"But there is one thing," said she, "that I cannot hold with them in. I am no rebel, and I care not to disown the authority of the King!"
"Yet you look not like a sufferer in silence!" I said, smiling at her. "Are you a maid of the Quaker folk?"
At which she was fain to laugh and deny it.
"But," I said, "if you are a King's woman, you will surely find yourself in a strange company to-day. Yet there is one here of the same mind as yourself."
Then she entreated me to tell her who that might be.
"Oh, not I," I replied, "I have had enough of Charles Stuart. I could eat with ease all I like of him, or his brother either! It is my cousin of Lochinvar, who has been lately put to the horn and outlawed."
At the name she seemed much surprised.
"It were well not to name him here," she said, "for the chief men know of his past companying with Claverhouse and other malignants, and they might distrust his honesty and yours."
We had other pleasant talk by the way, and she told me of all her house, of her uncle that was at Kirkcudbright with Captain Winram and the garrison there, and of her father that had forbidden her to go to the field-meetings.
"Which is perhaps why I am here!" she said, glancing at me with her bold black eyes.