“Did ye so?” cries she.  “Ye met Rob?”

“I passed the night with him,” said I.

“He is a fowl of the night,” said she.

“There was a set of pipes there,” I went on, “so you may judge if the time passed.”

“You should be no enemy, at all events,” said she.  “That was his brother there a moment since, with the red soldiers round him.  It is him that I call father.”

“Is it so?” cried I.  “Are you a daughter of James More’s?”

“All the daughter that he has,” says she:  “the daughter of a prisoner; that I should forget it so, even for one hour, to talk with strangers!”

Here one of the gillies addressed her in what he had of English, to know what “she” (meaning by that himself) was to do about “ta sneeshin.”  I took some note of him for a short, bandy-legged, red-haired, big-headed man, that I was to know more of to my cost.

“There can be none the day, Neil,” she replied.  “How will you get ‘sneeshin,’ wanting siller?  It will teach you another time to be more careful; and I think James More will not be very well pleased with Neil of the Tom.”

“Miss Drummond,” I said, “I told you I was in my lucky day.  Here I am, and a bank-porter at my tail.  And remember I have had the hospitality of your own country of Balwhidder.”

“It was not one of my people gave it,” said she.

“Ah, well,” said I, “but I am owing your uncle at least for some springs upon the pipes.  Besides which, I have offered myself to be your friend, and you have been so forgetful that you did not refuse me in the proper time.”

“If it had been a great sum, it might have done you honour,” said she.  “But I will tell you what this is.  James More lies shackled in prison; but this time past, they will be bringing him down here daily to the Advocate’s...”

“The Advocate’s?” I cried.  “Is that...?”

“It is the house of the Lord Advocate, Grant of Prestongrange,” said she.  “There they bring my father one time and another, for what purpose I have no thought in my mind; but it seems there is some hope dawned for him.  All this same time they will not let me be seeing him, nor yet him write; and we wait upon the King’s street to catch him; and now we give him his snuff as he goes by, and now something else.  And here is this son of trouble, Neil, son of Duncan, has lost my fourpenny-piece that was to buy that snuff, and James More must go wanting, and will think his daughter has forgotten him.”

I took sixpence from my pocket, gave it to Neil, and bade him go about his errand.  Then to her, “That sixpence came with me by Balwhidder,” said I.

“Ah!” she said, “you are a friend to the Gregara!”

“I would not like to deceive you either,” said I.  “I know very little of the Gregara and less of James More and his doings; but since the while I have been standing in this close, I seem to know something of yourself; and if you will just say ‘a friend to Miss Catriona’ I will see you are the less cheated.”