"There was a lad o' that name was hanged at Inveraray i' '68 for stealin' twae hens and a wether."
"The man I mean is long and lean, and his head is as red as fire. He gave me your name, so you must know him."
His eyes showed no recognition. He repeated the name to himself, mumbling it toothlessly. "It sticks i' my memory," he said, "but when and where I canna tell. Certes, there's no man o' the name in Virginia."
I was beginning to think that my memory had played me false, when suddenly the whole scene in the Saltmarket leaped vividly to my brain. Then I remembered the something else I had been enjoined to say.
"Ninian Campbell," I went on, "bade me ask for him here, and I was to tell you that the lymphads are on the loch and the horn of Diarmaid has sounded."
In a twinkling his face changed from vacancy to shrewdness and from senility to purpose. He glanced uneasily round.
"For God's sake, speak soft," he whispered. "Come inside, man. We'll steek the door, and then I'll hear your business."
CHAPTER VIII.
RED RINGAN.
Once at Edinburgh College I had read the Latin tale of Apuleius, and the beginning stuck in my memory: "Thraciam ex negotio petebam"—"I was starting off for Thrace on business." That was my case now. I was about to plunge into a wild world for no more startling causes than that I was a trader who wanted to save my pocket. It is to those who seek only peace and a quiet life that adventures fall; the homely merchant, jogging with his pack train, finds the enchanted forest and the sleeping princess; and Saul, busily searching for his father's asses, stumbles upon a kingdom.