When breakfast was concluded, and the party who had sat around the table—Adair, his family, and the stranger—had risen to their feet, the latter, smiling through his natural gravity, asked his host if he would be so good as give him a private interview with him. To this Mr Adair, although not a little surprised at the request, consented, and led the way into a small back-parlour that opened from the room in which they had breakfasted.
"Mr Adair," said the stranger, on their entering this apartment, and having previously secured the door, "I am greatly indebted to you for the kindness and hospitality you have shewn me."
"No the least, sir—no the least," replied the farmer, with a decree of respect in his manner with which his guest's air and bearing had unconsciously inspired him, he did not know how or wherefore—"No the least. I am aye glad to shew civility to them that seek the shelter o' my rufe; it's just a pleasure to me. Ye're not only heartily welcome, sir, to a' ye hae gotten, but to a week o't, an' ye like. I dinna think that I wad be the first to weary o't."
"Have you any objection to try?" said the stranger, with a gentle smile.
"None whatever," replied the hospitable yeoman.
"Well, Mr Adair," said the stranger, with more gravity of manner, "to convert jest into earnest, I have a proposal to make to you. I have been for some time looking out for such a quiet retirement as this is, and a family as respectable and agreeable as yours seems to me to be. Now, having found both of these things to my mind here, I will, if you have no objection, become a boarder with you, Mr Adair, paying you a hundred guineas a-year; and here," he said, drawing out a well-filled purse, and emptying its contents on the table—"here are fifty guineas in advance." And he told off from the heap that lay on the table, the sum he named, and thrust it towards his astonished host. "And let me add," went on the mysterious stranger, "that, if you agree to my proposal, and continue to put up as well together as I expect we shall, I will not limit my payment to the sum I have mentioned. What say you to this, Mr Adair?"
To this Mr Adair could say nothing for some time. Not a word. He was lost in perplexity and amazement—a state of mental difficulty and embarrassment, which he made manifest by scratching his head, and looking, with a bewildered sort of smile, alternately at the gold and its late owner—first at the one, then at the other. At length—
"Well," he said, still scratching his head, "this is a queer sort o' business, an' a turn o' matters I didna look for ava; but I hae seen waur things come o' better beginnins. To tell ye a truth, sir," continued the perplexed yeoman, "I'm no oot o' the need o' the siller. But, if ye'll just stop a minute, if ye please, till I speak to the guidwife on the subject."
And, with this, Adair hurried out of the room; and, having done this, he hurried his wife into another, and told her of what had just taken place, concluding with a—"An', noo, guidwife, what do ye think we should do?"
"Tak the siller, to be sure," replied the latter. "He seems to me to be a decent, canny lad; and, at ony rate, we canna be far wrang wi' ae six months o' him, ony way, seein that he's payin the siller afore haun. That's the grand point, Rab."