“Well, and I can tell ye more than that,” said Alan. “For the last night, when you were fast asleep, I heard the man colloguing with some one in the French, and then the door of that inn to be opened and shut.”
“Alan!” cried I, “you slept all night, and I am here to prove it.”
“Ay, but I would never trust Alan whether he was asleep or waking!” says he. “But the business looks bad.
Let’s see the letter.”
I gave it him.
“Catriona,” said he, “you have to excuse me, my dear; but there’s nothing less than my fine bones upon the cast of it, and I’ll have to break this seal.”
“It is my wish,” said Catriona.
He opened it, glanced it through, and flung his hand in the air.
“The stinking brock!” says he, and crammed the paper in his pocket. “Here, let’s get our things together.
This place is fair death to me.”
And he began to walk towards the inn.
It was Catriona that spoke the first.
“He has sold you?” she asked.
“Sold me, my dear,” said Alan. “But thanks to you and Davie, I’ll can jink him yet.
Just let me win upon my horse,” he added.
“Catriona must come with us,” said I. “She can have no more traffic with that man.
She and I are to be married.”
At which she pressed my hand to her side.
“Are ye there with it?” says Alan, looking back. “The best day’s work that ever either of you did yet!
And I’m bound to say, my dawtie, ye make a real, bonny couple.”
The way that he was following brought us close in by the windmill, where I was aware of a man in seaman’s trousers, who seemed to be spying from behind it. Only, of course, we took him in the rear.
“See, Alan!”
“Wheesht!” said, he, “this is my affairs.”
The man was, no doubt, a little deafened by the clattering of the mill, and we got up close before he noticed.
Then he turned, and we saw he was a big fellow with a mahogany face.
“I think, sir,” says Alan, “that you speak the English?”
“_Non_, _monsieur_,” says he, with an incredible bad accent.
“_Non_, _monsieur_,” cries Alan, mocking him. “Is that how they learn you French on the _Seahorse_?
Ye muckle, gutsey hash, here’s a Scots boot to your English hurdies!”
And bounding on him before he could escape, he dealt the man a kick that laid him on his nose.
Then he stood, with a savage smile, and watched him scramble to his feet and scamper off into the sand-hills.
“But it’s high time I was clear of these empty bents!” said Alan; and continued his way at top speed, and we still following, to the backdoor of Bazin’s inn.
It chanced that as we entered by the one door we came face to face with James More entering by the other.
“Here!” said I to Catriona, “quick! upstairs with you and make your packets; this is no fit scene for you.”
In the meanwhile James and Alan had met in the midst of the long room.
She passed them close by to reach the stairs; and after she was some way up I saw her turn and glance at them again, though without pausing.
Indeed, they were worth looking at.
Alan wore as they met one of his best appearances of courtesy and friendliness, yet with something eminently warlike, so that James smelled danger off the man, as folk smell fire in a house, and stood prepared for accidents.
Time pressed.
Alan’s situation in that solitary place, and his enemies about him, might have daunted C?sar.
It made no change in him; and it was in his old spirit of mockery and daffing that he began the interview.
“A braw good day to ye again, Mr. Drummond,” said he.
“What’ll yon business of yours be just about?”
“Why, the thing being private, and rather of a long story,” says James,
“I think it will keep very well till we have eaten.”
“I’m none so sure of that,” said Alan.
“It sticks in my mind it’s either now or never; for the fact is me and Mr. Balfour here have gotten a line, and we’re thinking of the road.”
I saw a little surprise in James’s eye; but he held himself stoutly.
“I have but the one word to say to cure you of that,” said he, “and that is the name of my business.”
“Say it then,” says Alan.