Sonachan and the baron-bailie quarrelled away about some point of pedigree as they sat, a towsy, unkempt pair, in a dusty corner of the byre, with beards of a most scraggy nature grown upon their chins. Their uncouthness gave a scruple of foppishness to M’I ver, and sent him seeking a razor in the widow’s house. He found the late husband’s, and shaved himself trimly, while Stewart played lackey again to the rest of us, taking out a breakfast the housewife was in the humour to force on us. He had completed his scraping, and was cracking away very freely with the woman, who was baking some bannocks on the stone, with sleeves rolled up from arms that were rounded and white. They talked of the husband (the one topic of new widowhood), a man, it appeared, of a thousand parts, a favourite with all, and yet, as she said, “When it came to the black end they left me to dress him for the grave, and a stranger had to bury him.”
M’Iver, looking fresh and spruce after his cleansing, though his eyes were small for want of sleep, aroused at once to an interest in the cause of this unneighbourliness.
The woman stopped her occupation with a sudden start and flared crimson.
“I thought you knew,” said she, stammering, turning a rolling-pin in her hand—“I thought you knew; and then how could you?... I maybe should have mentioned it,... but,... but could I turn you from my door in the night-time and hunger?”
M’Iver whistled softly to himself, and looked at me where I stood in the byre-door.
“Tuts,” said he, at last turning with a smile to the woman, as if she could see him; “what does a bit difference with Lowland law make after all? I’ll tell you this, mistress, between us,—I have a name myself for private foray, and it’s perhaps not the first time I have earned the justification of the kind gallows of Crief by small diversions among cattle at night It’s the least deserving that get the tow gravatte.”
(Oh you liar! I thought.)
The woman’s face looked puzzled. She thought a little, and said, “I think you must be taking me up wrong; my man was never at the trade of reiving, and——”
“I would never hint that he was, goodwife,” cried John, quickly, puzzled-looking himself. “I said I had a name for the thing; but they were no friends of mine who gave me the credit, and I never stole stot or quey in all my life.”
(I have my doubts, thinks I.)