“Me, my lord!” returned Malcolm.  “Wha wad min’ me?  An’ what cud I du wi’ her?  I cudna even hand her ohn wat her feet.  Her leddy’s maid cud du mair wi’ her, though I wad lay doon my life for her, as I tauld ye, my lord; an’ she kens ’t weel eneuch.”

Silence followed.  Both men were thinking.

“Gie me a richt, my lord, an’ I’ll du my best,” said Malcolm, at length breaking the silence.

“What do you mean?” growled the marquis, whose mood had altered.

“Gie me a legal richt, my lord, an’ see gien I dinna.”

“See what?”

“See gien I dinna luik weel efter my leddy.”

“How am I to see?  I shall be dead and damned.”

“Please God, my lord, ye’ll be alive an’ weel—­in a better place, if no here to luik efter my leddy yersel’.”

“Oh, I dare say,” muttered the marquis.

“But ye’ll hearken to the doctors, my lord,” Malcolm went on, “an’ no dee wantin’ time to consider o’ ’t.”

“Yes, yes:  to-morrow I’ll have another talk with them.  We’ll see about it.  There’s time enough yet.  They’re all coxcombs, every one of them.  They never give a patient the least credit for common sense.”

“I dinna ken, my lord,” said Malcolm doubtfully.

After a few minutes’ silence, during which Malcolm thought he had fallen asleep, the marquis resumed abruptly.  “What do you mean by giving you a legal right?” he said.

“There’s some w’y o’ makin’ ae body guairdian till anither, sae ’at the law ’ll uphaud him—­isna there, my lord?”

“Yes, surely.  Well!  Rather odd—­wouldn’t it be?—­a young fisher-lad guardian to a marchioness!  Eh?  They say there’s nothing new under the sun, but that sounds rather like it, I think.”

Malcolm was overjoyed to hear him speak with something like his old manner.  He felt he could stand any amount of chaff from him now, and so the proposition he had made in seriousness he went on to defend in the hope of giving amusement, yet with a secret wild delight in the dream of such full devotion to the service of Lady Florimel.

“It wad soon’ queer eneuch, my lord, nae doobt, but fowk maunna min’ the soon’ o’ a thing gien ‘t be a’ straucht an’ fair, an’ strong eneuch to stan’.  They cudna lauch me oot o’ my richts, be they ’at they likit—­Lady Bellair or ony o’ them—­na, nor jaw me oot o’ them aither.”

“They might do a good deal to render those rights of little use,” said the marquis.

“That wad come till a trial o’ brains, my lord,” returned Malcolm:  “an’ ye dinna think I wadna hae the wit to speir advice; an’, what’s mair, to ken whan it was guid, an’ tak it.  There’s lawyers, my lord.”

“And their expenses?”

“Ye cud lea’ sae muckle to be waured (spent) upo’ the cairryin’ oot o’ yer lordship’s wull.”

“Who would see that you applied it properly?”

“My ain conscience, my lord, or Mr. Graham gien ye likit.”