The thing was a mystery to us.
But at last Nell, whose eyes were like an eagle's for keenness—though, as I have before observed, of heavenly beauty, cried out, 'It is Robert Harburgh—we are saved!' Which was no great things of a saying, for I myself had saved her ten times during that last night and day, if it came to any talk of saving. Yet I think from that moment she began to draw away a little from me. Whether as remembering some of my old ploys with that tricksy lass who was now Robert Harburgh's wife, or partly lest she should have seemed to be over-ready in owning her love for me.
At any rate, after I had thought over her unkindness and sudden chill a little while, I was not sure that it might not be after all the best sign in the world. For as the reader of this chronicle must have gathered, I am a man of some penetration in these matters, and it is not given to any woman to twine Launcelot Kennedy in a knot about her little finger.
Also I have had very considerable experience.
'Faith,' cried Robert Harburgh, when he had ridden up, 'whom have we here?'
I answered him with another question.
'Where gat ye that horse, Robert?'
'I got it,' he replied, readily and also calmly, 'from a man that is little likely to need it again, at least for a tale of months.'
'From Thomas of Drummurchie?' I asked.
'Who else?' said Harburgh, simply, as though the fact had been sufficient explanation; as, indeed, it was—in the way he said it.