“She told me she saw Robertson go into the ruins, so I made what haste I could to cleek the callant.”
“It’s all over now,” said Sharpitlaw; “we shall see no more of him to-night; but he shall hide himself in a bean-hool, if he remains on Scottish ground without my finding him. Call back the people, Ratcliffe.”
Ratcliffe hollowed to the dispersed officers, who willingly obeyed the signal; for probably there was no individual among them who would have been much desirous of a rencontre, hand to hand, and at a distance from his comrades, with such an active and desperate fellow as Robertson.
“And where are the two women?” said Sharpitlaw.
“Both made their heels serve them, I suspect,” replied Ratcliffe, and he hummed the end of the old song—
“Then hey play up the rin-awa bride,
For she has taen the gee.”
“One woman,” said Sharpitlaw,—for, like all rogues, he was a great calumniator of the fair sex,*—“one woman is enough to dark the fairest ploy that was ever planned; and how could I be such an ass as to expect to carry through a job that had two in it?
* Note L. Calumniator of the Fair Sex.
But we know how to come by them both, if they are wanted, that’s one good thing.”
Accordingly, like a defeated general, sad and sulky, he led back his discomfited forces to the metropolis, and dismissed them for the night.