said to him, 'Well then, if you are
sorry for me, I am sorry for you. D--n me, if I have cared a button for
man or mother's son, since two years since when I had another peep of
Jack Hadaway. 'The fellow was got as fat as a Norway whale--married to a
great Dutch-built quean that had brought him six children. I believe
he did not know me, and thought I was come to rob his house; however, I
made up a poor face, and told him who I was. Poor Jack would have given
me shelter and clothes, and began to tell me of the moidores that were
in bank, when I wanted them. Egad, he changed his note when I told him
what my life had been, and only wanted to pay me my cash and get rid
of me. I never saw so terrified a visage. I burst out a-laughing in his
face, told him it was all a humbug, and that the moidores were all his
own, henceforth and for ever, and so ran off. I caused one of our people
send him a bag of tea and a keg of brandy, before I left--poor Jack!
I think you are the second person these ten years, that has cared a
tobacco-stopper for Nanty Ewart.'

'Perhaps, Mr. Ewart,' said Fairford, 'you live chiefly with men too
deeply interested for their own immediate safety, to think much upon the
distress of others?'

'And with whom do you yourself consort, I pray?' replied Nanty, smartly.
'Why, with plotters, that can make no plot to better purpose than their
own hanging; and incendiaries, that are snapping the flint upon wet
tinder. You'll as soon raise the dead as raise the Highlands--you'll as
soon get a grunt from a dead sow as any comfort from Wales or Cheshire.
You think because the pot is boiling, that no scum but yours can come
uppermost--I know better, by--. All these rackets and riots that you
think are trending your way have no relation at all to your interest;
and the best way to make the whole kingdom friends again at once, would
be the alarm of such an undertaking as these mad old fellows are trying
to launch into.

'I really am not in such secrets as you seem to allude to,' said
Fairford; and, determined at the same time to avail himself as far as
possible of Nanty's communicative disposition, he added, with a smile,'
And if I were, I should not hold it prudent to make them much the
subject of conversation. But I am sure, so sensible a man as Summertrees
and the laird may correspond together without offence to the state.'

'I take you, friend--I take you,' said Nanty Ewart, upon whom, at
length, the liquor and t