"Uh! uh!—hem! hem!" said the Bailie, clearing his throat as well as he could, "I suld study to say as little on that score as might be—least said is sunest mended."
"But if you were called on by the courts, as you term them, of justice," she again demanded, "what then would be your answer?"
The Bailie looked this way and that way, like a person who meditates an escape, and then answered in the tone of one who, seeing no means of accomplishing a retreat, determines to stand the brunt of battle—"I see what you are driving me to the wa' about. But I'll tell you't plain, kinswoman,—I behoved just to speak according to my ain conscience; and though your ain gudeman, that I wish had been here for his ain sake and mine, as wool as the puir Hieland creature Dougal, can tell ye that Nicol Jarvie can wink as hard at a friend's failings as onybody, yet I'se tell ye, kinswoman, mine's ne'er be the tongue to belie my thought; and sooner than say that yonder puir wretch was lawfully slaughtered, I wad consent to be laid beside him—though I think ye are the first Hieland woman wad mint sic a doom to her husband's kinsman but four times removed."
It is probable that the tone and firmness assumed by the Bailie in his last speech was better suited to make an impression on the hard heart of his kinswoman than the tone of supplication he had hitherto assumed, as gems can be cut with steel, though they resist softer metals. She commanded us both to be placed before her. "Your name," she said to me, "is Osbaldistone?—the dead dog, whose death you have witnessed, called you so."
"My name is Osbaldistone," was my answer.
"Rashleigh, then, I suppose, is your Christian name?" she pursued.
"No,—my name is Francis."
"But you know Rashleigh Osbaldistone," she continued. "He is your brother, if I mistake not,—at least your kinsman and near friend."
"He is my kinsman," I replied, "but not my friend. We were lately engaged together in a rencontre, when we were separated by a person whom I understand to be your husband. My blood is hardly yet dried on his sword, and the wound on my side is yet green. I have little reason to acknowledge him as a friend."
"Then," she replied, "if a stranger to his intrigues, you can go in safety to Garschattachin and his party without fear of being detained, and carry them a message from the wife of the MacGregor?"