full towards me:  so that by the moonlight I could see every line and wrinkle of his face.  Then my drunken mirth died out of me, as I have seen the waters of our great rivers die away in one night; and I, Duncan Parrenness, who was afraid of no man, was taken with a more deadly terror than I hold it has ever been the lot of mortal man to know.  For I saw that his face was my very own, but marked and lined and scarred with the furrows of disease and much evil living—­as I once, when I was (Lord help me) very drunk indeed, have seen mine own face, all white and drawn and grown old, in a mirror.  I take it that any man would have been even more greatly feared than I. For I am in no way wanting in courage.

After I had lain still for a little, sweating in my agony and waiting until I should awake from this terrible dream (for dream I knew it to be) he says again, that I must pay my price, and a little after, as though it were to be given in pagodas and sicca rupees:  ’What price will you pay?’ Says I, very softly:  ’For God’s sake let me be, whoever you are, and I will mend my ways from to-night.’  Says he, laughing a little at my words, but otherwise making no motion of having heard them:  ’Nay, I would only rid so brave a young ruffler as yourself of much that will be a great hindrance to you on your way through life in the Indies; for believe me,’ and here he looks full on me once more, ’there is no return.’  At all this rigmarole, which I could not then understand, I was a good deal put aback and waited for what should come next.  Says he very calmly, ‘Give me your trust in man.’  At that I saw how heavy would be my price, for I never doubted but that he could take from me all that he asked, and my head was, through terror and wakefulness, altogether cleared of the wine I had drunk.  So I takes him up very short, crying that I was not so wholly bad as he would make believe, and that I trusted my fellows to the full as much as they were worthy of it.  ’It was none of my fault,’ says I, ’if one half of them were liars and the other half deserved to be burnt in the hand, and I would once more ask him to have done with his questions.’  Then I stopped, a little afraid, it is true, to have let my tongue so run away with me, but he took no notice of this, and only laid his hand lightly on my left breast and I felt very cold there for a while.  Then he says, laughing more:  ’Give me your faith in women.’  At that I started in my bed as though I had been stung, for I thought of my sweet mother in England, and for a while fancied that my faith in God’s best creatures could neither be shaken nor stolen from me.  But later, Myself’s hard eyes being upon me, I fell to thinking, for the second time that night, of Kitty (she that jilted me and married Tom Sanderson) and of Mistress Vansuythen, whom only my devilish pride made me follow, and how she was even worse than Kitty, and I worst of them all—­seeing that with my life’s work to be done, I must needs go dancing down the Devil’s swept and garnished causeway, because, forsooth, there was a light woman’s smile at the end of it.  And I thought that all women in the world were either like Kitty or Mistress Vansuythen (as indeed they have ever since been to me) and this put me to such an extremity of rage and sorrow, that I was beyond word glad when Myself’s hand fell again on my left breast, and I was no more troubled by these follies.