The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 10

And it came in my mind that Alan, on the day of that battle, had been engaged upon the royal side.

“Why do ye take that air, Mr. Stewart?” said I. “Is that to remind me you have been beaten on both sides?”

The air stopped on Alan’s lips. “David!” said he.

“But it’s time these manners ceased,” I continued; “and I mean you shall henceforth speak civilly of my King and my good friends the Campbells.”

“I am a Stewart – ” began Alan.

“O!” says I, “I ken ye bear a king’s name. But you are to remember, since I have been in the Highlands, I have seen a good many of those that bear it; and the best I can say of them is this, that they would be none the worse of washing.”

“Do you know that you insult me?” said Alan, very low.

“I am sorry for that,” said I, “for I am not done; and if you distaste the sermon, I doubt the pirliecue²⁹ will please you as little. You have been chased in the field by the grown men of my party; it seems a poor kind of pleasure to outface a boy. Both the Campbells and the Whigs have beaten you; you have run before them like a hare. It behoves you to speak of them as of your betters.”

Alan stood quite still, the tails of his great-coat clapping behind him in the wind.

“This is a pity,” he said at last. “There are things said that cannot be passed over.”

“I never asked you to,” said I. “I am as ready as yourself.”

“Ready?” said he.

“Ready,” I repeated. “I am no blower and boaster like some that I could name. Come on!” And drawing my sword, I fell on guard as Alan himself had taught me.

“David!” he cried. “Are ye daft? I canna draw upon ye, David. It’s fair murder.”

“That was your look-out when you insulted me,” said I.

“It’s the truth!” cried Alan, and he stood for a moment, wringing his mouth in his hand like a man in sore perplexity. “It’s the bare truth,” he said, and drew his sword. But before I could touch his blade with mine, he had thrown it from him and fallen to the ground. “Na, na,” he kept saying, “na, na – I canna, I canna.”

At this the last of my anger oozed all out of me; and I found myself only sick, and sorry, and blank, and wondering at myself. I would have given the world to take back what I had said; but a word once spoken, who can recapture it? I minded me of all Alan’s kindness and courage in the past, how he had helped and cheered and borne with me in our evil days; and then recalled my own insults, and saw that I had lost for ever that doughty friend. At the same time, the sickness that hung upon me seemed to redouble, and the pang in my side was like a sword for sharpness. I thought I must have swooned where I stood.

This it was that gave me a thought. No apology could blot out what I had said; it was needless to think of one, none could cover the offence; but where an apology was vain, a mere cry for help might bring Alan back to my side. I put my pride away from me. “Alan!” I said; “if you canna help me, I must just die here.”

He started up sitting, and looked at me.

“It’s true,” said I. “I’m by with it. O let me get into the bield of a house – I can die there easier.” I had no need to pretend; whether I chose or not, I spoke in a weeping voice that would have melted a heart of stone.

“Can ye walk?” asked Alan.

“No,” said I, “not without help. This last hour my legs have been fainting under me; I’ve a stitch in my side like a red-hot iron; I canna breathe right. If I die, ye’ll can forgive me, Alan? In my heart I liked ye fine – even when I was the angriest.”

“Wheesht, wheesht!” cried Alan. “Dinna say that! David man, ye ken – ” He shut his mouth upon a sob. “Let me get my arm about ye,” he continued; “that’s the way! Now lean upon me hard. Gude kens where there’s a house! We’re in Balwhidder, too; there should be no want of houses, no, nor friends’ houses here. Do ye gang easier so, Davie?”

“Ay,” said I, “I can be doing this way”; and I pressed his arm with my hand.

Again he came near sobbing. “Davie,” said he, “I’m no’ a right man at all; I have neither sense nor kindness; I couldna remember ye were just a bairn, I couldna see ye were dying on your feet; Davie, ye’ll have to try and forgive me.”

“O man, let’s say no more about it!” said I. “We’re neither one of us to mend the other – that’s the truth! We must just bear and forbear, man Alan. – O but my stitch is sore! Is there nae house?”

“I’ll find a house to ye, David,” he said stoutly. “We’ll follow down the burn, where there’s bound to be houses. My poor man, will ye no’ be better on my back?”

“O Alan,” says I, “and me a good twelve inches taller?”

“Ye’re no such a thing,” cried Alan, with a start. “There may be a trifling matter of an inch or two; I’m no’ saying I’m just exactly what ye would call a tall man, whatever; and I daresay,” he added, his voice tailing off in a laughable manner, “now when I come to think of it, I daresay ye’ll be just about right. Ay, it’ll be a foot, or near-hand; or maybe even mair!”

It was sweet and laughable to hear Alan eat his words up in the fear of some fresh quarrel. I could have laughed, had not my stitch caught me so hard; but if I had laughed, I think I must have wept too.

“Alan,” cried I, “what makes ye so good to me? What makes ye care for such a thankless fellow?”

“’Deed, and I don’t know,” said Alan. “For just precisely what I thought I liked about ye was that ye never quarrelled; – and now I like ye better!”

CHAPTER XXV
IN BALQUHIDDER

At the door of the first house we came to Alan knocked, which was no very safe enterprise in such a part of the Highlands as the Braes of Balquhidder. No great clan held rule there; it was filled and disputed by small septs, and broken remnants, and what they call “chiefless folk,” driven into the wild country about the springs of Forth and Teith by the advance of the Campbells. Here were Stewarts and Maclarens, which came to the same thing, for the Maclarens followed Alan’s chief in war, and made but one clan with Appin. Here, too, were many of that old, proscribed, nameless, red-handed clan of the Macgregors. They had always been ill-considered, and now worse than ever, having credit with no side or party in the whole country of Scotland. Their chief, Macgregor of Macgregor, was in exile; the more immediate leader of that part of them about Balquhidder, James More, Rob Roy’s eldest son, lay waiting his trial in Edinburgh Castle; they were in ill-blood with Highlander and Lowlander, with the Grahames, the Maclarens, and the Stewarts; and Alan, who took up the quarrel of any friend, however distant, was extremely wishful to avoid them.

Chance served us very well; for it was a household of Maclarens that we found, where Alan was not only welcome for his name’s sake, but known by reputation. Here then I was got to bed without delay, and a doctor fetched, who found me in a sorry plight. But whether because he was a very good doctor, or I a very young, strong man, I lay bedridden for no more than a week, and before a month I was able to take the road again with a good heart.

All this time Alan would not leave me, though I often pressed him, and indeed his foolhardiness in staying was a common subject of outcry with the two or three friends that were let into the secret. He hid by day in a hole of the braes under a little wood; and at night, when the coast was clear, would come into the house to visit me. I need not say if I was pleased to see him; Mrs. Maclaren, our hostess, thought nothing good enough for such a guest; and as Duncan Dhu (which was the name of our host) had a pair of pipes in his house, and was much of a lover of music, the time of my recovery was quite a festival, and we commonly turned night into day.

The soldiers let us be; although once a party of two companies and some dragoons went by in the bottom of the valley, where I could see them through the window as I lay in bed. What was much more astonishing, no magistrate came near me, and there was no question put of whence I came or whither I was going; and in that time of excitement I was as free of all inquiry as though I had lain in a desert. Yet my presence was known before I left to all the people in Balquhidder and the adjacent parts; many coming about the house on visits, and these (after the custom of the country) spreading the news among their neighbours. The bills, too, had now been printed. There was one pinned near the foot of my bed, where I could read my own not very flattering portrait, and, in larger characters, the amount of the blood-money that had been set upon my life. Duncan Dhu and the rest that knew that I had come there in Alan’s company could have entertained no doubt of who I was; and many others must have had their guess. For though I had changed my clothes, I could not change my age or person; and Lowland boys of eighteen were not so rife in these parts of the world, and above all about that time, that they could fail to put one thing with another, and connect me with the bill. So it was, at least. Other folk keep a secret among two or three near friends, and somehow it leaks out; but among these clansmen, it is told to a whole countryside, and they will keep it for a century.

There was but one thing happened worth narrating; and that is the visit I had of Robin Oig, one of the sons of the notorious Rob Roy. He was sought upon all sides on the charge of carrying a young woman from Balfron and marrying her (as was alleged) by force; yet he stepped about Balquhidder like a gentleman in his own walled policy. It was he who had shot James Maclaren at the plough-stilts, a quarrel never satisfied; yet he walked into the house of his blood enemies as a rider³⁰ might into a public inn.

Duncan had time to pass me word of who it was; and we looked at one another in concern. You should understand, it was then close upon the time of Alan’s coming; the two were little likely to agree; and yet if we sent word or sought to make a signal, it was sure to arouse suspicion in a man under so dark a cloud as the Macgregor.

He came in with a great show of civility, but like a man among inferiors; took off his bonnet to Mrs. Maclaren, but clapped it on his head again to speak to Duncan; and having thus set himself (as he would have thought) in a proper light, came to my bedside and bowed.

“I am given to know, sir,” says he, “that your name is Balfour.”

“They call me David Balfour,” said I, “at your service.”

“I would give ye my name in return, sir,” he replied, “but it’s one somewhat blown upon of late days; and it’ll perhaps suffice if I tell ye that I am own brother to James More Drummond or Macgregor, of whom ye will scarce have failed to hear.”

“No, sir,” said I, a little alarmed; “nor yet of your father, Macgregor-Campbell.” And I sat up and bowed in bed; for I thought best to compliment him, in case he was proud of having had an outlaw to his father.

He bowed in return. “But what I am come to say, sir,” he went on, “is this. In the year ’Forty-five my brother raised a part of the ‘Gregara,’ and marched six companies to strike a stroke for the good side; and the surgeon that marched with our clan and cured my brother’s leg when it was broken in the brush at Prestonpans, was a gentleman of the same name precisely as yourself. He was brother to Balfour of Baith; and if you are in any reasonable degree of nearness one of that gentleman’s kin, I have come to put myself and my people at your command.”

You are to remember that I knew no more of my descent than any cadger’s dog; my uncle, to be sure, had prated of some of our high connections, but nothing to the present purpose; and there was nothing left me but that bitter disgrace of owning that I could not tell.

Robin told me shortly he was sorry he had put himself about, turned his back upon me without a sign of salutation, and as he went towards the door I could hear him telling Duncan that I was “only some kinless loon that didn’t know his own father.” Angry as I was at these words, and ashamed of my own ignorance, I could scarce keep from smiling that a man who was under the lash of the law (and was indeed hanged some three years later) should be so nice as to the descent of his acquaintances.

Just in the door he met Alan coming in; and the two drew back and looked at each other like strange dogs. They were neither of them big men, but they seemed fairly to swell out with pride. Each wore a sword, and by a movement of his haunch, thrust clear the hilt of it, so that it might be the more readily grasped and the blade drawn.

“Mr. Stewart, I am thinking,” says Robin.

“Troth, Mr. Macgregor, it’s not a name to be ashamed of,” answered Alan.

“I did not know ye were in my country, sir,” says Robin.

“It sticks in my mind that I am in the country of my friends the Maclarens,” says Alan.

“That’s a kittle point,” returned the other. “There may be two words to say to that. But I think I will have heard that you are a man of your sword?”

“Unless ye were born deaf, Mr. Macgregor, ye will have heard a good deal more than that,” says Alan. “I am not the only man that can draw steel in Appin; and when my kinsman and captain, Ardshiel, had a talk with a gentleman of your name, not so many years back, I could never hear that the Macgregor had the best of it.”

“Do ye mean my father, sir?” says Robin.

“Well, I wouldna wonder,” said Alan. “The gentleman I have in my mind had the ill-taste to clap Campbell to his name.”

“My father was an old man,” returned Robin. “The match was unequal. You and me would make a better pair, sir.”

“I was thinking that,” said Alan.

I was half out of bed, and Duncan had been hanging at the elbow of these fighting-cocks, ready to intervene upon the least occasion. But when that word was uttered, it was a case of now or never; and Duncan, with something of a white face to be sure, thrust himself between.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “I will have been thinking of a very different matter, whateffer. Here are my pipes, and here are you two gentlemen who are baith acclaimed pipers. It’s an auld dispute which one of ye’s the best. Here will be a braw chance to settle it.”

“Why, sir,” said Alan, still addressing Robin, from whom, indeed, he had not so much as shifted his eyes, nor yet Robin from him, “why, sir,” says Alan, “I think I will have heard some sough³¹ of the sort. Have ye music, as folk say? Are ye a bit of a piper?”

“I can pipe like a Macrimmon!” cries Robin.

“And that is a very bold word,” quoth Alan.

“I have made bolder words good before now,” returned Robin, “and that against better adversaries.”

“It is easy to try that,” says Alan.

Duncan Dhu made haste to bring out the pair of pipes that was his principal possession, and to set before his guests a mutton-ham and a bottle of that drink which they call Athole brose, and which is made of old whisky, strained honey and sweet cream, slowly beaten together in the right order and proportion. The two enemies were still on the very breach of a quarrel; but down they sat, one upon each side of the peat fire, with a mighty show of politeness. Maclaren pressed them to taste his mutton-ham and “the wife’s brose,” reminding them the wife was out of Athole and had a name far and wide for her skill in that confection. But Robin put aside these hospitalities as bad for the breath.

“I would have ye to remark, sir,” said Alan, “that I havena broken bread for near upon ten hours, which will be worse for the breath than any brose in Scotland.”

“I will take no advantages, Mr. Stewart,” replied Robin. “Eat and drink; I’ll follow you.”

Each ate a small portion of the ham and drank a glass of the brose to Mrs. Maclaren; and then, after a great number of civilities, Robin took the pipes and played a little spring in a very ranting manner.

“Ay, ye can blow,” said Alan; and taking the instrument from his rival, he first played the same spring in a manner identical with Robin’s; and then wandered into variations, which, as he went on, he decorated with a perfect flight of grace-notes, such as pipers love, and call the “warblers.”

I had been pleased with Robin’s playing; Alan’s ravished me.

“That’s no’ very bad, Mr. Stewart,” said the rival, “but ye show a poor device in your warblers.”

“Me!” cried Alan, the blood starting to his face. “I give ye the lie.”

“Do ye own yourself beaten at the pipes, then,” said Robin, “that ye seek to change them for the sword?”

“And that’s very well said, Mr. Macgregor,” returned Alan; “and in the meantime” (laying a strong accent on the word) “I take back the lie. I appeal to Duncan.”

“Indeed, ye need apply to naebody,” said Robin. “Ye’re a far better judge than any Maclaren in Balquhidder: for it’s a God’s truth that you’re a very creditable piper for a Stewart. Hand me the pipes.”

Alan did as he asked; and Robin proceeded to imitate and correct some part of Alan’s variations, which it seemed that he remembered perfectly.

“Ay, ye have music,” said Alan gloomily.

“And now be the judge yourself, Mr. Stewart,” said Robin; and taking up the variations from the beginning, he worked them throughout to so new a purpose, with such ingenuity and sentiment, and with so odd a fancy and so quick a knack in the grace-notes, that I was amazed to hear him.

As for Alan, his face grew dark and hot, and he sat and gnawed his fingers, like a man under some deep affront. “Enough!” he cried. “Ye can blow the pipes – make the most of that.” And he made as if to rise.

But Robin only held out his hand as if to ask for silence, and struck into the slow measure of a pibroch. It was a fine piece of music in itself, and nobly played; but it seems, besides, it was a piece peculiar to the Appin Stewarts and a chief favourite with Alan. The first notes were scarce out, before there came a change in his face; when the time quickened he seemed to grow restless in his seat; and long before that piece was at an end, the last signs of his anger died from him, and he had no thought but for the music.

“Robin Oig,” he said, when it was done, “ye are a great piper. I am not fit to blow in the same kingdom with ye. Body of me! ye have mair music in your sporran than I have in my head! And though it still sticks in my mind that I could maybe show ye another of it with the cold steel, I warn ye beforehand – it’ll no’ be fair! It would go against my heart to haggle a man that can blow the pipes as you can!”

Thereupon that quarrel was made up; all night long the brose was going and the pipes changing hands; and the day had come pretty bright, and the three men were none the better for what they had been taking, before Robin as much as thought upon the road.

CHAPTER XXVI
END OF THE FLIGHT: WE PASS THE FORTH

The month, as I have said, was not yet out, but it was already far through August, and beautiful warm weather, with every sign of an early and great harvest, when I was pronounced able for my journey. Our money was now run to so low an ebb that we must think first of all on speed; for if we came not soon to Mr. Rankeillor’s, or if when we came there he should fail to help me, we must surely starve. In Alan’s view, besides, the hunt must have now greatly slackened; and the line of the Forth and even Stirling Bridge, which is the main pass over that river, would be watched with little interest.

“It’s a chief principle in military affairs,” said he, “to go where ye are least expected. Forth is our trouble; ye ken the saying, ‘Forth bridles the wild Hielandman.’ Well, if we seek to creep round about the head of that river and come down by Kippen or Balfron, it’s just precisely there that they’ll be looking to lay hands on us. But if we stave on straight to the auld Brig of Stirling, I’ll lay my sword they let us pass unchallenged.”

The first night, accordingly, we pushed to the house of a Maclaren in Strathire, a friend of Duncan’s, where we slept the twenty-first of the month, and whence we set forth again about the fall of night to make another easy stage. The twenty-second we lay in a heather bush on the hill-side in Uam Var, within view of a herd of deer, the happiest ten hours of sleep in a fine, breathing sunshine and on bone-dry ground, that I have ever tasted. That night we struck Allan Water, and followed it down; and coming to the edge of the hills saw the whole Carse of Stirling underfoot, as flat as a pancake, with the town and castle on a hill in the midst of it, and the moon shining on the Links of Forth.

“Now,” said Alan, “I kenna if ye care, but ye’re in your own land again. We passed the Hieland Line in the first hour; and now if we could but pass yon crooked water, we might cast our bonnets in the air.”

In Allan Water, near by where it falls into the Forth, we found a little sandy islet, overgrown with burdock, butterbur, and the like low plants, that would just cover us if we lay flat. Here it was we made our camp, within plain view of Stirling Castle, whence we could hear the drums beat as some part of the garrison paraded. Shearers worked all day in a field on one side of the river, and we could hear the stones going on the hooks, and the voices, and even the words, of the men talking. It behoved to lie close and keep silent. But the sand of the little isle was sun-warm, the green plants gave us shelter for our heads, we had food and drink in plenty; and, to crown all, we were within sight of safety.

As soon as the shearers quit their work and the dusk began to fall, we waded ashore and struck for the Bridge of Stirling, keeping to the fields and under the field fences.

The bridge is close under the castle hill, an old, high, narrow bridge with pinnacles along the parapet; and you may conceive with how much interest I looked upon it, not only as a place famous in history, but as the very doors of salvation to Alan and myself. The moon was not yet up when we came there; a few lights shone along the front of the fortress, and lower down a few lighted windows in the town; but it was all mighty still, and there seemed to be no guard upon the passage.

I was for pushing straight across; but Alan was more wary.

“It looks unco quiet,” said he; “but for all that we’ll lie down here cannily behind a dyke, and make sure.”

So we lay for about a quarter of an hour, whiles whispering, whiles lying still and hearing nothing earthly but the washing of the water on the piers. At last there came by an old, hobbling woman with a crutch stick; who first stopped a little, close to where we lay, and bemoaned herself and the long way she had travelled; and then set forth again up the steep spring of the bridge. The woman was so little, and the night still so dark, that we soon lost sight of her; only heard the sound of her steps, and her stick, and a cough that she had by fits, draw slowly farther away.

“She’s bound to be across now,” I whispered.

“Na,” said Alan, “her foot still sounds boss³² upon the bridge.”

And just then – “Who goes?” cried a voice, and we heard the butt of a musket rattle on the stones. I must suppose the sentry had been sleeping, so that had we tried, we might have passed unseen; but he was awake now, and the chance forfeited.

“This’ll never do,” said Alan. “This’ll never, never do for us, David.”

And without another word he began to crawl away through the fields; and a little after, being well out of eye-shot, got to his feet again, and struck along a road that led to the eastward. I could not conceive what he was doing; and indeed I was so sharply cut by the disappointment that I was little likely to be pleased with anything. A moment back and I had seen myself knocking at Mr. Rankeillor’s door to claim my inheritance, like a hero in a ballad; and here was I back again, a wandering, hunted blackguard, on the wrong side of Forth.

“Well?” said I.

“Well,” said Alan, “what would ye have? They’re none such fools as I took them for. We have still the Forth to pass, Davie – weary fall the rains that fed and the hillsides that guided it!”

“And why go east?” said I.

“Ou, just upon the chance!” said he. “If we canna pass the river, we’ll have to see what we can do for the firth.”

“There are fords upon the river, and none upon the firth,” said I.

“To be sure there are fords, and a bridge forbye,” quoth Alan; “and of what service, when they are watched?”

“Well,” said I, “but a river can be swum.”

“By them that have the skill of it,” returned he; “but I have yet to hear that either you or me is much of a hand at that exercise; and for my own part, I swim like a stone.”

“I’m not up to you in talking back, Alan,” I said; “but I can see we’re making bad worse. If it’s hard to pass a river, it stands to reason it must be worse to pass a sea.”

“But there’s such a thing as a boat,” says Alan, “or I’m the more deceived.”

“Ay, and such a thing as money,” says I. “But for us that have neither one nor other, they might just as well not have been invented.”

“Ye think so?” said Alan.

“I do that,” said I.

“David,” says he, “ye’re a man of small invention and less faith. But let me set my wits upon the hone, and if I canna beg, borrow, nor yet steal a boat, I’ll make one!”

“I think I see ye!” said I. “And what’s more than all that: if ye pass a bridge, it can tell no tales; but if we pass the firth, there’s the boat on the wrong side – somebody must have brought it – the countryside will all be in a bizz – ”

“Man!” cried Alan, “if I make a boat, I’ll make a body to take it back again! So deave me with no more of your nonsense, but walk (for that’s what you’ve got to do) – and let Alan think for ye.”

All night, then, we walked through the north side of the Carse, under the high line of the Ochil mountains; and by Alloa and Clackmannan and Culross, all of which we avoided: and about ten in the morning, mighty hungry and tired, came to the little clachan of Limekilns. This is a place that sits near in by the waterside and looks across the Hope to the town of the Queen’s Ferry. Smoke went up from both of these and from other villages and farms upon all hands. The fields were being reaped; two ships lay anchored, and boats were coming and going on the Hope. It was altogether a right pleasant sight to me; and I could not take my fill of gazing at these comfortable, green, cultivated hills and the busy people both of the field and sea.

For all that, there was Mr. Rankeillor’s house on the south shore, where I had no doubt wealth awaited me; and here was I upon the north, clad in poor enough attire of an outlandish fashion, with three silver shillings left to me of all my fortune, a price set upon my head, and an outlawed man for my sole company.

“O Alan!” said I, “to think of it! Over there, there’s all that heart could want waiting me; and the birds go over, and the boats go over – all that please can go, but just me only! O, man, but it’s a heart-break!”

In Limekilns we entered a small change-house, which we only knew to be a public by the wand over the door, and bought some bread and cheese from a good-looking lass that was the servant. This we carried with us in a bundle, meaning to sit and eat it in a bush of wood on the sea-shore, that we saw some third part of a mile in front. As we went, I kept looking across the water and sighing to myself; and, though I took no heed of it, Alan had fallen into a muse. At last he stopped in the way.

“Did ye take heed of the lass we bought this of?” says he, tapping on the bread and cheese.

“To be sure,” said I, “and a bonny lass she was.”

“Ye thought that?” cries he. “Man David, that’s good news.”

“In the name of all that’s wonderful, why so?” says I. “What good can that do?”

“Well,” said Alan, with one of his droll looks, “I was rather in hopes it would maybe get us that boat.”

“If it were the other way about, it would be liker it,” said I.

“That’s all that you ken, ye see,” said Alan. “I don’t want the lass to fall in love with ye, I want her to be sorry for ye, David; to which end there is no manner of need that she should take you for a beauty. Let me see” (looking me curiously over). “I wish ye were a wee thing paler; but apart from that ye’ll do fine for my purpose – ye have a fine, hang-dog, rag-and-tatter, clappermaclaw kind of a look to ye, as if ye had stolen the coat from a potato-bogle. Come; right about, and back to the change-house for that boat of ours.”

I followed him, laughing.

“David Balfour,” said he, “ye’re a very funny gentleman by your way of it, and this is a very funny employ for ye, no doubt. For all that, if ye have any affection for my neck (to say nothing of your own) ye will perhaps be kind enough to take this matter responsibly. I am going to do a bit of play-acting, the bottom ground of which is just exactly as serious as the gallows for the pair of us. So bear it, if ye please, in mind, and conduct yourself according.”

“Well, well,” said I, “have it as you will.”

As we got near the clachan, he made me take his arm and hang upon it like one almost helpless with weariness; and by the time he pushed open the change-house door he seemed to be half carrying me. The maid appeared surprised (as well she might be) at our speedy return; but Alan had no words to spare for her in explanation, helped me to a chair, called for a tass of brandy, with which he fed me in little sips, and then, breaking up the bread and cheese, helped me to eat it like a nursery-lass; the whole with that grave, concerned, affectionate countenance, that might have imposed upon a judge. It was small wonder if the maid were taken with the picture we presented, of a poor, sick, overwrought lad and his most tender comrade. She drew quite near, and stood leaning with her back on the next table.

“What’s like wrong with him?” said she at last.

Alan turned upon her, to my great wonder, with a kind of fury. “Wrong?” cries he. “He’s walked more hundreds of miles than he has hairs upon his chin, and slept oftener in wet heather than dry sheets. Wrong, quo’ she! Wrong enough, I would think! Wrong, indeed!” and he kept grumbling to himself, as he fed me, like a man ill-pleased.

“He’s young for the like of that,” said the maid.

“Ower young,” said Alan, with his back to her.

“He would be better riding,” says she.