“Oh, come on!” said he. “If I'm no' mistaken Dan Risk's the very man ye're in the need of. You're wanting out of Scotland, are ye no'?”
“More than that; I'm wanting out of myself,” said I, but that seemed beyond him.
“Come in anyway, and we'll talk it over.”
That he might help me out of the country seemed possible if he was not, as I feared at first, some agent of the law and merely playing with me, so I entered the tavern with him.
“Two gills to the coffin-room, Mrs. Clerihew,” he cried to the woman in the kitchen. “And slippy aboot it, if ye please, for my mate here's been drinking buttermilk all his life, and ye can tell't in his face.”
“I would rather have some meat,” said I.
“Humph!” quo' he, looking at my breeches. “A lang ride!” He ordered the food at my mentioning, and made no fuss about drinking my share of the spirits as well as his own, while I ate with a hunger that was soon appeased, for my eye, as the saying goes, was iller to satisfy than my appetite.
He sat on the other side of the table in the little room that doubtless fairly deserved the name it got of coffin, for many a man, I'm thinking, was buried there in his evil habits; and I wondered what was to be next.
“To come to the bit,” said the at last, looking hard into the bottom of his tankard in a way that was a plain invitation to buy more for him. “To come to the bit, you're wanting out of the country?”
“It's true,” said I; “but how do you know? And how do you know my name, for I never saw you to my knowledge in all my life before?”