I
made sure he was one of Appin's men.

"And what for no?" said he.

"I am seeking somebody," said I; "and it comes in my mind that you will
have news of him. Alan Breck Stewart is his name." And very foolishly,
instead of showing him the button, I sought to pass a shilling in his
hand.

At this he drew back. "I am very much affronted," he said; "and this is
not the way that one shentleman should behave to another at all. The man
you ask for is in France; but if he was in my sporran," says he, "and
your belly full of shillings, I would not hurt a hair upon his body."

I saw I had gone the wrong way to work, and, without wasting time upon
apologies, showed him the button lying in the hollow of my palm.

"Aweel, aweel," said Neil; "and I think ye might have begun with that
end of the stick, whatever! But if ye are the lad with the silver
button, all is well, and I have the word to see that ye come safe. But
if ye will pardon me to speak plainly," says he, "there is a name that
you should never take into your mouth, and that is the name of Alan
Breck; and there is a thing that ye would never do, and that is to offer
your dirty money to a Hieland shentleman."

It was not very easy to apologise; for I could scarce tell him (what was
the truth) that I had never dreamed he would set up to be a gentleman
until he told me so. Neil on his part had no wish to prolong his
dealings with me, only to fulfil his orders and be done with it; and he
made haste to give me my route. This was to lie the night in
Kinlochaline in the public inn; to cross Morven the next day to Ardgour,
and lie the night in the house of one John of the Claymore, who was
warned that I might come; the third day to be set across one loch at
Corran and another at Balachulish, and then ask my way to the house of
James of the Glens, at Aucharn in Duror of Appin. There was a good deal
of ferrying, as you hear; the sea in all this part running deep into the
mountains and winding about their roots. It makes the country strong to
hold and difficult to travel, but full of prodigious wild and dreadful
prospects.

I had some other advice from Neil: to speak with no one by the way, to
avoid Whigs, Campbells, and the "red-soldiers"; to leave the road and
lie in a bush if I saw any of the latter coming, "for it was never
chancy to meet in with them"; and, in brief, to conduct myself like a
robber or a Jacobite agent, as perhaps Neil thought me.

The inn at Kinlochal