Thus my leaving town Inneraora—its frozen hearths, its smokeless vents, its desecrated doorways, and the few of my friends who were back to it—was a stupendous grief. My father and my kinspeople were safe—we had heard of them by the returners from Lennox; but a girl with dark tresses gave me a closer passion for my native burgh than ever I felt for the same before. If love of his lady had been Argile’s reason for retreat (thought I), there was no great mystery in his act.
What enhanced my trouble was that Clan MacLachlan—as Catholics always safe to a degree from the meddling of the invaders—had re-established themselves some weeks before in their own territory down the loch, and that young Lachlan, as his father’s proxy, was already manifesting a guardian’s interest in his cousin. The fact came to my knowledge in a way rather odd, but characteristic of John Splendid’s anxiety to save his friends the faintest breeze of ill-tidings.
We were up early betimes in the morning of our departure for Lorn, though our march was fixed for the afternoon, as we had to await the arrival of some officers from Ceanntyre; and John and I, preparing our accoutrements, began to talk of the business that lay heaviest at my heart—the leaving of the girl we had found in Strongara wood.
“The oddest thing that ever happened to me,” he said, after a while, “is that in the matter of this child she mothers so finely she should be under the delusion that I have the closest of all interests in its paternity. Did you catch her meaning when she spoke of its antecedents as we sat, the four of us, behind the fir-roots?”
“No, I can’t say that I did,” said I, wonderingly.
“You’re not very gleg at some things, Elrigmore,” he said, smiling. “Your Latin gave you no clue, did it, to the fact that she thought John M’Iver a vagabond of the deepest dye?”
“If she thought that,” I cried, “she baffles me; for a hint I let drop in a mere careless badinage of your gallanting reputation made her perilously near angry.”
John with pursed lips stroked his chin, musing on my words. I was afraid for a little he resented my indiscretion, but resentment was apparently not in his mind, for his speech found no fault with me.
“Man, Colin,” he said, “you could scarcely have played a more cunning card if you had had myself to advise you. But no matter about that.”
“If she thinks so badly of you, then,” I said, “why not clear yourself from her suspicions, that I am willing to swear (less because of your general character than because of your conduct since she and you and the child met) are without foundation?”