Afraid that I had still been too slightly obliging, and that I run the risk of being separated from her, I studied the whole day on the most becoming way of conducting myself, and entered on several most amorous resolutions; but the higher my resolves were, the more pusillanimous was my behaviour when put to the test. I durst not even touch the side of her bed that night; but the wicked unsonsy bogle still continued its scratchings, sometimes on the one side of the bed, and sometimes on the other, I was therefore obliged once more to sit down on her bed side, to guard her from its inroads. In sitting there I dropt asleep, and my head fell down on her pillow--it was impossible I could help that; and then she kindly laid the uppermost coverlet over me for fear of my catching cold; but I was by far too sound asleep to perceive it. She had to pull the covering from below me, in order that she might lay it above me,--for all that I did not awake, which was a great pity, but always as she made the greatest stir, I sniffed the louder. A while after, I turned myself about, and gave my head a ketch toward the back of the bed, till my cheek came in contact with something soft; but it was in my sleep,--and I was in one so so profound, that I could not possibly know what that thing was. What a fright I got next morning on perceiving my situation! I sprung from the bed, and ran away to the hills to my charge, without speaking a word. I was, however, quite intoxicated with delight, and endeavoured to ingratiate myself with my master, by paying every possible attention to his behests, lest I should lose so delightful a place both for stolen meat and approaching pleasures, which I perceived would still grow more and more sublime, and was glad when he said to me one day that Kell had given over complaining of my rudeness and incivility, and he would trust me as her companion for a little while longer. In the mean while, I was to take care and do nothing improper; but he had such trust to put in me, he was not afraid of that. He was informed every day by this subservient beauty how matters proceeded; so he let them go on by degrees till they arrived at such a crisis as he desired, which was no more than a boy lying on a girl's bed-side with his clothes on. He then came up with a light one night at midnight to see how his child was resting, pretending that he thought her ill, and found me lying sound asleep, where perhaps I should not have been, though I was as innocent and as free of his mistress as the child that lay in her bosom. He was in great wrath, and pulled me over the bed, giving me two or three gentle thwacks with his open hand: he also rebuked her very sharply, but said to us before going away: "Keep your own secret. For both your sakes I will conceal what I have seen, although you have acted so _very_ improperly; but let me never catch you in the like fault again. If the church get hold of you, you are both undone."