“They are a patrol of the militia,” answered Halcro. “Glorious John touches them off a little sharply,—but then John was a Jacobite,—[(e)]
‘Mouths without hands, maintain’d at vast expense,
In peace a charge, in war a weak defence;
Stout once a-month, they march, a blustering band,
And ever, but in time of need, at hand.’
I fancy they halted just now, taking us, as they saw us on the brow of the hill, for a party of the sloop’s men, and now they can distinguish that you wear petticoats, they are moving on again.”
They came on accordingly, and proved to be, as Claud Halcro had suggested, a patrol sent out to watch the motions of the pirates, and to prevent their attempting descents to damage the country.
They heartily congratulated Claud Halcro, who was well known to more than one of them, upon his escape from captivity; and the commander of the party, while offering every assistance to the ladies, could not help condoling with them on the circumstances in which their father stood, hinting, though in a delicate and doubtful manner, the difficulties which might be in the way of his liberation.
When they arrived at Kirkwall, and obtained an audience of the Provost, and one or two of the Magistrates, these difficulties were more plainly insisted upon.—“The Halcyon frigate is upon the coast,” said the Provost; “she was seen off Duncansbay-head; and, though I have the deepest respect for Mr. Troil of Burgh-Westra, yet I shall be answerable to law if I release from prison the Captain of this suspicious vessel, on account of the safety of any individual who may be unhappily endangered by his detention. This man is now known to be the heart and soul of these buccaniers, and am I at liberty to send him aboard, that he may plunder the country, or perhaps go fight the King’s ship?—for he has impudence enough for any thing.”
“Courage enough for any thing, you mean, Mr. Provost,” said Minna, unable to restrain her displeasure.
“Why, you may call it as you please, Miss Troil,” said the worthy Magistrate; “but, in my opinion, that sort of courage which proposes to fight singly against two, is little better than a kind of practical impudence.”
“But our father?” said Brenda, in a tone of the most earnest entreaty—“our father—the friend, I may say the father, of his country—to whom so many look for kindness, and so many for actual support—whose loss would be the extinction of a beacon in a storm—will you indeed weigh the risk which he runs, against such a trifling thing as letting an unfortunate man from prison, to seek his unhappy fate elsewhere?”