CHAPTER VII.
I MAKE A FAULT IN HONOR I came forth, I vow I know not how, on the _Lang Dykes_.[12] This is a rural road which runs on the north side over against the city.

Thence I could see the whole black length of it tail down, from where the castle stands upon its crags above the loch in a long line of spires and gable ends, and smoking chimneys, and at the sight my heart swelled in my bosom.

My youth, as I have told, was already inured to dangers; but such danger as I had seen the face of but that morning, in the midst of what they call the safety of a town, shook me beyond experience.

Peril of slavery, peril of shipwreck, peril of sword and shot, I had stood all of these without discredit; but the peril there was in the sharp voice and the fat face of Symon, properly Lord Lovat, daunted me wholly.
I sat by the lake side in a place where the rushes went down into the water, and there steeped my wrists and laved my temples.

If I could have done so with any remains of self-esteem I would now have fled from my foolhardy enterprise.