ve been wearying to see ye!" says he. "I've had the
longest kind of a time. A' day I've had my dwelling into the inside of a
stack of hay, where I couldna see the nebs of my ten fingers; and then
two hours of it waiting here for you, and you never coming! Dod, and
ye're none too soon the way it is, with me to sail the morn! The morn?
what am I saying?--the day, I mean."

"Ay, Alan man, the day, sure enough," said I. "It's past twelve now,
surely, and ye sail the day. This'll be a long road you have before
you."

"We'll have a long crack of it first," said he.

"Well, indeed, and I have a good deal it will be telling you to hear,"
said I.

And I told him what behoved, making rather a jumble of it, but clear
enough when done. He heard me out with very few questions, laughing here
and there like a man delighted: and the sound of his laughing (above all
there, in the dark, where neither one of us could see the other) was
extraordinary friendly to my heart.

"Ay, Davie, ye're a queer character," says he, when I had done: "a queer
bitch after a', and I have no mind of meeting with the like of ye. As
for your story, Prestongrange is a Whig like yoursel', so I'll say the
less of him; and, dod! I believe he was the best friend ye had, if ye
could only trust him. But Simon Fraser and James More are my ain kind of
cattle, and I'll give them the name that they deserve. The muckle black
deil was father to the Frasers, a'body kens that; and as for the
Gregara, I never could abye the reek o' them since I could stotter on
two feet. I bloodied the nose of one, I mind, when I was still so wambly
on my legs that I cowped upon the top of him. A proud man was my father
that day, God rest him! and I think he had the cause. I'll never can
deny but what Robin was something of a piper," he added; "but as for
James More, the deil guide him for me!"

"One thing we have to consider," said I. "Was Charles Stewart right or
wrong? Is it only me they're after, or the pair of us?"

"And what's your ain opinion, you that's a man of so much experience?"
said he.

"It passes me," said I.

"And me too," says Alan. "Do ye think this lass would keep her word to
ye?" he asked.

"I do that," said I.

"Well, there's nae telling," said he. "And anyway, that's over and done:
he'll be joined to the rest of them lang syne."

"How many would ye think there would be of them?" I asked.

"That depends," said Alan. "If it was only you, they would likely