He gave a little chuckle and had that turn in the eye that showed he had a curious thought.
“What are you laughing at?” I asked. “Oh, just an old word we have in the Language, that with a two-deer stag-hound it will be happening often that a stag's amissing.”
“There's another thing I would like you to tell me out of your experience,” I said, “and that is the reason for the Prince's doing me a good turn with the one hand and a bad one with the other; using his efforts to get me the lieutenancy and at the same time putting a man on my track to quarrel with me?”
“It's as plain as the nose on your face,” he cried. “It was no great situation he got you when it was in the Regiment d'Auvergne, as you have discovered, but it would be got I'll warrant on the pressure of the Walkinshaw one. Just because she had that interest in you to press him for the post, and you were in the trim to keep up a correspondence with her (though in his own interest, as he must know, so far as she was concerned), he would want you out of the road. Love is like lairdship, Hazel Den, and it puts up very poorly with fellowship, as the other man said.”
I thought of the occasions when his Royal Highness had seen me at night in front of a certain window in the Rue de la Boucherie, and concluded that Kilbride in this too had probably hit the mark.
And so we passed through Holland in many changes of weather that finally turned to a black frost, which covered the canals with ice whereon skated the Dutch folks very pleasantly, but we were the losers, as the rest of our journey had to be made by post.
It was well on in the winter when we got to Helvoetsluys.