“But these were no enemies of yours?” I protested, “though you happen to be doctoring in their midst.”
“Tuts! tuts, man!” said he shortly. “When the conies quarrel the quirky one (and that's Sir Fox if ye like to ken) will get his own. There seems far too much delicacy about you, my friend, to be a sporran-soldier fighting for the best terms an army will give you. And what for need you grumble at my having found a purse in an empty house when it's by virtue of the same we're at this moment making our way to the sea?”
I could make no answer to that, for indeed I had had, like the other three wounded men in the cart with me, the full benefit of his purse, wherever he had found it, and but for that we had doubtless been mouldering in a Prussian prison.
It will be observed that MacKellar spoke of our making for the sea, and here it behoves that I should tell how that project arose.
When we had crossed the frontier the first time it was simply because it seemed the easiest way out of trouble, though it led us away from the remnants of the army. I had commented upon this the first night we stopped within the Netherlands, and the surgeon bluntly gave me his mind on the matter. The truth was, he said, that he was sick of his post and meant to make this the opportunity of getting quit of it.
I went as close as I dared upon a hint that the thing looked woundily like a desertion. He picked me up quick enough and counselled me to follow his example, and say farewell to so scurvy a service as that I had embarked on. His advices might have weighed less with me (though in truth I was sick enough of the Regiment d'Auvergne and a succession of defeats) if he had not told me that there was a certain man at Helvoetsluys he knew I should like to see.
“And who might that be?” I asked.
“Who but his reverence himself?” said Kilbride, who dearly loved an effect. “Yon night I met you in the Paris change-house it was planned by them I was with, one of them being Buhot himself of the police, that the old man must be driven out of his nest in the Hôtel Dieu, seeing they had got all the information they wanted from him, and I was one of the parties who was to carry this into effect. At the time I fancied Buhot was as keen upon yourself as upon the priest, and I thought I was doing a wonderfully clever thing to spy your red shoes and give you a warning to quit the priest, but all the time Buhot was only laughing at me, and saw you and recognised you himself in the change-house. Well, to make the long tale short, when we went to the hospital the birds were both of them gone, which was more than we bargained for, because some sort of trial was due to the priest though there was no great feeling against him. Where he had taken wing to we could not guess, but you will not hinder him to come on a night of nights (as we say) to the lodging I was tenanting at the time in the Rue Espade, and throw himself upon my mercy. The muckle hash! I'll allow the insolency of the thing tickled me greatly. The man was a fair object, too; had not tasted food for two days, and captured my fancy by a tale I suppose there is no trusting, that he had given you the last few livres he had in the world.”
“That was true enough about the livres,” I said with gratitude.
“Was it, faith?” cried Kilbride. “Then I'm glad I did him the little service that lay in my power, which was to give him enough money to pay for posting to Helvoetsluys, where he is now, and grateful enough so far as I could gather from the last letters I had from him, and also mighty anxious to learn what became of his secretary.”