“There, there,” said he.  “You go too fast, you go too fast, Mr. Balfour.  It is a good thing that I have learned to be more patient.  And I believe you forget that I have yet to see my daughter.”

I began to be a little relieved upon this speech and a change in the man’s manner that I spied in him as soon as the name of money fell between us.

“I was thinking it would be more fit—­if you will excuse the plainness of my dressing in your presence—­that I should go forth and leave you to encounter her alone?” said I.

“What I would have looked for at your hands!” says he; and there was no mistake but what he said it civilly.

I thought this better and better still, and as I began to pull on my hose, recalling the man’s impudent mendicancy at Prestongrange’s, I determined to pursue what seemed to be my victory.

“If you have any mind to stay some while in Leyden,” said I, “this room is very much at your disposal, and I can easy find another for myself:  in which way we shall have the least amount of flitting possible, there being only one to change.”

“Why, sir,” said he, making his bosom big, “I think no shame of a poverty I have come by in the service of my king; I make no secret that my affairs are quite involved; and for the moment, it would be even impossible for me to undertake a journey.”

“Until you have occasion to communicate with your friends,” said I, “perhaps it might be convenient for you (as of course it would be honourable to myself) if you were to regard yourself in the light of my guest?”

“Sir,” said he, “when an offer is frankly made, I think I honour myself most to imitate that frankness.  Your hand, Mr. David; you have the character that I respect the most; you are one of those from whom a gentleman can take a favour and no more words about it.  I am an old soldier,” he went on, looking rather disgusted-like around my chamber, “and you need not fear I shall prove burthensome.  I have ate too often at a dyke-side, drank of the ditch, and had no roof but the rain.”

“I should be telling you,” said I, “that our breakfasts are sent customarily in about this time of morning.  I propose I should go now to the tavern, and bid them add a cover for yourself and delay the meal the matter of an hour, which will give you an interval to meet your daughter in.”

Methought his nostrils wagged at this.  “O, an hour,” says he.  “That is perhaps superfluous.  Half an hour, Mr. David, or say twenty minutes; I shall do very well in that.  And by the way,” he adds, detaining me by the coat, “what is it you drink in the morning, whether ale or wine?”

“To be frank with you, sir,” says I, “I drink nothing else but spare, cold water?”

“Tut-tut,” says he, “that is fair destruction to the stomach, take an old campaigner’s word for it.  Our country spirit at home is perhaps the most entirely wholesome; but as that is not come-at-able, Rhenish or a white wine of Burgundy will be next best.”