"Oh, if they are no use to you," Tommy said sweetly, "me and Corp is willing to buy them off you for threepence."
Then Gav became a scorner of duplicity, but he had to consent to the bargain, and again Corp said to Tommy, "Oh, you crittur!" But he was sorry to lose a fellow-conspirator. "There's just the twa o' us now," he sighed.
"Just twa!" cried Tommy. "What are you havering about, man? There's as many as I like to whistle for."
"You mean Grizel and Elspeth, I ken, but—"
"I wasna thinking of the womenfolk," Tommy told him, with a contemptuous wave of the hand. He went closer to Corp, and said, in a low voice, "The McKenzies are waiting!"
"Are they, though?" said Corp, perplexed, as he had no notion who the McKenzies might be.
"And Lochiel has twa hunder spearsmen."
"Do you say so?"
"Young Kinnordy's ettling to come out, and I meet Lord Airlie, when the moon rises, at the Loups o' Kenny, and auld Bradwardine's as spunky as ever, and there's fifty wild Highlandmen lying ready in the muckle cave of Clova."
He spoke so earnestly that Corp could only ejaculate, "Michty me!"