After we had separated I went to thinking sadly on the stupidity of my performances. This field of thought was a large one and the consideration of it, patch by patch, took some time. It was market day. The bleating of flocks was about me, a pleasant smell of wool and tar and heather—and of bullocks blowing clouds of perfumed breath that condensed upon the frosty air. I was leaning my arms upon the stone dyke of the Market Hill and thinking of Irma, now by my own act rendered more inaccessible than ever—when a hand, heavy as a ham falling from a high ceiling, descended upon my shoulder. A voice of incomparable richness, a little husky perhaps with the morning’s moistening at the King’s Arms, cried out, “So ho, lad! thou dost not want assurance! Thinking on the lasses at thy age! You’re the chap, they tell me, that’s been walkin’ out my daughter in broad daylight! Well, well, cannot find it in my heart to be too hard—did the like mysel’ thirty years ago, and never regretted it. School-master’s son, aren’t ye? Thought I kenned ye by sight! Student lad at the College of Edinburgh? Yes, yes—knew thy father any time ever since he came from the North. No man has anything to say again thy father! Except that he does not lay on the young rascals’ backs half heavily enough! I dare say thou would be noways the worse of a dressing down thysel’!”
All this time he was thumping me on my back, and I was standing before him with such a red face, and (I doubt not) such a compound of idiocy and black despair upon it, that I might have been listening to my doom being pronounced by the mouth of some full-blooded, jovial red judge, with a bunch of seals the size of your fist dangling from his fob and the loaded whip with which he had brought down the highwayman, under his arm.
“Come thou up to the King’s Arms!” he cried; “don’t stand there looking like a dummy. Let’s have the matter out! Thour’t noan shamed, surely! There’s no reason for why. At thy age, laddie—hout-hout—there’s no wrong as young folks go. Come thy ways, lad!”
Obediently I followed in his wake as he elbowed a way through the crowd, salutations pouring in upon him on every side.
“Ah, Birkenbog, what’s brought you into the market this day—sellin’ lambs?”
“That’s as may be—buyin’ calves more belike!”
This was for my benefit, and the old brute, tasting his sorry jest, turned and slapped me again, winking all the time with his formidable brows in a spasmodic and horrible manner, that was like a threat.
Now, I did not mind Lalor Maitland or Galligaskins when my blood was up. But now it was down—far down—indeed in my very boots.
All the time and every step of the way, I was trying in a void and empty brain to evolve plans of escape. I could only hear the rich port-wine chuckle of that great voice, and watch the gleam of those huge silver spurs.
And so presently we came to the King’s Arms. Never was bold wooer in a more hopeless position. Whichever way I turned the case was desperate—if I resisted, I could not expect to fare better than Tam Haggart, whom that whip shank had beaten to the ground on the Corse o’ Slakes. If I let myself drift, then farewell all hope of Irma Maitland.