"I've got to dodge more, and not let myself be cornered," Darrin told himself, keeping his fists busy in warding off blows.

I saw no light for myself in the business.

The Canongate Tolbooth was our portion, the darkest and foulest of the city prisons; and presently I found myself forced through a gateway and up a narrow staircase, into a little chamber in which a score of beings were already penned.

But I caught a reflection of myself in the polished steel of the fireplace, and my spirits fell, for a more woebegone ruffian my eyes had never seen.

But only for a, second, for as I balanced myself to step forward he rammed the butt of the pole in my chest, so that I staggered and fell plump in the river.

So, being determined to find out for myself the truth about this wonderful new land, I left him the business in the town, bought two good horses, hired a servant, by name John Faulkner, who had worked out his time as a redemptioner, and set out on my travels.

I was not very sane myself.

Something like the sails of a windmill smote me on the jaw, and I felt myself falling into a pit of great darkness where little lights twinkled.

All my ill-humour had gone, and I was now in a hurry to set myself right with my conscience.

"I did that myself," he said.

With a young man's vanity, I saw myself the saviour of Virginia, and hailed as such by the proud folk who now scorned me.

'Twas well enough for your fine gentleman in his buckled shoes and silk stockings to enter such a place, but for myself, in my coarse boots, I seemed like a colt in a flower garden.

" A sudden perversity had taken me to show myself at my most prosaic and unromantic.

It was easy so to arrange, the contents that a passing visitor could guess nothing, and no one ever penetrated to its recesses but Faulkner and myself.

He would say, "If I do not myself take part in my offerings, it is all the same as if I did not offer them.

Also of hiding resentment felt towards an opponent and treating him as a friendof this kind of thing he was ashamed, and so too am I." Attended once by the two disciples Yen Yuen and Tsz-lu, he said, "Come now, why not tell me, each of you, what in your hearts you are really after?" "I should like," said Tsz-lu, "for myself and my friends and associates, carriages and horses, and to be clad in light furs!

If the offer is renewed, then indeed I shall feel myself obliged to go and live on the further bank of the Wan." Peh-niu had fallen ill, and the Master was inquiring after him.

Addressing his favorite disciple, he said, "To you only and myself it has been given to do thisto go when called to serve, and to go back into quiet retirement when released from office.

Hearing of this, the Master said, "Why did you not say, He is a man with a mind so intent on his pursuits that he forgets his food, and finds such pleasure in them that he forgets his troubles, and does not know that old age is coming upon him?" "As I came not into life with any knowledge of it," he said, "and as my likings are for what is old, I busy myself in seeking knowledge there.

What says the Ode? 'Act as from a sense of danger, With precaution and with care, As a yawning gulf o'erlooking, As on ice that scarce will bear,' At all times, my children, I know how to keep myself free from bodily harm.

" Again he devoted a moment to thought, and then continued: "Tell you what I'll do, sir; I'll solicit the subscriptions myself, and deduct the price from the men's wages, as I do the cost of their other supplies.

Quoth he: "In sooth, most youthful and excellent sir, I have myself marvelled thereat betimes, but, since alive am I, now do I declare unto you that she for whom I sigh is the fairest, gentlest, noblest, most glorious and most womanly of all women in the world alive" "Save one!" said Beltane.

," said Sir Jocelyn, his cheek flushing, "an earl am I of thirty and two quarterings and divers goodly manors: yet thou art the better man, meseemeth, and as such do I salute thee, and swear myself thy brother-in-arms henceforthan ye will.

" "For all that, I think I'd like to choose for myself.

I fear much more for your brother than for myself, as the conquest of the one would be nothing to the other....