out too secret; pistols they may have, but
never guns."

"I believe ye'll be in the right," says Alan. "For all which I am
wearying a good deal for yon boat."

And he snapped his fingers and whistled to it like a dog.

It was now perhaps a third of the way in, and we ourselves already hard
on the margin of the sea, so that the soft sand rose over my shoes.
There was no more to do whatever but to wait, to look as much as we were
able at the creeping nearer of the boat, and as little as we could
manage at the long impenetrable front of the sandhills, over which the
gulls twinkled and behind which our enemies were doubtless marshalling.

"This is a fine, bright, caller place to get shot in," says Alan,
suddenly; "and, man, I wish that I had your courage!"

"Alan!" I cried, "what kind of talk is this of it? You're just made of
courage; it's the character of the man, as I could prove myself if there
was nobody else."

"And you would be the more mistaken," said he. "What makes the differ
with me is just my great penetration and knowledge of affairs. But for
auld, cauld, dour, deidly courage, I am not fit to hold a candle to
yourself. Look at us two here upon the sands. Here am I, fair hotching
to be off; here's you (for all that I ken) in two minds of it whether
you'll no stop. Do you think that I could do that, or would? No me!
Firstly, because I havenae got the courage and wouldnae daur; and
secondly, because I am a man of so much penetration and would see ye
damned first."

"It's there ye're coming, is it?" I cried. "Ah, man Alan, you can wile
your old wives, but you never can wile me."

Remembrance of my temptation in the wood made me strong as iron.

"I have a tryst to keep," I continued. "I am trysted with your cousin
Charlie; I have passed my word."

"Braw trysts that you'll can keep," said Alan. "Ye'll just mistryst
aince and for a' with the gentry in the bents. And what for?" he went on
with an extreme threatening gravity. "Just tell me that, my mannie! Are
ye to be speerited away like Lady Grange? Are they to drive a dirk in
your inside and bury ye in the bents? Or is it to be the other way, and
are they to bring ye in with James? Are they folk to be trustit? Would
ye stick your head in the mouth of Sim Fraser and the ither Whigs?" he
added with extraordinary bitterness.

"Alan," cried I, "they're all rogues and liars, and I'm with ye there.
The more reason there should be one decent man in such a land