"Finely," says I; "you will be seeing her with the daylight."
"Man, I will have been needing that word," says he.
"What am I to be calling ye, man?"
"Hooch," says he, and his words were sharper and fiercer than of yore. "My father's rank will be good enough for me, but ye will call me Dan McBride and naething else. Major I was in the Low Countries, and the warrant's in my saddle-bags," says he. "Wae's me, for I've lost that, horse and all."
But I had a word to say to that.
"The horse will be sleeping in the stable," said I, "and I will be the man that's put him there," and told him about the strange horse.
"Yon crater, Dol Beag, didna just dee," says he after a while.
"Nor a drop out of his lug," says I, "if ye will be overlooking a crooked back. I sent ye that word with the heathen."
"The heathen—the skemp—yon was the last o' the heathen—hilt or hair o' him that I saw, and me mixed up wi' daftlike wars—it was a packet that reached me—in Dantzig," says he, "after lying a year, frae some sensible wench calling hersel' Helen Stockdale. . . ."
I was dumb at that, but I was remembering the lass asking of the Scot that took the Pagan to the mouth of the Rouen river. "Ay, a priest gave the packet to a Scots friend o' mine in Rouen, and then it came to me at a tavern in Dantzig. I didna bide long there. I was landed wi' the smugglers at Fowey," says he, "and McNeilage put me ashore last night at the Point and was to leave word for ye. It was a thought gruesome here," says he, "wi' McAllan and the dog among the bones ben there—deid? Ay, deid twenty years, Hamish, by the look o' things. Tell me about Belle," said he, "Belle and the boy, Hamish. The lass that wrote had a great word o' the boy, and she wanted me hame. I am not sure why—weemen are such droll . . . Is she religious?" says he.