CHAPTER IV
Walking home with her father next day up the crowded Canongate after rain, Miss Alison Grant suddenly became aware of a tall Highland officer striding up the street some way ahead. From the occasional glimpses of him, which were all that she was able to obtain in the moving throng, it seemed to be her betrothed; but, if so, he was carrying his right arm in a sling. This was disturbing. Moreover Ewen, if it were he—and at any rate the officer was a Cameron—was walking at such a pace that Alison and her parent would never overtake him, unless indeed he were on his way to visit them where they lodged in Hyndford’s Close, a little beyond the Netherbow.
“Papa,” whispered Alison, “let us walk quicker; yonder’s Ewen, unless I am much mistaken, on his way to wait upon us, and he must not find us from home.”
They quickened their pace, without much visible effect, when lo! their quarry was brought to a standstill by two gentlemen coming downwards who encountered and stopped him.
“Now let us go more slowly, sir,” suggested Alison, dragging at her father’s arm. To which Mr. Grant, complying, said, “My dear, to be alternately a greyhound and a snail is hard upon a man of my years, nor do I understand why you should be stalking Ardroy in this fashion.”
“Ewen is rather like a stag,” thought Alison; “he carries his head like one.—Papa,” she explained, “I want to know—I must know—why he wears his arm in a sling! Look, now that he has turned a little you can see it plainly. And, you remember, he disappeared so strangely last night.”
And now, crawl as they would, they must pass the three gentlemen, who made way for them instantly, not to turn the lady with her hooped petticoats into the swirling gutter. As Ewen—for it was he—raised his bonnet with his left hand, Alison cast a swift and comprehensive glance over him, though she did not pause for the fraction of a second, but, acknowledging his salutation and those of his companions, went on her way with dignity.
But she walked ever slower and slower, and when she came to the narrow entrance of their close she stopped. Yet even then she did not look back down the Canongate.
“Papa, did you hear, those gentlemen were asking Ewen what had befallen him. I heard something about ‘disturbance’ and ‘Grassmarket’. You saw his hand was all bandaged about. He looked pale, I thought. What can he have been at last night—not fighting a duel, surely!”