"One o' them is dead auld, as auld as the wife here. She didn't look to me very right in the head."
"And the other?"
"Oh, just a lassie."
"What was she like?"
Dougal seemed to be searching for adequate words. "She is ..." he began. Then a popular song gave him inspiration. "She's pure as the lully in the dell!"
In no way discomposed by Heritage's fierce interrogatory air, he continued: "She's either foreign or English, for she couldn't understand what I said, and I could make nothing o' her clippit tongue. But I could see she had been greetin'. She looked feared, yet kind o' determined. I speired if I could do anything for her, and when she got my meaning she was terrible anxious to ken if I had seen a man—a big man, she said, wi' a yellow beard. She didn't seem to ken his name, or else she wouldn't tell me. The auld wife was mortal feared, and was aye speakin' in a foreign langwidge. I seen at once that what frightened them was Lean and his friends, and I was just starting to speir about them when there came a sound like a man walkin' along the passage. She was for hidin' me in behind a sofy, but I wasn't going to be trapped like that, so I got out by the other door and down the kitchen stairs and into the coal-hole. Gosh, it was a near thing!"
The boy was on his feet. "I must be off to the camp to give out the orders for the morn. I'm going back to that Hoose, for it's a fight atween the Gorbals Die-Hards and the scoundrels that are frightenin' thae women. The question is, Are ye comin' with me? Mind, ye've sworn. But if ye're no', I'm going mysel', though I'll no' deny I'd be glad o' company. You anyway——" he added, nodding at Heritage. "Maybe auld McCunn wouldn't get through the coal-hole."
"You're an impident laddie," said the outraged Dickson. "It's no' likely we're coming with you. Breaking into other folks' houses! It's a job for the police!"
"Please yersel'," said the Chieftain and looked at Heritage.
"I'm on," said that gentleman.