"That's odd," he said, on the young lady's imposing on him the character of her deliverer—"verra odd," he repeated, but with considerable embarrassment in his manner; "but I dinna think ye're the young leddy I saved that day; she was a hantle stouter than you, and a guid deal aulder."
"The very same, the very same, I assure you, sir," rejoined his fair companion, laughingly. "There was no accident of the kind you mentioned, at the place you pointed out, during all last summer, but my own. This I know, from our having lived there from the month of March to October. So you must not attempt to balk me of the happiness of believing I have found my deliverer."
Here, then, was a poser for Jamie. The young lady, it seems, was familiar with the place, and knew that no accident, except the one which, by so odd and unhappy a coincidence for Jamie's veracity, had befallen herself, had occurred there at the period he stated. He must, therefore, either confess to a lie, or quietly pocket the compliments that were thrust on him. On the latter he naturally enough determined; but he wanted no more acknowledgments, as he found them sit on him rather awkwardly. In truth, he now began to show as great a reluctance to advert to the subject as he had before shown forwardness, and was most evidently desirous of waiving it altogether; but this his fair companion would by no means allow. She was by far too full of the extraordinary chance, and extraordinary good fortune, as she reckoned it, of having thus so strangely met with her deliverer, to allow the matter to drop.
Before going further, we may as well advert to a circumstance which may have a little startled the reader. This is, how it should have happened that Jamie's story of a rescue should have had a counterpart in fact. As to this matter, we can only vouch for its being perfectly true. It was a coincidence—certainly an odd one, but not more odd than many that have happened, and are daily occurring. The facts of the case, as we may say, were these:—The young lady's father, who was a wealthy Glasgow merchant, possessed a very pretty little cottage, which he and his family occasionally occupied during the summer months, at a short distance from the banks of the Clyde, and near to the very spot which Jamie had so unfortunately chosen as the scene of his exploit; and, still more unluckly for Jamie, it happened that the young lady in question had actually met with such an accident as that which formed the groundwork of his romance. Moreover, she had, in the case alluded to, been rescued from a watery grave by a person who chanced to be angling near the spot at the time; but this person had no sooner brought her on shore, being assured that her recovery was certain, although she appeared at the time insensible, and seen her safely in the charge of some people who had hurried to the scene of the accident, than he had suddenly and abruptly withdrawn, and was no more seen or heard of. These, then, were the facts of that case which so strangely tallied with Jamie's fiction. It is true that, had the fact and the fiction been carefully collated, a good many small discrepancies would have appeared, that would have at once stripped Jamie of his self-assumed honours; but this not having been done, and the leading incident being the same in both, no such result took place.
To resume our story. On the arrival of the coach at Glasgow—an event to
which Jamie had been looking forward with great impatience, as the only occurrence that could relieve him from his present awkward predicament—he bade his fair companion a hurried good-by, and, heedless of her remonstrances and entreaties, was hastening down the side of the coach, to make his escape, when the father of the young lady, to whom the latter had hastily communicated the discovery of her deliverer, by leaning over the top of the coach, and speaking through the upper part of the doorway, suddenly intercepted him.
"Too bad, sir, too bad," said the old gentleman, smilingly, "to try and escape us again. But we have you this time, and will take care that you do not." Saying this, Mr. Alston held out his hand to Jamie, and, on grasping the latter's, shook it with the most cordial warmth, expressing, at the same time, the deepest sense of the mighty obligation under which he lay to him, for having so nobly saved his daughter from an untimely death—"An obligation," said the good old gentleman, "which I can never repay."
"Dinna speak o't, sir, dinna speak o't," said Jamie, in the greatest embarrassment, and wishing, the while, that his tongue had been blistered when he first opened his mouth on the ill-starred subject of the rescuing. "Dinna speak o't," he said, "it't just what ae fellow-cratur should do for anither." And, having said this, Jamie was about to make a sudden bolt, when the old gentleman, perceiving his intention, dexterously hooked his arm within Jamie's right; while his daughter, who had by this time joined them, did the same by his left, and thus secured him.
"Away from us you shall not get," said Mr. Alston.
"Indeed you shall not," interposed his daughter.