At first I thought no shame of this capitulation; I was only amazed I had not thought upon the thing and done it earlier; and began to inquire into the causes of the change.  These I traced to my lowness of spirits, that back to my late recklessness, and that again to the common, old, public, disconsidered sin of self-indulgence.  Instantly the text came in my head, “How can Satan cast out Satan?” What? (I thought) I had, by self-indulgence, and the following of pleasant paths, and the lure of a young maid, cast myself wholly out of conceit with my own character, and jeopardised the lives of James and Alan?  And I was to seek the way out by the same road as I had entered in?  No; the hurt that had been caused by self-indulgence must be cured by self-denial; the flesh I had pampered must be crucified.  I looked about me for that course which I least liked to follow:  this was to leave the wood without waiting to see Alan, and go forth again alone, in the dark and in the midst of my perplexed and dangerous fortunes.

I have been the more careful to narrate this passage of my reflections, because I think it is of some utility, and may serve as an example to young men.  But there is reason (they say) in planting kale, and even in ethic and religion, room for common sense.  It was already close on Alan’s hour, and the moon was down.  If I left (as I could not very decently whistle to my spies to follow me) they might miss me in the dark and tack themselves to Alan by mistake.  If I stayed, I could at the least of it set my friend upon his guard which might prove his mere salvation.  I had adventured other peoples’ safety in a course of self-indulgence; to have endangered them again, and now on a mere design of penance, would have been scarce rational.  Accordingly, I had scarce risen from my place ere I sat down again, but already in a different frame of spirits, and equally marvelling at my past weakness and rejoicing in my present composure.

Presently after came a crackling in the thicket.  Putting my mouth near down to the ground, I whistled a note or two of Alan’s air; an answer came, in the like guarded tone, and soon we had thralled together in the dark.

“Is this you at last, Davie?” he whispered.

“Just myself,” said I.

“God, man, but I’ve been wearying to see ye!” says he.  “I’ve had the longest kind of a time.  A’ day, I’ve had my dwelling into the inside of a stack of hay, where I couldnae see the nebs of my ten fingers; and then two hours of it waiting here for you, and you never coming!  Dod, and ye’re none too soon the way it is, with me to sail the morn!  The morn? what am I saying?—­the day, I mean.”

“Ay, Alan, man, the day, sure enough,” said I.  “It’s past twelve now, surely, and ye sail the day.  This’ll be a long road you have before you.”

“We’ll have a long crack of it first,” said he.

“Well, indeed, and I have a good deal it will be telling you to hear,” said I.