This time the invader looked at him closer. He was a handsome boy of eleven or twelve years of age, tall, and rather slender, and although he wore old, worn clothes, he did not look in the least humble or ashamed of them, a thing which struck the Londoner’s mind as reckless and a little bad. Below his kilt of dark green tartan, variegated with stripes of black and white, the boy’s legs and feet were bare, like those of his companions. Above the kilt he had on a shabby jacket of black velvet with tarnished silver buttons, and a round bonnet set on the back of his black curls made a frame for his face.
The man repeated his first question in another form.
“Do you know Mr. Duncan Gilderoy?”
“Do you mean Duncan Gilderoy of the Old House? Or is it the minister?” asked the boy.
“No, it’s not the minister. He is a farmer, and they told me his house was just outside the town.”
He said “town,” because he had heard it called that on the steamer. But his London eye called it “village.” Two rows of squat houses struggling up from the harbour’s edge to a small kirk just under the ridge of the hill—that was all he could see.
“Then that is Duncan Gilderoy of the Old House,” put in another of the boys.
The man turned to him.
“Has he a young gentleman living with him, named Stuart?” he asked.
All eyes were turned to the boy who had been the first to speak. This boy gave a distrustful, searching glance at the stranger.