nd.

Presently we rose from table, and Colonel Beverley summoned us to the
Green Parlour, where Miss Elspeth was brewing a dish of chocolate, then
a newfangled luxury in the dominion. I would fain have made my escape,
for if my appearance was unfit for a dining-hall, it was an outrage in
a lady's withdrawing-room. But Doctor Blair came forward to me and
shook me warmly by the hand, and was full of gossip about Clydesdale,
from which apparently he had been absent these twenty years. "My niece
bade me bring you to her," he said. "She, poor child, is a happy exile,
but she has now and then an exile's longings. A Scots tongue is
pleasant in her ear."

So I perforce had to follow him into a fine room with an oaken floor,
whereon lay rich Smyrna rugs and the skins of wild beasts from the
wood. There was a prodigious number of soft couches of flowered damask,
and little tables inlaid with foreign woods and jeweller's work. 'Twas
well enough for your fine gentleman in his buckled shoes and silk
stockings to enter such a place, but for myself, in my coarse boots, I
seemed like a colt in a flower garden. The girl sat by a brazier of
charcoal, with the scarlet-coated negro at hand doing her commands. She
was so busy at the chocolate making that when her uncle said, "Elspeth,
I have brought you Mr. Garvald," she had no hand to give me. She looked
up and smiled, and went on with the business, while I stood awkwardly
by, the scorn of the assured gentlemen around me.

By and by she spoke: "You and I seem fated to meet in odd places. First
it was at Carnwath in the rain, and then at the Cauldstaneslap in a
motley company. Then I think it was in the Tolbooth, Mr. Garvald, when
you were very gruff to your deliverer. And now we are both exiles, and
once more you step in like a bogle out of the night. Will you taste my
chocolate?"

She served me first, and I could see how little the favour was to the
liking of her little retinue of courtiers. My silken gentleman, whose
name was Grey, broke in on us abruptly.

"What is this story, sir, of Indian dangers? You are new to the
country, or you would know that it is the old cry of the landless and
the lawless. Every out-at-elbows republican makes it a stick to beat
His Majesty."

"Are you a republican, Mr. Garvald?" she asked. "Now that I remember, I
have seen you in Whiggamore company."

"Why, no," I said. "I do not meddle with politics. I am a merchant, and
am well content with any Gov