“I will not do that,” said Archie; “far from that: for I am come to ask you to take me back, aunty, as if I had never been away.”
Mrs. Brown gave a shriek of dismay. “Oh, dinna say that, dinna say that! for it looks as if things were going ill at the house at home.”
“Things are going as ill as they can: at their very worst,” he said. “I’ve come home, Aunt Jane, because it’s a well-known place, where I’ve lived all my life, so that if the policemen should be sent after me——”
She interrupted him with another shriek. “The pollisman!” she cried.
“That is what it has come to,” he answered, “in four months’ time, no more. I was to be a gentleman, never to want, Mr. Rowland’s son, the great man that everybody knows: and now I’m cast out, charged with a crime, with the thing flung in my face as if it were beyond doubt; and I’m to be brought up before the judges, and tried—and hanged, for anything I know. I promised,” said Archie, throwing back his tired head, “that I would wait upon him here, that I would not stir a step but bide—the worst that he or any man could do. But, Aunty Jane, to shame you, an honest, upright woman, with policemen coming to your door, is what I will not do. So, what I want is, that you should find a lodging for me, any kind of a place, a little hole, what does it matter.”
“To hide you; oh, to hide you, Archie?” cried Mrs. Brown, wringing her hands.
“To hide me!” he cried, with scorn; “it would be easy enough to do that.”
“Oh, my laddie,” cried Aunty Jane, “do you think I would let anybody but me do that? They shall never come at you, but o’er my body; they shall never touch a hair of your head, if it was to cost me my last drop of blood. Oh, Archie! it’s me that will hide you, my bonny man. There’s little means in this house, but I’ll find a way. If it comes to heart’s love and a woman’s wit against your muckle pollisman——”
“Aunty!” cried Archie, rising to his feet.
“Oh, whisht, whisht, my bairn! Come up the stair an’ we’ll settle it a’. Ye’ll have the air of going away when the evening comes: and you’ll just creep back, and I’ll make ye a hidin’ hole, where a’ the pollismen in Glesgow shall not find ye. Whisht, we’ll have to take Bell into our counsel; but she’s just an excellent lass, baith true and sure.”