The next morning, I was no sooner awake in my new lodging than I
was up and into my new clothes; and no sooner the breakfast
swallowed, than I was forth on my adventurers. Alan, I could hope,
was fended for; James was like to be a more difficult affair, and I
could not but think that enterprise might cost me dear, even as
everybody said to whom I had opened my opinion. It seemed I was
come to the top of the mountain only to cast myself down; that I
had clambered up, through so many and hard trials, to be rich, to
be recognised, to wear city clothes and a sword to my side, all to
commit mere suicide at the last end of it, and the worst kind of
suicide, besides, which is to get hanged at the King's charges.

What was I doing it for? I asked, as I went down the high Street
and out north by Leith Wynd. First I said it was to save James
Stewart; and no doubt the memory of his distress, and his wife's
cries, and a word or so I had let drop on that occasion worked upon
me strongly. At the same time I reflected that it was (or ought to
be) the most indifferent matter to my father's son, whether James
died in his bed or from a scaffold. He was Alan's cousin, to be
sure; but so far as regarded Alan, the best thing would be to lie
low, and let the King, and his Grace of Argyll, and the corbie
crows, pick the bones of his kinsman their own way. Nor could I
forget that, while we were all in the pot together, James had shown
no such particular anxiety whether for Alan or me.

Next it came upon me I was acting for the sake of justice: and I
thought that a fine word, and reasoned it out that (since we dwelt
in polities, at some discomfort to each one of us) the main thing