Fiction > Book editions > New York, 1893 - David Balfour

CHAPTER XXV
THE RETURIS" OF JAMES MORE
I WAS called on the morrow out of a late and
troubled slumber by a knocking on my door, ran to
open it, and had almost swooned with the contrariety
of my feelings, mostly painful ; for on the threshold, in
a rough wraprascal and an extraordinary big laced hat,
there stood James More.
I ought to have been glad perhaps without admix-
ture, for there was a sense in which the man came like
an answer to prayer. I had been saying till my head
was weary that Catriona and I must separate, and look-
ing till my head ached for any possible means of
separation. Here were the means come to me upon
two legs, and joy was the hindmost of my thoughts. It
is to be considered, however, that even if the weight of
the future were lifted off me by the man's arrival, the
present heaved up the more black and menacing; so
that, as I first stood before him in my shirt and
breeches, I believe I took a leaping step backward
like a person shot.
"Ah," said he, "I have found you, Mr. Balfour."
And offered me his large, fine hand, the which (recover-