you at this time only
for the favour of his liberty."

"You give yourself hard names," said she.

"Mr. Doig and I would be blithe to take harder at your clever pen," says
I.

"Once more I have to admire the discretion of all menfolk," she replied.
"But if you will not eat, off with you at once; you will be back the
sooner, for you go on a fool's errand. Off with you, Mr. David," she
continued, opening the door.

"He has lowpen on his bonny grey,
He rade the richt gate and the ready;
I trow he would neither stint nor stay,
For he was seeking his bonny leddy."

I did not wait to be twice bidden, and did justice to Miss Grant's
citation on the way to Dean.

Old Lady Allardyce walked there alone in the garden, in her hat and
mutch, and having a silver-mounted staff of some black wood to lean
upon. As I alighted from my horse, and drew near to her with _congees_,
I could see the blood come in her face, and her head fling into the air
like what I had conceived of empresses.

"What brings you to my poor door?" she cried, speaking high through her
nose. "I cannot bar it. The males of my house are dead and buried; I
have neither son nor husband to stand in the gate for me; any beggar can
pluck me by the baird[18]--and a baird there is, and that's the worst of
it yet!" she added, partly to herself.

I was extremely put out at this reception, and the last remark, which
seemed like a daft wife's, left me near-hand speechless.

"I see I have fallen under your displeasure, ma'am," said I. "Yet I will
still be so bold as to ask after Mistress Drummond."

She considered me with a burning eye, her lips pressed close together
into twenty creases, her hand shaking on her staff. "This cowes all!"
she cried. "Ye come to me to speir for her? Would God I knew!"

"She is not here?" I cried.

She threw up her chin and made a step and a cry at me, so that I fell
back incontinent.

"Out upon your leeing throat!" she cried. "What! ye come and speir at
me! She's in jyle, whaur ye took her to--that's all there is to it. And
of a' the beings ever I beheld in breeks, to think it should be you! Ye
timmer scoun'rel, if I had a male left to my name I would have your
jaicket dustit till ye raired."

I thought it not good to delay longer in that place, because I remarked
her passion to be rising. As I turned to the horse-post she even
followed me; and I make no shame to confess that I rode away with the
one stirrup on an