“She has a lot of fair hair—dull-looking, it might be false, but I don’t think somehow it is—and no colour to speak of, but might put on some, I should say. She looks like that.”
Lew put his arm within Rob’s as if accidentally, and gave forth a low whistle. “If that’s her,” he said, “and she’s going to marry a minister—I should just think she would like to get me out of the way.”
“But why, then, should she ask you to come and see her?—for she had seen you on the sly, and that was enough.”
“There’s where the mystery comes in: but you never know that kind of woman. There’s always a screw loose in them somewhere. She repents it, perhaps, by now. Let’s make a round by her house, wherever it is, and perhaps we’ll see her through a window, as she saw me.”
“It’s close to the village—it’s dangerous—don’t think of it,” said Rob.
“Dangerous!” cried the other: “what’s a man for but to face danger—when it comes? I’m twice the man I was last night. I smell the smell of gunpowder in the air. I feel as if I could face the worst road, ten minutes’ start, and fifty mile an hour.”
If this trumpet-note was intended to rouse Rob, it was successful. His duller spirit caught the spark of excitement, which moved it only to the point of exhilaration and drove the last mist away. They went on, always with caution, always watchful, through a corner of the little town where the houses were almost all closed, and the good people in bed. No two innocent persons, however observant, were they the finest naturalists or scientific observers in the world, ever saw so much in a dark road as these two broken men. They saw the very footsteps of the few people who came towards them in the darkness, darker here with the shadow of the houses than in the open country, but not important enough to have lights: and could tell what manner of people they were—honest, meaning no harm, or stealthy and prepared for mischief—though they never saw the faces that belonged to them. “There’s one that means no good,” Lew said. There was no man in the world who had a greater contempt for a petty thief. “I’ve half a mind to warn some one of him.”
“For goodness’ sake, make no disturbance,” said the (for once) more prudent Rob.
Presently they came to Mrs Ainslie’s house, a little square house, with its door close to the road, but a considerable garden behind. There was light in the windows still, but no chance of seeing into the interior behind the closed blinds. “Let’s risk it, Bob; let’s go and pay our call like gentlemen,” said Lew.
“You don’t think of such a thing!” cried Robert, holding him back. This was perhaps one of the things that bound Lew’s followers to him most. Sometimes the excitement of risk and daring got into his veins like wine, and then the youngest and least guarded of them had to change rôles with the captain and restrain him. But whether Rob could have succeeded in doing so can never be known, for at the moment there were sounds in the house, and the door was opened, and a conversation, begun inside, was carried on for a minute or two there. The pair who appeared were the minister and Mrs Ainslie. He all dark, his face shaded by his hat: she in a light dress, and with a candle in her hand, which threw its light upon her face. She was saying good-night, and bidding her visitor take care of the corner where it was so dark. “There is what your people call a dub there,” she said, with one of those shrill laughs which cut the air—and she held the candle high to guide her visitor’s parting steps. He answered, in a voice very dull and low-pitched after hers, that he was bound to know every dub in the place; and so went off, bidding her, if she went to Edinburgh in the morning, be sure to be back in good time.