inary length. Sometimes it was merely dull, sometimes both
dull and awful, for she talked with unction. The upshot was that I fell
in a deep muse, looking forth of the window on the road, and scarce
marking what I saw. Presently, had any been looking, they might have
seen me to start.

"We pit a fomentation to his feet," the goodwife was saying, "and a het
stane to his wame, and we gied him hyssop and water of pennyroyal, and
fine clean balsam of sulphur for the hoast...."

"Sir," says I, cutting very quietly in, "there's a friend of mine gone
by the house."

"Is that e'en sae?" replies Alan, as though it were a thing of small
account. And then, "Ye were saying, mem?" says he; and the wearyful wife
went on.

Presently, however, he paid her with a half-crown piece, and she must go
forth after the change.

"Was it him with the red head?" asked Alan.

"Ye have it," said I.

"What did I tell you in the wood?" he cried. "And yet it's strange he
should be here too. Was he his lane?"

"His lee-lane for what I could see," said I.

"Did he gang by?" he asked.

"Straight by," said I, "and looked neither to the right nor left."

"And that's queerer yet," said Alan. "It sticks in my mind, Davie, that
we should be stirring. But where to?--deil hae't! This is like old days
fairly," cries he.

"There is one big differ, though," said I, "that now we have money in
our pockets."

"And another big differ, Mr. Balfour," says he, "that now we have dogs
at our tail. They're on the scent; they're in full cry, David. It's a
bad business and be damned to it." And he sat thinking hard with a look
of his that I knew well.

"I'm saying, Luckie," says he, when the goodwife returned, "have ye a
back road out of this change-house?"

She told him there was, and where it led to.

"Then, sir," says he to me, "I think that will be the shortest road for
us. And here's good-bye to ye, my braw woman; and I'll no' forget thon
of the cinnamon-water."

We went out by way of the woman's kale-yard, and up a lane among fields.
Alan looked sharply to all sides, and seeing we were in a little hollow
place of the country, out of view of men, sat down.

"Now for a council of war, Davie," said he. "But first of all, a bit
lesson to ye. Suppose that I had been like you, what would yon old wife
have minded of the pair of us? Just that we had gone out by the back
gate. And what does she mind now? A fine, canty, friendly, cracky man,
that suffered