“Sir Paitrick?” he repeated “Ow! ow! ye’ve een tauld Sir Paitrick aboot it, have ye?  There’s a chiel wi’ a lang head on his shouthers, if ever there was ane yet!  What might Sir Paitrick ha’ said?”

Blanche noticed a change in his tone.  Blanche was rigidly careful (when it was too late) to answer him in guarded terms.

“Sir Patrick thought you might have found the letter,” she said, “and might not have remembered about it again until after you had left the inn.”

Bishopriggs looked back into his own personal experience of his old master—­and drew the correct conclusion that Sir Patrick’s view of his connection with the disappearance of the letter was not the purely unsuspicious view reported by Blanche.  “The dour auld deevil,” he thought to himself, “knows me better than that!”

“Well?” asked Blanche, impatiently.  “Is Sir Patrick right?”

“Richt?” rejoined Bishopriggs, briskly.  “He’s as far awa’ from the truth as John o’ Groat’s House is from Jericho.”

“You know nothing of the letter?”

“Deil a bit I know o’ the letter.  The first I ha’ heard o’ it is what I hear noo.”

Blanche’s heart sank within her.  Had she defeated her own object, and cut the ground from under Sir Patrick’s feet, for the second time?  Surely not!  There was unquestionably a chance, on this occasion, that the man might be prevailed upon to place the trust in her uncle which he was too cautious to confide to a stranger like herself.  The one wise thing to do now was to pave the way for the exertion of Sir Patrick’s superior influence, and Sir Patrick’s superior skill.  She resumed the conversation with that object in view.

“I am sorry to hear that Sir Patrick has guessed wrong,” she resumed.  “My friend was anxious to recover the letter when I last saw her; and I hoped to hear news of it from you.  However, right or wrong, Sir Patrick has some reasons for wishing to see you—­and I take the opportunity of telling you so.  He has left a letter to wait for you at the Craig Fernie inn.”

“I’m thinking the letter will ha’ lang eneugh to wait, if it waits till I gae back for it to the hottle,” remarked Bishopriggs.

“In that case,” said Blanche, promptly, “you had better give me an address at which Sir Patrick can write to you.  You wouldn’t, I suppose, wish me to say that I had seen you here, and that you refused to communicate with him?”

“Never think it!” cried Bishopriggs, fervently.  “If there’s ain thing mair than anither that I’m carefu’ to presairve intact, it’s joost the respectful attention that I owe to Sir Paitrick.  I’ll make sae bauld, miss, au to chairge ye wi’ that bit caird.  I’m no’ settled in ony place yet (mair’s the pity at my time o’ life!), but Sir Paitrick may hear o’ me, when Sir Paitrick has need o’ me, there.”  He handed a dirty little card to Blanche containing the name and address of a butcher in Edinburgh.  “Sawmuel Bishopriggs,” he went on, glibly.  “Care o’ Davie Dow, flesher; Cowgate; Embro.  My Patmos in the weelderness, miss, for the time being.”