" quoth Alan, drawing
himself up, like one who smelt an offence.

"Only, sir, that you mentioned a king's name," replied Rankeillor; "and
as there has never yet been a King Thomson, or his fame at least has
never come my way, I judged you must refer to that you had in baptism."

This was just the stab that Alan would feel keenest, and I am free to
confess he took it very ill. Not a word would he answer, but stepped off
to the far end of the kitchen, and sat down and sulked; and it was not
till I stepped after him, and gave him my hand, and thanked him by title
as the chief spring of my success, that he began to smile a bit, and was
at last prevailed upon to join our party.

By that time we had the fire lighted, and a bottle of wine uncorked; a
good supper came out of the basket, to which Torrance and I and Alan
set ourselves down; while the lawyer and my uncle passed into the next
chamber to consult. They stayed there closeted about an hour; at the end
of which period they had come to a good understanding, and my uncle and
I set our hands to the agreement in a formal manner. By the terms
of this, my uncle bound himself to satisfy Rankeillor as to his
intromissions, and to pay me two clear thirds of the yearly income of
Shaws.

So the beggar in the ballad had come home; and when I lay down that
night on the kitchen chests, I was a man of means and had a name in the
country. Alan and Torrance and Rankeillor slept and snored on their hard
beds; but for me who had lain out under heaven and upon dirt and stones,
so many days and nights, and often with an empty belly, and in fear
of death, this good change in my case unmanned me more than any of the
former evil ones; and I lay till dawn, looking at the fire on the roof
and planning the future.

CHAPTER XXX

GOOD-BYE

So far as I was concerned myself, I had come to port; but I had still
Alan, to whom I was so much beholden, on my hands; and I felt besides a
heavy charge in the matter of the murder and James of the Glens. On both
these heads I unbosomed to Rankeillor the next morning, walking to and
fro about six of the clock before the house of Shaws, and with nothing
in view but the fields and woods that had been my ancestors' and were
now mine. Even as I spoke on these grave subjects, my eye would take a
glad bit of a run over the prospect, and my heart jump with pride.

About my clear duty to my friend, the lawyer had no doubt. I must help
him out of the cou