I followed, accordingly, and took off my new hat to her, the best that I was able.

“Madam,” said I, “I think it only fair to myself to let you understand I have no Gaelic.  It is true I was listening, for I have friends of my own across the Highland line, and the sound of that tongue comes friendly; but for your private affairs, if you had spoken Greek, I might have had more guess at them.”

She made me a little, distant curtsey.  “There is no harm done,” said she, with a pretty accent, most like the English (but more agreeable).  “A cat may look at a king.”

“I do not mean to offend,” said I.  “I have no skill of city manners; I never before this day set foot inside the doors of Edinburgh.  Take me for a country lad—­it’s what I am; and I would rather I told you than you found it out.”

“Indeed, it will be a very unusual thing for strangers to be speaking to each other on the causeway,” she replied.  “But if you are landward[2] bred it will be different.  I am as landward as yourself; I am Highland as you see, and think myself the farther from my home.”

“It is not yet a week since I passed the line,” said I.  “Less than a week ago I was on the Braes of Balwhidder.”

“Balwhither?” she cries; “come ye from Balwhither?  The name of it makes all there is of me rejoice.  You will not have been long there, and not known some of our friends or family?”

“I lived with a very honest, kind man called Duncan Dhu Maclaren,” I replied.

“Well I know Duncan, and you give him the true name!” she said; “and if he is an honest man, his wife is honest indeed.”

“Ay,” said I, “they are fine people, and the place is a bonny place.”

“Where in the great world is such another?” she cries; “I am loving the smell of that place and the roots that grew there.”

I was infinitely taken with the spirit of the maid.  “I could be wishing I had brought you a spray of that heather,” says I.  “And though I did ill to speak with you at the first, now it seems we have common acquaintance, I make it my petition you will not forget me.  David Balfour is the name I am known by.  This is my lucky day when I have just come into a landed estate and am not very long out of a deadly peril.  I wish you would keep my name in mind for the sake of Balquidder,” said I, “and I will yours for the sake of my lucky day.”

“My name is not spoken,” she replied, with a great deal of haughtiness.  “More than a hundred years it has not gone upon men’s tongues, save for a blink.  I am nameless like the Folk of Peace.[3] Catriona Drummond is the one I use.”

Now indeed I knew where I was standing.  In all broad Scotland there was but the one name proscribed, and that was the name of the Macgregors.  Yet so far from fleeing this undesirable acquaintancy, I plunged the deeper in.

“I have been sitting with one who was in the same case with yourself,” said I, “and I think he will be one of your friends.  They called him Robin Oig.”