“Straight by,” said I, “and looked neither to the right nor left.”
“And that’s queerer yet,” said Alan. “It sticks in my mind, Davie, that we should be stirring. But where to?—deil hae’t! This is like old days fairly,” cries he.
“There is one big differ, though,” said I, “that now we have money in our pockets.”
“And another big differ, Mr. Balfour,” says he, “that now we have dogs at our tail. They’re on the scent; they’re in full cry, David. It’s a bad business and be damned to it.” And he sat thinking hard with a look of his that I knew well.
“I’m saying, Luckie,” says he, when the goodwife returned, “have ye a back road out of this change-house?”
She told him there was, and where it led to.
“Then, sir,” says he to me, “I think that will be the shortest road for us. And here’s good-bye to ye, my braw woman; and I’ll no’ forget thon of the cinnamon-water.”
We went out by way of the woman’s kale-yard, and up a lane among fields. Alan looked sharply to all sides, and seeing we were in a little hollow place of the country, out of view of men, sat down.
“Now for a council of war, Davie,” said he. “But first of all, a bit lesson to ye. Suppose that I had been like you, what would yon old wife have minded of the pair of us? Just that we had gone out by the back gate. And what does she mind now? A fine, canty, friendly, cracky man, that suffered with the stomach, poor body! and was rael ta’en up about the good-brother. O man, David, try and learn to have some kind of intelligence!”