“Well, I know Duncan, and you give him the true name!” she said; “and if he is an honest man, his wife is honest indeed.”
“Ay,” said I, “they are fine people, and the place is a bonny place.”
“Where in the great world is such another?” she cries; “I am loving the smell of that place and the roots that grow there.”
I was infinitely taken with the spirit of the maid. “I could be wishing I had brought you a spray of that heather,” says I. “And though I did ill to speak with you at the first, now it seems we have common acquaintance, I make it my petition you will not forget me. David Balfour is the name I am known by. This is my lucky day, when I have just come into a landed estate, and am not very long out of a deadly peril, I wish you would keep my name in mind for the sake of Balquhidder,” said I, “and I will yours for the sake of my lucky day.”
“My name is not spoken,” she replied, with a great deal of haughtiness. “More than a hundred years it has not gone upon men’s tongues, save for a blink. I am nameless, like the Folk of Peace.[3] Catriona Drummond is the one I use.”
Now indeed I knew where I was standing. In all broad Scotland there was but the one name proscribed, and that was the name of the Macgregors. Yet so far from fleeing this undesirable acquaintancy, I plunged the deeper in.
“I have been sitting with one who was in the same case with yourself,” said I, “and I think he will be one of your friends. They called him Robin Oig.”
“Did ye so?” cries she. “Ye met Rob?”
“I passed the night with him,” said I.
“He is a fowl of the night,” said she.