Say to my father I will be back anon." "Are ye distraught, lassie ?" shouted Dorothy, as Catharine made past her towards the street door.

"You would not gang into the street with the hair hanging down your haffets in that guise, and you kenn'd for the Fair Maid of Perth?
Mass, but she's out in the street, come o't what like, and the auld Glover will be as mad as if I could withhold her, will she nill she, flyte she fling she.

This is a brave morning for an Ash Wednesday! What's to be done?
If I were to seek my master among the multitude, I were like to be crushed beneath their feet, and little moan made for the old woman.

And am I to run after Catharine, who ere this is out of sight, and far lighter of foot than I am?
so I will just down the gate to Nicol Barber's, and tell him a' about it." While the trusty Dorothy was putting her prudent resolve into execution, Catharine ran through the streets of Perth in a manner which at another moment would have brought on her the attention of every one who saw her hurrying on with a reckless impetuosity wildly and widely different from the ordinary decency and composure of her step and manner, and without the plaid, scarf, or mantle which "women of good," of fair character and decent rank, universally carried around them, when they went abroad.
But, distracted as the people were, every one inquiring or telling the cause of the tumult, and most recounting it different ways, the negligence of her dress and discomposure of her manner made no impression on any one; and she was suffered to press forward on the path she had chosen without attracting more notice than the other females who, stirred by anxious curiosity or fear, had come out to inquire the cause of an alarm so general--it might be to seek for friends for whose safety they were interested.
As Catharine passed along, she felt all the wild influence of the agitating scene, and it was with difficulty she forbore from repeating the cries of lamentation and alarm which were echoed around her.

In the mean time, she rushed rapidly on, embarrassed like one in a dream, with a strange sense of dreadful calamity, the precise nature of which she was unable to define, but which implied the terrible consciousness that the man who loved her so fondly, whose good qualities she so highly esteemed, and whom she now felt to be dearer than perhaps she would before have acknowledged to her own bosom, was murdered, and most probably by her means.