“Ah, that’s easier said than done. When you once shut a spring door on yourself, it isn’t by saying ‘I will’ that you get out. You’ll not have forgotten the first night we met, when you jumped down on my back from the wall of the Grey Friars’ Church?”
“I remember it very distinctly, but which was the more surprised, you or I, I have never yet been able to settle. I know I was very much taken aback.”
“Not so much as I,” interrupted the cobbler dryly, “when you came plump on my shoulders.”
“I was going to say,” went on Ballengeich, “that I’m afraid my explanation about taking a short cut was rather incoherent.”
“Oh, no more than mine, that I was there to catch a thief. It was none of my business to learn why you were in the kirkyard.”
“By the way, did you ever hear any more of the thief you were after?”
“That’s just the point I am coming to. The man we were after was his youthful majesty, James the Fifth, of Scotland.”
“What, the king!” exclaimed the amazed laird.
“Just him, and no other,” replied the cobbler, “and very glad I am that the ploy miscarried, although I fear it’s to come on again.”