ometimes even refusing invitations.
"No," he would say, "what do I care for these thick-headed
bonnet-lairds? I will stay at home, Mackellar; and we shall share a
bottle quietly, and have one of our good talks." And, indeed, meal-time
at Durrisdeer must have been a delight to any one, by reason of the
brilliancy of the discourse. He would often express wonder at his former
indifference to my society. "But, you see," he would add, "we were upon
opposite sides. And so we are to-day; but let us never speak of that. I
would think much less of you if you were not staunch to your employer."
You are to consider he seemed to me quite impotent for any evil; and how
it is a most engaging form of flattery when (after many years) tardy
justice is done to a man's character and parts. But I have no thought to
excuse myself. I was to blame; I let him cajole me, and, in short, I
think the watch-dog was gone sound asleep, when he was suddenly aroused.

I should say the Indian was continually travelling to and fro in the
house. He never spoke, save in his own dialect and with the Master;
walked without sound; and was always turning up where you would least
expect him, fallen into a deep abstraction, from which he would start
(upon your coming) to mock you with one of his grovelling obeisances. He
seemed so quiet, so frail, and so wrapped in his own fancies, that I
came to pass him over without much regard, or even to pity him for a
harmless exile from his country. And yet without doubt the creature was
still eavesdropping; and without doubt it was through his stealth and my
security that our secret reached the Master.

It was one very wild night, after supper, and when we had been making
more than usually merry, that the blow fell on me.

"This is all very fine," says the Master, "but we should do better to be
buckling our valise."

"Why so?" I cried. "Are you leaving?"

"We are all leaving to-morrow in the morning," said he. "For the port of
Glascow first, thence for the province of New York."

I suppose I must have groaned aloud.

"Yes," he continued, "I boasted; I said a week, and it has taken me near
twenty days. But never mind; I shall make it up; I will go the faster."

"Have you the money for this voyage?" I asked.

"Dear and ingenuous personage, I have," said he. "Blame me, if you
choose, for my duplicity; but while I have been wringing shillings from
my daddy, I had a stock of my own put by against a rainy day. You will