“It’s five, Hannah, and it will be twice five more before I sleep in a bed again. I dare not stay here.”
“Thon’s what Miss Una said. But, faith, if it’s the yeomen you’re afeard of, I’ll no let them near you.”
“I daren’t, Hannah; I daren’t do it. I must away to-night and lie in the Pigeon Cave. I’ll be safe there, and you must manage somehow to get food to me.”
“Is it me that you look to be climbing down them sliddery rocks and swimming intil the cold sea among your caves and hiding holes? I’m too old for the like, but there’s a lassie with bonny brown eyes that’ll do that and more for ye. Don’t you be afeard, Master Neal. She’d climb the Causey chimney pots and take the silver sixpence off the top if she thought you were wanting it. Ay, or swim intil them caves, that God Almighty never meant for man nor maid to enter, and if were waiting for her at the hinder end of one of them. She’s been here an odd time or twa since ever she got the letter that the groom lad fetched. I’ve seen the glint in her eyes at the sound o’ your name, and the red go out of her cheek at word of them dratted yeos, bad scran to them! I’m no so old yet, but I mind weel how a young lassie feels for the lad she’s after. Ay, my bairn, it’s all yin, gentle or simple, lord’s daughter or beggar’s wench, when the love of a lad has got the grip o’ them. And there was yin with her—the foreign lady with the lang name. For all that she mocks and fleers as if there was nothing in the wide world but play-actin’ and gagin’ about. Faith, she’s an artist, but she might be more help than Miss Una herself if it came to a pinch. She’s a cunning one, that. I’m thinking that she’s no unlike the serpent that’s more subtle than any beast of the field. She has a way of glowerin’ a body and giving a bit of a girn to her mouth. Man or woman or red-coated sojer itself, they’d need to be up gey an’ early that would get the better o’ her. A bird might be lang afore it could find time to build a nest in her ear, so it might. Eh! but, my poor lad, it’s a sorry thing to think of ye lyin’ the night through among the hard stones and me in my warm bed. Eh! but it grieves me sore—— whisht, boy, what’s thon?”
Hannah started to her feet. Hand to ear, lips parted, with eager eyes and head bent forward she listened.
“It’s the tread of horses; they’re coming up the loany.”
“I must run for it,” said Neal, “let me out of the door, Hannah.”
“Bide now, bide a wee, they’d see you if you went through the door.”
She put out the lamp as she spoke.
“Do you slip through to the master’s room and open the window. Go canny now, and make no noise. Get through and off with ye into your cave as hard as ever you can lift a foot, I’ll cap them at the door, lad. I’m the woman can do it. Faith and I’ll sort them, be they who it may, so as they’ll no be in too great a hurry to come ridin’ to this house again, the black-hearted villains. But I’ll learn them manners or I’m done wi’ them else my name’s no Hannah Macaulay.”