“What's all this about 'bound to him'?” said MacKellar with a kind of sneer. “The dog that's tethered with a black pudding needs no pity, as the other man said, and I would leave this fellow to shift for himself.”
“Thank you,” said I, “but I'll not be doing that.”
“Well, well,” said he, “it's your business, and let me tell you that you're nothing but a fool to be tangled up with the creature. That's Kilbride's advice to you. Let me tell you this more of it, that they're not troubling themselves much about you at all now that you have given them the information.”
“Information!” I said with a start. “What do you mean by that?”
He prepared to join his friends, with a smile of some slyness, and gave me no satisfaction on the point.
“You'll maybe ken best yourself,” said he, “and I'm thinking your name will have to be Robertson and yourself a decent Englishman for my friends on the other side of the room there. Between here and yonder I'll have to be making up a bonny lie or two that will put them off the scent of you.”
A bonny lie or two seemed to serve the purpose, for their interest in me appeared to go no further, and by-and-by, when it was obvious that there would be no remission of the rain, they rose to go.
The last that went out of the door turned on the threshold and looked at me with a smile of recognition and amusement.
It was Buhot!