My master was a mightily curious man in one particular. He could not abide any repair of people coming and going with him on his journeyings. And if in a quieter time he had gotten his will, he would have ridden here and there without any attendance whatever—so kindly and unsuspicious of evil was his nature. On the New Year night he had bidden me to remain within doors, because, as he said, he knew his way home full well from Sir Thomas Nisbett's house. Also, I suspect, he wished me not to observe whether he retained his usual walk and conversation, after seeing the New Year in with the Provost and the other Sir Thomas, for the custom of Maybole was exceedingly hospitable.
New Year's Day had been dark and gloomy. The promise of oncoming foul weather was in the feel of the raw, drooky air. No sooner was it dark than a smurr of rain began to fell, very wetting and thick, so that even with torches it had been impossible to see many paces. We reached our lodging at the town house of Culzean before the night had set in, and as the supper was at six of the clock, it was no long time before my master took his way to Sir Thomas Nisbett's house. He left me seated by the fire with a book of chronicles of the wars to read. As soon, however, as he had issued forth upon the street, I took my bare sword in my hand, and by another door I sallied forth also. For in such a town as Maybole there are always ill-set folk that would gladly do an injury to a well-kenned and well-respected man like my master. And much more now when the feud had waxed so hot and high.
But it chanced that Sir Thomas, so soon almost as he set foot over the doorstep, greeted his fellow-guest, the Provost of the town—who, as became his office, had with him one to hold the tail of his furred gown out of the clarty mud, and also a lad with a torch running before him. Nevertheless, I followed on in that darker dusk which succeeds the glare of a torch. On our way we had to pass through the garden behind the house of Sir Thomas Nisbett, which was full of groset bushes, divided by high hedges of yew and box. I came softly after them, and abode still by the gate when the Provost and his train had passed through with our good knight in their midst. The pair of them were talking jovially together as they went, like men with toom kytes that know they are going in to be filled with good cheer.
'I declare I am as hungry as a moudiewort in a black frost,' said the douce Provost. 'I haena seen meat the day. What wi' hearkening to auld wives denouncing ane anither for kenned and notour witches, and sending men of the tribes of little Egypt to the Tolbooth, my life has no been my ain.'
My master laughed loudly and heartsomely.
'It is weel to be hungry and ken o' meat,' he replied, in the words of the well-kenned proverb.
And the pair of them laughed with their noses in the air, easily mirthful like men that strengthen themselves with the comfortable smell of dinner blown through an open door.
But I question much whether they had laughed so heartily if they had seen what I saw at that moment. And that was a face looking over the height of the yew hedge—a face wrapped about the mouth with a grey plaid and with a grey brimmed hat pulled close down over the eyes. As the flickering of the torch died out at the entering in of the house door, I saw the man raise his hand in a warning and forbidding gesture, as though he made a signal to men who could see him, but who were hidden from my sight.
This was enough for me. I resolved that those who plotted evil behind backs should have to war with Launce Kennedy, who, at least, was no mean foe, and one not given to wearing his eyes under his coat.
Not for a moment after this could I leave the garden, for one of the villains might have gone to the window and shot at my master through the glass—as one had done years before to good Maister John Knox (who, as I have heard tell, reformed religion in this land) on an evening he sat quietly reading his book and drinking of his ale in his own house in the High Street of Edinburgh.