“So am I, Stephen,” said his honour; “and so are all the folks in the house, I hope.  But if there be a knave amongst us, it must be he that tells the story he cannot prove.”  He paused, and then added, mair sternly, “If I understand your trick, sir, you want to take advantage of some malicious reports concerning things in this family, and particularly respecting my father’s sudden death, thereby to cheat me out of the money, and perhaps take away my character, by insinuating that I have received the rent I am demanding.—­Where do you suppose this money to be?—­I insist upon knowing.”

My gudesire saw everything look sae muckle against him, that he grew nearly desperate—­however, he shifted from one foot to another, looked to every corner of the room and made no answer.

“Speak out, sirrah,” said the Laird, assuming a look of his father’s, a very particular ane, which he had when he was angry—­it seemed as if the wrinkles of his frown made that self-same fearful shape of a horse’s shoe in the middle of his brow;—­“Speak out, sir!  I will know your thoughts;—­do you suppose that I have this money?”

“Far be it frae me to say so,” said Stephen.

“Do you charge any of my people with having taken it?”

“I wad be laith to charge them that may be innocent,” said my gudesire; “and if there be anyone that is guilty, I have nae proof.”

“Somewhere the money must be, if there is a word of truth in your story,” said Sir John; “I ask where you think it is—­and demand a correct answer?”

“In hell, if you will have my thoughts of it,” said my gudesire, driven to extremity,—­“in hell! with your father, his jackanape, and his silver whistle.”

Down the stairs he ran (for the parlour was nae place for him after such a word), and he heard the Laird swearing blood and wounds behind him, as fast as ever did Sir Robert, and roaring for the bailie and the baron-officer.

Away rode my gudesire to his chief creditor (him they caa’d Laurie Lapraik), to try if he could make ony thing out of him; but when he tauld his story, he got but the warst word in his wame—­thief, beggar, and dyvour, were the saftest terms; and to the boot of these hard terms, Laurie brought up the auld story of his dipping his hand in the blood of God’s saunts, just as if a tenant could have helped riding with the Laird, and that a laird like Sir Robert Redgauntlet.  My gudesire was, by this time, far beyond the bounds of patience, and, while he and Laurie were at deil speed the liars, he was wanchancie aneugh to abuse Lapraik’s doctrine as weel as the man, and said things that garr’d folk’s flesh grue that heard them;—­he wasna just himsell, and he had lived wi’ a wild set in his day.