He whispered a name which, in this place, I must not write, though afterwards it will be plain enough.
'It is simply not possible,' said I; 'the man you mention is but a bonnet laird, as one might say, with a peel-tower and a holding of half-a-dozen crofts. Why, my master could eat him up saltless, without turning out more than half a parish of his fighting men.'
'Nevertheless,' said Robert Bruce, 'that is the man who stands behind and makes the miracles work, as in Popish days the priests were wont to do behind the altar. Ye are but a set of jigging fools here in Carrick, and the man that pipes to you is the man I've told ye of!'
Then I thought over the matter—all that I knew of the man.
'In truth,' said I, 'I am none so sure that you may not be right.'
Robert Bruce smiled as one that waxes aweary of a babe's prattle.
'For,' said I, 'I mind that I heard him endeavour to win one by promises to the side of Bargany—'
'Pshaw,' said the Minister, 'he would as readily try to win Bargany to the Earl's side, if it suited him to murder them both together. It is his plan to make them fight each other till there are none left—to cut off the heads of the taller poppies as in the ancient tale of Rome. I tell you this man has no side but his own, no desire but his own profit, no end but to make himself supreme in Carrick.'
'And what can I, that am but a squire and a youth, do in the matter?' said I.
'You are on the spot, Launcelot,' said the Minister, kindly. 'I am in Edinburgh, and if things march as evilly as they have been doing of late, it is likely I shall be even further afield than Edinburgh. But you can watch—you can judge whom it boots to warn. You can put in a word—'