For more than an hour I sat close in the border of the trees, and no hare or eagle could have kept a more particular watch.  When that hour began the sun was already set, but the sky still all golden and the daylight clear; before the hour was done it had fallen to be half mirk, the images and distances of things were mingled, and observation began to be difficult.  All that time not a foot of man had come east from Silvermills, and the few that had gone west were honest countryfolk and their wives upon the road to bed.  If I were tracked by the most cunning spies in Europe, I judged it was beyond the course of nature they could have any jealousy of where I was; and going a little further home into the wood I lay down to wait for Alan.

The strain of my attention had been great, for I had watched not the path only, but every bush and field within my vision.  That was now at an end.  The moon, which was in her first quarter, glinted a little in the wood; all round there was a stillness of the country; and as I lay there on my back, the next three or four hours, I had a fine occasion to review my conduct.

Two things became plain to me first:  that I had had no right to go that day to Dean, and (having gone there) had now no right to be lying where I was.  This (where Alan was to come) was just the one wood in all broad Scotland that was, by every proper feeling, closed against me; I admitted that, and yet stayed on, wondering at myself.  I thought of the measure with which I had meted to Catriona that same night; how I had prated of the two lives I carried, and had thus forced her to enjeopardy her father’s; and how I was here exposing them again, it seemed in wantonness.  A good conscience is eight parts of courage.  No sooner had I lost conceit of my behaviour, than I seemed to stand disarmed amidst a throng of terrors.  Of a sudden I sat up.  How if I went now to Prestongrange, caught him (as I still easily might) before he slept, and made a full submission?  Who could blame me?  Not Stewart the writer; I had but to say that I was followed, despaired of getting clear, and so gave in.  Not Catriona:  here, too, I had my answer ready; that I could not bear she should expose her father.  So, in a moment, I could lay all these troubles by, which were after all and truly none of mine; swim clear of the Appin murder; get forth out of handstroke of all the Stewarts and Campbells, all the whigs and tories, in the land; and live thenceforth to my own mind, and be able to enjoy and to improve my fortunes, and devote some hours of my youth to courting Catriona, which would be surely a more suitable occupation than to hide and run and be followed like a hunted thief, and begin over again the dreadful miseries of my escape with Alan.