“Yes,” said the young man stepping inside, “but the farm will see nothing of me till the morning. I’ve a friend in town who gives me a bed for myself and a stall for my horse, and gets the same in return when he pays a visit to the country.”
“A fair exchange,” replied the host as he closed and barred the door.
The low room in which the stranger found himself was palpably a cobbler’s shop. Boots and shoes of various sizes and different degrees of ill repair strewed the floor, and the bench in the corner under a lighted cruzie held implements of the trade, while the apron which enveloped the man of the door proclaimed his occupation. The incomer seated himself on a stool, and the cobbler returned to his last, resuming his interrupted work. He looked up however, from time to time, in kindly fashion at his visitor, who seemed to be a welcome guest.
“Well,” said the shoemaker with a laugh, “what’s wrong with you?”
“Wrong with me? Nothing. Why do you think there is anything amiss?”
“You are flushed in the face; your breath comes quick as if you had been running, and there’s a set about your lips that spells anger.”
“You are a very observing man, Flemming,” replied he of the plaid. “I have been walking fast so that I should have little chance of meeting any one. But it is as well to tell the whole truth as only part of it. I had a fright up the street. One of those young court sprigs riding to the castle tried to trample me under the feet of his horse, and struck at me with his whip for getting into his road, so I had just to plaster my back against somebody’s front door and keep out of the way.”
“It’s easy to see that you live in the country, Ballengeich,” replied the cobbler, “or you would never get red in the face over a little thing like that.”
“I had some thought of pulling him off his horse, nevertheless,” said the Laird of Ballengeich, whose brow wrinkled into a frown at the thought of the indignity he had suffered.
“It was just as well you left him alone,” commented the cobbler, “for an unarmed man must even take whatever those court gallants think fit to offer, and if wise, he keeps the gap in his face shut, for fear he gets a bigger gap opened in his head. Such doings on the part of the nobles do not make them exactly popular. Still, I am speaking rather freely, and doubtless you are a firm friend of the new king?” and the shoemaker cast a cautious sidelong glance at his visitor.