“Indeed and there's a sameness about every part of it,” I confessed, “and yet it has its qualities. See the sun on yonder island—'tis pleasant enough to my notion, and as for the folk, they are not the cut of our own, but still they have very much in common with folks I've seen in Ayr.”
He frowned at that unbelievingly, and cast a sour eye upon some women that stood upon a bridge. “Troth!” said he, “you would not compare these limmers with our own. I have not seen a light foot and a right dark eye since ever I put the back of me to the town of Inverness in the year of 'Fifty-six.'”
“Nor I since I left the Mearns,” I cried, suddenly thinking of Isobel and forgetting all that lay between that lass and me.
“Oh! oh!” cried Kilbride. “And that's the way of it? Therms more than Clemie Walkinshaw, is there? I was ill to convince that a nephew of Andy Greig's began the game at the age of twenty-odd with a lady that might have been his mother.”
I felt very much ashamed that he should have any knowledge of this part of my history, and seeing it he took to bantering me.
“Come, come!” said he, “you must save my reputation with myself for penetration, for I aye argued with Buhot that your tanglement with madame was something short of innocency for all your mim look, and he was for swearing the lady had found a fool.”
“I am beat to understand how my affairs came to be the topic of dispute with you and Buhot?” said I, astonished.
“And what for no'?” said he. “Wasn't the man's business to find out things, and would you have me with no interest in a ploy when it turned up? There were but the two ways of it—you were all the gomeral in love that Buhot thought you, or you were Andy Greig's nephew and willing to win the woman's favour (for all her antiquity) by keeping Buhot in the news of Hamilton's movements.”
“Good God!” I cried, “that was a horrible alternative!” even then failing to grasp all that he implied.
“Maybe,” he said pawkily; “but you cannot deny you kept them very well informed upon your master's movements, otherwise it had gone very hard perhaps with his Royal Highness.”