had no notion who he was or how he could aid,
but I had a vague memory of his power and briskness. He had looked like
the kind of lad who might conduct me into the wild world of the Free
Companions.

I sought Mercer's tavern by the water-side, a melancholy place grown up
with weeds, with a yard of dark trees at the back of it. Old Mercer was
an elder in the little wooden Presbyterian kirk, which I had taken to
attending since my quarrels with the gentry. He knew me and greeted me
with his doleful smile, shaking his foolish old beard.

"What's your errand this e'en, Mr. Garvald?" he said in broad Scots.
"Will you drink a rummer o' toddy, or try some fine auld usquebaugh I
hae got frae my cousin in Buchan?"

I sat down on the settle outside the tavern door. "This is my errand. I
want you to bring me to a man or bring that man to me. His name is
Ninian Campbell."

Mercer looked at me dully.

"There was a lad o' that name was hanged at Inveraray i' '68 for
stealin' twae hens and a wether."

"The man I mean is long and lean, and his head is as red as fire. He
gave me your name, so you must know him."

His eyes showed no recognition. He repeated the name to himself,
mumbling it toothlessly. "It sticks i' my memory," he said, "but when
and where I canna tell. Certes, there's no man o' the name in
Virginia."

I was beginning to think that my memory had played me false, when
suddenly the whole scene in the Saltmarket leaped vividly to my brain.
Then I remembered the something else I had been enjoined to say.

"Ninian Campbell," I went on, "bade me ask for him here, and I was to
tell you that the lymphads are on the loch and the horn of Diarmaid has
sounded."

In a twinkling his face changed from vacancy to shrewdness and from
senility to purpose. He glanced uneasily round.

"For God's sake, speak soft," he whispered. "Come inside, man. We'll
steek the door, and then I'll hear your business."

CHAPTER VIII.

RED RINGAN.

Once at Edinburgh College I had read the Latin tale of Apuleius, and
the beginning stuck in my memory: "_Thraciam ex negotio petebam_"--"I
was starting off for Thrace on business." That was my case now. I was
about to plunge into a wild world for no more startling causes than
that I was a trader who wanted to save my pocket. It is to those who
seek only peace and a quiet life that adventures fall; the homely
merchant, jogging with his pack train, finds the enchanted forest and
the sleepi