You have seen my lady dressed as a boy before, and you might have seen her wearing her brother's clothes again that day for better convenience in riding and travelling. I do not know whether I like her better in her proper woman's gear or in men's--to tell the truth she is adorable in either--but I had such sweet associations with the latter, she was more comrade and not less wife as she bestrode her horse gallantly booted and spurred and cantered by my side, that I was more than satisfied with her election. Never hoped I to find both comrade and wife in one woman. I doubt not I behaved like a foolish boy. Anon I trolled out a stave of soldier song. In the lonesomer parts of the road I clapped her on the shoulder when I had a chance, as if she had been a boy; yet I recognised such colour as no boy ever sported come and go in her cheek under my touch as I drew her to me and kissed her as no boy was ever kissed. I vow, if it had given her pleasure, I would have got down in the road and let her ride over me. She bewitched me, she possessed me, she does still for that matter, I am more fond and foolish now than ever. I can master with ease my turbulent regiment of soldiers of fortune with which we were getting ready for a great adventure toward England under Dutch William, but in truth she wound me around her finger then and ever. Did the men of my command but know it I should have been disgraced forever, and it is only of her charity that she confines her sweet dominance over me to our lodgings, in the quiet of our chamber rather than in camp and court and field. I grow garrulous as an old woman when I think of her. Now I know full well that a soldier should ever be on the alert, but I was as unsuspicious on that mid-day as any man that lived. Monmouth's rebellion had been stamped out with such thorough-going ferocity by that brute Jeffreys, that there was not even a whisper of disappointment heard; not one, not even among Scotsmen. Nor were there any gentlemen of the highway to be feared, and if there were we were all armed, and Katharine was as good as a fourth man. We rode carelessly therefore, she and I in the advance, sometimes galloping ahead until screened behind a turn of the road or a clump of trees for an exchange of kisses unseen by the Earl and Master Dunner who jogged on behind sedately. We were approaching the outskirts of Cockenzie village when the road suddenly swerved around a thick woodland toward the bluff overlooking the sea, where I marked a small brigantine in the offing and pointed it out idly enough to my Lady Katharine. "Will that be our ship, Hugh?" asked my wife, following my hand with her eyes. "No, Kate, I think not," I replied after a careless glance. "'Tis too small a boat for such happiness as is ours, Sweet."