they do not seem to have been men of note. After a good education at home Balfour was sent to travel on the continent, and after his return, although he had shown some inclination for poetry in his youth, when he translated the 'Panthea' of Johannes Leochæus (John Leech) into Scottish verse, he devoted himself to the study of the history and antiquities of Scotland. ”

“ By your way of it, you're Balfour of the Shaws; but for what I ken you may be Balfour of the Deevil's oxter. It's possible ye may come here for what ye say, and it's equally possible ye may come here for deil care what! I'm good enough whig to sit quiet, and to have keepit all my men-folk's heads upon their shoulders. But I'm not just a good enough whig to be made a fool of neither. And I tell you fairly, there's too much Advocate's door and Advocate's window here for a man that comes taigling after a Macgregor's daughter. ”

“ I was about to have signed here, but that would leave the purport of my question doubtful; and in my own case I ken the answer. So fill up here with good advice. Do not be too blate, [25] and for God's sake do not try to be too forward; nothing sets you worse. I am
"Your affectionate friend and governess,
"BARBARA GRANT."
I wrote a word of answer and compliment on a leaf out of my pocketbook, put it in with another scratch from Catriona, sealed the whole with my new signet of the Balfour arms, and despatched it by the hand of Prestongrange's servant that still waited in my boat. ”

“ 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 tack such a ferret to my tails. I had three visits to make, all immediately needful: to my kinsman Mr. [pg 4] Balfour of Pilrig, to Stewart the Writer that was Appin's agent, and to William Grant Esquire of Prestongrange, Lord Advocate of Scotland. Mr. ”

“ My way was down the glen of the Leith River, towards Stockbridge and Silvermills. A path led in the foot of it, the water bickered and sang in the midst; the sunbeams overhead struck out of the west among long shadows and (as the valley turned) made like a new scene and a new world of it at every corner. With Catriona behind and Alan before me, I was like one lifted up. ”

“ Balfour," said she. "I think we will have met but the once, and will can part like gentle-folk."
"O, let me have one to believe in me!" I pleaded, "I cannae bear it else. The whole world is clanned against me. How am I to go through with my dreadful fate? If there's to be none to believe in me I cannot do it. The man must just die, for I cannot do it." ”

“ My heart beat high as I stepped inside the garden hedge, but it fell low indeed when I came face to face with a grim and fierce old lady, walking there in a white mutch with a man's hat strapped upon the top of it. ”

“ Macgregor, I was getting skelped in the parish school," said I.
"So young!" cries he. "Ah, then you will never be able to think what this meeting is to me. In the hour of my adversity, and in the house of my enemy, to meet in with the blood of an old brother-in-arms--it heartens me, Mr. Balfour, like the skirling of the Highland pipes! Sir, this is a sad look-back that many of us have to make: some with falling tears. I have lived in my own country like a king; my sword, my mountains, and the faith of my friends and kinsmen sufficed for me. ”

“ It was a kerchief of a very pretty hue, on which I had frequently remarked; and once that she had it on, I remembered telling her (by way of a banter) that she wore my colours. There came a glow of hope and like a tide of sweetness in my bosom; and the next moment I was plunged back in a fresh despair. For there was the corner crumpled in a knot and cast down by itself in another part of the floor.
But when I argued with myself, I grew more hopeful. She had cut that corner off in some childish freak that was manifestly tender ”

“ "You deal with me very frankly, and I thank you for it," said I. "I will try on my side to be no less honest. I believe your policy to be sound. I believe these deep duties may lie upon your lordship; I believe you may have laid them on your conscience when you took the oaths of the high office which you [pg 52] hold. But for me, who am just a plain man--or scarce a man yet--the plain duties must suffice. I can think but of two things, of a poor soul in the immediate and unjust danger of a shameful death, and of the cries and tears of his wife that still tingle in my head. ”

“ I am to be brought in a party to the murder; I am to have held Glenure in talk for money and old clothes; I am to be killed and shamed. If this is the way I am to fall, and me scarce a man--if this is the story to be told of me in all Scotland--if you are to believe it too, and my name is to be nothing but a by-word--Catriona, how can I go through with it? [pg 87] The thing's not possible; it's more than a man has in his heart. ”

“ You're just made of courage; it's the character of the man, as I could prove myself if there was nobody else."
"And you would be the more mistaken," said he. "What makes the differ with me is just my great penetration and knowledge of affairs. But for auld, cauld, dour, deidly courage, I am not fit to hold a candle to yourself. ”

“ To protect the life of this man Stewart--which is forfeit already on half-a-dozen different counts if not on this--do you propose to plunge your country in war, to jeopardise the faith of your fathers, and to expose the lives and fortunes of how many thousand innocent persons? ”

“ Are ye to be speerited away like Lady Grange? Are they to drive a dirk in your inside and bury ye in the bents? Or is it to be the other way, and are they to bring ye in with James? Are they folk to be trustit? Would ye stick your head in the mouth of Sim Fraser and the ither Whigs?" he added with extraordinary bitterness.
"Alan," cried I, "they're all rogues and liars, and I'm with ye there. The more reason there should be one decent man in such a land of thieves! My word is passed, and I'll stick to it. I said long syne to your kinswoman that I would stumble at no risk. ”