They pressed me both to stay, but I seemed, in my mind, to have a new demand upon me for an immediate and private meeting with the girl; she must be seen alone, and not in presence of the old couple, who would give my natural shyness in her company far more gawkiness than it might have if I met her alone. I went out and went down the stair, and along the front of the land, my being in a tumult, yet with my observation keen to everything, no matter how trivial, that happened around me. The sea-gulls, that make the town the playground of their stormy holidays, swept and curved among the pigeons in the gutter and quarrelled over the spoils; tossed in the air wind-blown, then dropped with feet outstretched upon the black joists and window-sills. Fowls of the midden, new brought from other parts to make up the place of those that had gone to the kail-pots of Antrim and Athole, stalked about with heads high, foreign to this causied and gravelled country, clucking eagerly for meat I made my way amid the bird of the sea and the bird of the wood and common bird of the yard with a divided mind, seeing them with the eye for future recollection, but seeing them not Peats were at every close-mouth, at every door almost that was half-habitable, and fuel cut from the wood, and all about the thoroughfare was embarrassed. I had a different decision at every step, now to seek the girl, now to go home, now finding the most heartening hints in the agitation of the parents, anon troubled exceedingly with the reflection that there was something of an unfavourable nature in the demeanour of her mother, however much the father’s badinage might soothe my vanity. I had made up my mind for the twentieth time to go the length of Carlunnan and face her plump and plain, when behold she came suddenly round the corner at the Maltland where the surviving Lowland troops were gathered! M’Iver was with her, and my resolution shrivelled and shook within me like an old nut kernel. I would have turned but for the stupidity and ill-breeding such a movement would evidence, yet as I held on my way at a slower pace and the pair approached, I felt every limb an encumbrance, I felt the country lout throbbing in every vein.