Old Lady Allardyce walked there alone in the garden, in her hat and mutch, and having a silver-mounted staff of some black wood to lean upon.  As I alighted from my horse, and drew near to her with congees, I could see the blood come in her face, and her head fling into the air like what I had conceived of empresses.

“What brings you to my poor door?” she cried, speaking high through her nose.  “I cannot bar it.  The males of my house are dead and buried; I have neither son nor husband to stand in the gate for me; any beggar can pluck me by the baird[18]—­and a baird there is, and that’s the worst of it yet!” she added, partly to herself.

I was extremely put out at this reception, and the last remark, which seemed like a daft wife’s, left me near hand speechless.

“I see I have fallen under your displeasure, ma’am,” said I.  “Yet I will still be so bold as ask after Mistress Drummond.”

She considered me with a burning eye, her lips pressed close together into twenty creases, her hand shaking on her staff.  “This cows all!” she cried.  “Ye come to me to spier for her!  Would God I knew!”

“She is not here?” I cried.

She threw up her chin and made a step and a cry at me, so that I fell back incontinent.

“Out upon your leeing throat!” she cried.  “What! ye come and spier at me!  She’s in jyle, whaur ye took her to—­that’s all there is to it.  And of a’ the beings ever I beheld in breeks, to think it should be you!  Ye timmer scoun’rel, if I had a male left to my name I would have your jaicket dustit till ye raired.”

I thought it not good to delay longer in that place because I remarked her passion to be rising.  As I turned to the horse-post she even followed me; and I make no shame to confess that I rode away with the one stirrup on and scrambling for the other.

As I knew no other quarter where I could push my inquiries, there was nothing left me but to return to the Advocate’s.  I was well received by the four ladies, who were now in company together, and must give the news of Prestongrange and what word went in the west country, at the most inordinate length and with great weariness to myself; while all the time that young lady, with whom I so much desired to be alone again, observed me quizzically and seemed to find pleasure in the sight of my impatience.  At last, after I had endured a meal with them, and was come very near the point of appealing for an interview before her aunt, she went and stood by the music case, and picking out a tune, sang to it on a high key—­“He that will not when he may, When he will he shall have nay.”  But this was the end of her rigours, and presently, after making some excuse of which I have no mind, she carried me away in private to her father’s library.  I should not fail to say that she was dressed to the nines, and appeared extraordinary handsome.

“Now, Mr. David, sit ye down here and let us have a two-handed crack,” said she.  “For I have much to tell you, and it appears besides that I have been grossly unjust to your good taste.”