“What a miserable sort of public to keep! No brandy!”
“My lord, you are at Castle Warlock—not so good a place for your lordship’s needs.”
“Oh, that’s it, yes! I remember! I knew your father, or your grandfather, or your grandson, or somebody—the more’s my curse! Out of this I must be gone, and that at once! Tell them to put the horses to. Little I thought when I left Cairntod where I was going to find myself! I would rather be in—and have done with it! Lord! Lord! to think of a trifle like that not being forgotten yet! Are there no doors out? Give me brandy, I say. There’s some in my pocket somewhere. Look you! I don’t know what coat I had on yesterday! or where it is!”
He threw himself back in his chair. The laird set about looking if he had brought the brandy of which he spoke; it might be well to let him have some. Not finding it, he would have gone to search the outer garments his lordship had put off in the kitchen; but he burst out afresh:
“I tell you—and confound you, I see that you have to be told twice—I will not be left alone with that child! He’s as good as nobody! What could he do if—” Here he left the sentence unfinished.
“Very well, my lord,” responded the laird, “I will not leave you. Cosmo shall go and look for the brandy-flask in your lordship’s greatcoat.”
“Yes, yes, good boy! you go and look for it. You’re all Cosmos, are you? Will the line never come to an end! A cursed line for me—if it shouldn’t be a rope-line! But I had the best of the game after all!—though I did lose my two rings. Confounded old cheating son of a porpus! It was doing the world a good turn, and Glenwarlock a better to—Look you! what are you listening there for!—Ha! ha! ha! I say, now—would you hang a man, laird—I mean, when you could get no good out of it—not a ha’p’orth for yourself or your family?”
“I’ve never had occasion to consider the question,” answered the laird.
“Ho! ho! haven’t you? Let me tell you it’s quite time you considered it. It’s no joke when a man has to decide without time to think. He’s pretty sure to decide wrong.”
“That depends, I should think, my lord, on the way in which he has been in the habit of deciding.”