“Gin you ken that there’ll be nae use telling you.”
“A Campbell, I take it.”
He turned his black-a-vised face on me, scowling.
“Or perhaps you’re on the other side of the hedge—implicated in this barelegged rebellion, I dare say.”
Under my smiling, watchful eye he began to grow restless. His hand crept to his breast, and I heard the crackle of papers.
“Deil hae’t, what’s it to you?” he growled.
“To me? Oh, nothing at all. Merely a friendly interest. On the whole I think my first guess right. I wouldn’t wonder but you’re carrying dispatches from Lieutenant Campbell.”
The fellow went all colours and was as easy as a worm on a hook.
“I make no doubt you’ll be geyan tired from long travel, and the responsibility of carrying such important documents must weigh down your spirits,” I drolled, “and so I will trouble you”—with a pistol clapped to his head and a sudden ring of command in my voice—“to hand them over to me at once.”
The fellow’s jaw dropped lankly. He looked hither and thither for a way of escape and found none. He was confronting an argument that had a great deal of weight with him, and out of the lining of his bonnet he ripped a letter.