The days, however, were fine and dry, and a fanning wind from the north blew in our faces as we went. It was near to the road-end of the Duchrae, up which I had so often helped the cars (or sledges of wood with birch twigs for wheels) to drag the hay crop, that we met Roderick MacPherson, a Highland man-servant of the Laird of Balmaghie, riding one pony and leading other two. We knew them at once as those which for common were ridden by Kate McGhie and Maisie Lennox.
"Hey, where away, Roderick?" cried Wat, as soon as he set eyes on the cavalcade.
The fellow looked through his lowering thatch of eyebrows and grunted, but whether with stupidity or cunning it had been hard to say.
"Speak!" said Wat, threateningly; "you can understand well enough, when they cry from the kitchen door that it is porridge time."
"The leddies was tak' a ride," MacPherson answered, with a cock in his eye that angered Wat, whose temper, indeed, in these days was not of the most enduring.
"Where did you leave them?" cried he of Lochinvar.
"It was on a muir, no far frae a burnside; I was fair forget where!" said Roderick, with a look of the most dense stupidity.
Then I saw the fellow had been commanded not to tell, so I said to Wat,
"Come on, Wat. Kate has ordered him not to tell us."
"This is a bonny like thing," said Wat, angrily, "that I canna truss him up and make him tell, only because I am riding with the hill-folk. Oh, that I were a King's man of any sort for half an hour."