“Is she in?” said the Chamberlain, suddenly, without changing his attitude, and with scanty interest in his eyes.
“Oh ay! She's in, sure enough,” said Mungo. “Whaur else wad she be but in?”
“And she'll have heard me?” continued the Chamberlain.
“I'll warrant ye!” said Mungo.
“What's wrong?”
Mungo pursed out his lips and shook his lantern. “Ye can be askin' that,” said he. “Gude kens!”
The Chamberlain still leaned wearily against the door jamb, mentally whelmed by dejection, bodily weak as water. His ride on a horse along the coast had manifestly not been the most fitting exercise for a man new out of bed and the hands of his physician.
“What about the foreigner?” said he at length, and glowered the more into the interior as if he might espy him.
Mungo was cautious. This was the sort of person who on an impulse would rush the guard and create a commotion in the garrison; he temporised.
“The foreigner?” said he, as if there were so many in his experience that some discrimination was called for. “Oh ay, the Coont. A gey queer birkie yon! He's no' awa yet. He's sittin' on his dowp yet, waitin' a dispensation o' Providence that'll gie him a heeze somewhere else.”