“You shall find me alive to your cost, you scoundrel!” said the irritated Captain.
“Weel, but take patience,—ye will not hear a body speak,” said the Jagger.—“Then there was the lad Mordaunt Mertoun”——
“Ha!” said the Captain, “what of him?”
“Cannot be heard of,” said the pedlar; “clean and clear tint,—a gone youth;—fallen, it is thought, from the craig into the sea—he was aye venturous. I have had dealings with him for furs and feathers, whilk he swapped against powder and shot, and the like; and now he has worn out from among us—clean retired—utterly vanished, like the last puff of an auld wife’s tobacco pipe.”
“But what is all this to the Captain’s clothes, my dear friend?” said Bunce; “I must presently beat you myself unless you come to the point.”
“Weel, weel,—patience, patience,” said Bryce, waving his hand; “you will get all time enough. Weel, there are two folks gane, as I said, forbye the distress at Burgh-Westra about Mistress Minna’s sad ailment”——
“Bring not her into your buffoonery, sirrah,” said Cleveland, in a tone of anger, not so loud, but far deeper and more concentrated than he had hitherto used; “for, if you name her with less than reverence, I will crop the ears out of your head, and make you swallow them on the spot!”
“He, he, he!” faintly laughed the Jagger; “that were a pleasant jest! you are pleased to be witty. But, to say naething of Burgh-Westra, there is the carle at Jarlshof, he that was the auld Mertoun, Mordaunt’s father, whom men thought as fast bound to the place he dwelt in as the Sumburgh-head itsell, naething maun serve him but he is lost as weel as the lave about whom I have spoken. And there’s Magnus Troil (wi’ favour be he named) taking horse; and there is pleasant Maister Claud Halcro taking boat, whilk he steers worst of any man in Zetland, his head running on rambling rhymes; and the Factor body is on the stir—the Scots Factor,—him that is aye speaking of dikes and delving, and such unprofitable wark, which has naething of merchandise in it, and he is on the lang trot, too; so that ye might say, upon a manner, the tae half of the Mainland of Zetland is lost, and the other is running to and fro seeking it—awfu’ times!”
Captain Cleveland had subdued his passion, and listened to this tirade of the worthy man of merchandise, with impatience indeed, yet not without the hope of hearing something that might concern him. But his companion was now become impatient in his turn:—“The clothes!” he exclaimed, “the clothes, the clothes, the clothes!” accompanying each repetition of the words with a flourish of his cane, the dexterity of which consisted in coming mighty near the Jagger’s ears without actually touching them.
The Jagger, shrinking from each of these demonstrations, continued to exclaim, “Nay, sir—good sir—worthy sir—for the clothes—I found the worthy dame in great distress on account of her old maister, and on account of her young maister, and on account of worthy Captain Cleveland; and because of the distress of the worthy Fowd’s family, and the trouble of the great Fowd himself,—and because of the Factor, and in respect of Claud Halcro, and on other accounts and respects. Also we mingled our sorrows and our tears with a bottle, as the holy text hath it, and called in the Ranzelman to our council, a worthy man, Niel Ronaldson by name, who hath a good reputation.”