ding in your rooms.
Let the facts speak for me. Stravaiging through the streets with the chase
hot on my heels, your open window invited me. I stepped in, footed it
up-stairs, and found refuge in your sleeping apartments, where I took the
liberty of borrowing a change of clothes, mine being over well known at
the New Prison. So too I purloined this good sword and the pistol. That
Sir Robert Volney was my host I did not know till I chanced on some
letters addressed to that name. Believe me, I'm unco sorry to force myself
upon you."

"I felicitate myself on having you as a guest. The vapours had me by the
throat to-night. Your presence is a sufficing tonic for a most oppressive
attack of the blue devils. This armchair has been recommended as an easy
one. Pray occupy it."

Captain Roy tossed the pistol on a table and sat him down in the chair
with much composure. Volney poured him wine and he drank; offered him
fruit and he ate. Together, gazing into the glowing coals, they supped
their mulled claret in a luxurious silence.

The Highlander was the first to speak.

"It's a geyan queer warld this. _Anjour d'hui roi, demain rien._ Yestreen
I gaped away the hours in a vile hole waiting for my craig (neck) to be
raxed (twisted); the night I drink old claret in the best of company
before a cheery fire. The warm glow of it goes to my heart after that dank
cell in the prison. By heaven, the memory of that dungeon sends a shiver
down my spine."

"To-morrow, was it not, that you were to journey to Tyburn and from thence
across the Styx?"

"Yes, to-morrow, and with me as pretty a lot of lads as ever threw steel
across their hurdies. My heart is wae for them, the leal comrades who have
lain out with me in the heather many a night and watched the stars come
out. There's Montagu and Creagh now! We three have tholed together empty
wame and niddering cold and the weariness o' death. The hurly o' the
whistling claymore has warmed our hearts; the sight of friends stark from
lead and steel and rope has garred them rin like water. God, it makes me
feel like a deserter to let them take the lang journey alane. Did you ken
that the lad came back to get me from the field when I was wounded at
Drummossie Moor?"

"Montagu? I never heard that."

"Took his life in his hand to come back to that de'il's caldron where the
red bluid ran like a mountain burn. It iss the boast of the Macdonalds
that they always pay their debts both to friend and