‘And what did the stranger say when you told him all this?’ said Glossin.
‘Say?’ echoed the postilion, ‘he said naething at a’; he just stared at them as they walked round the loch upon the ice, as if he could have eaten them, and he never took his ee aff them, or said another word, or gave another glance at the bonspiel, though there was the finest fun amang the curlers ever was seen; and he turned round and gaed aff the loch by the kirkstile through Woodbourne fir-plantings, and we saw nae mair o’ him.’
‘Only think,’ said Mrs. Mac-Candlish, ‘what a hard heart he maun hae had, to think o’ hurting the poor young gentleman in the very presence of the leddy he was to be married to!’
‘O, Mrs. Mac-Candlish,’ said Glossin, ‘there’s been many cases such as that on the record; doubtless he was seeking revenge where it would be deepest and sweetest.’
‘God pity us!’ said Deacon Bearcliff, ‘we’re puir frail creatures when left to oursells! Ay, he forgot wha said, “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay it.”’
‘Weel, aweel, sirs,’ said Jabos, whose hard-headed and uncultivated shrewdness seemed sometimes to start the game when others beat the bush--’weel, weel, ye may be a’ mista’en yet; I’ll never believe that a man would lay a plan to shoot another wi’ his ain gun. Lord help ye, I was the keeper’s assistant down at the Isle mysell, and I’ll uphaud it the biggest man in Scotland shouldna take a gun frae me or I had weized the slugs through him, though I’m but sic a little feckless body, fit for naething but the outside o’ a saddle and the fore-end o’ a poschay; na, na, nae living man wad venture on that. I’ll wad my best buckskins, and they were new coft at Kirkcudbright Fair, it’s been a chance job after a’. But if ye hae naething mair to say to me, I am thinking I maun gang and see my beasts fed’; and he departed accordingly.
The hostler, who had accompanied him, gave evidence to the same purpose. He and Mrs. Mac-Candlish were then reinterrogated whether Brown had no arms with him on that unhappy morning. ‘None,’ they said, ‘but an ordinary bit cutlass or hanger by his side.’
‘Now,’ said the Deacon, taking Glossin by the button (for, in considering this intricate subject, he had forgot Glossin’s new accession of rank), ‘this is but doubtfu’ after a’, Maister Gilbert; for it was not sae dooms likely that he would go down into battle wi’ sic sma’ means.’
Glossin extricated himself from the Deacon’s grasp and from the discussion, though not with rudeness; for it was his present interest to buy golden opinions from all sorts of people. He inquired the price of tea and sugar, and spoke of providing himself for the year; he gave Mrs. Mac-Candlish directions to have a handsome entertainment in readiness for a party of five friends whom he intended to invite to dine with him at the Gordon Arms next Saturday week; and, lastly, he gave a half-crown to Jock Jabos, whom the hostler had deputed to hold his steed.
‘Weel,’ said the Deacon to Mrs. Mac-Candlish, as he accepted her offer of a glass of bitters at the bar, ‘the deil’s no sae ill as he’s ca’d. It’s pleasant to see a gentleman pay the regard to the business o’ the county that Mr. Glossin does.’