He read it. “Troth, and ye’re nane sae ill aff,” said he.
“I thought that would maybe vary your opinions,” said I.
“Hout!” said he. “It shows me ye can bribe; but I’m no’ to be bribit.”
“We’ll see about that yet a while,” says I. “And first, I’ll show you that I know what I am talking. You have orders to detain me here till after Thursday, 21st September.”
“Ye’re no’ a’thegether wrong either,” says Andie. “I’m to let ye gang, bar orders contrair, on Saturday, the 23rd.”
I could not but feel there was something extremely insidious in this arrangement. That I was to reappear precisely in time to be too late would cast the more discredit on my tale, if I were minded to tell one; and this screwed me to fighting point.
“Now then, Andie, you that kens the world, listen to me, and think while ye listen,” said I. “I know there are great folks in the business, and I make no doubt you have their names to go upon. I have seen some of them myself since this affair began, and said my say into their faces too. But what kind of a crime would this be that I had committed? or what kind of a process is this that I am fallen under? To be apprehended by some ragged John-Hielandmen on August 30th, carried to a rickle of old stones that is now neither fort nor gaol (whatever it once was) but just the gamekeeper’s lodge of the Bass Rock, and set free again, September 23rd, as secretly as I was first arrested—does that sound like law to you? or does it sound like justice? or does it not sound honestly like a piece of some low, dirty intrigue, of which the very folk that meddle with it are ashamed?”
“I canna gainsay ye, Shaws. It looks unco under-hand,” says Andie. “And werena the folk guid sound Whigs and true-blue Presbyterians I would hae seen them ayont Jordan and Jeroozlem or I would have set hand to it.”
“The Master of Lovat’ll be a braw Whig,” says I, “and a grand Presbyterian.”
“I ken naething by him,” said he. “I hae nae trokings wi’ Lovats.”