empt at a dance in the middle of the floor to the tune of
the Jew-trump, a transparent trick to restore the good-humour of his
roysterers, and the black man who had fetched the spae-wife was standing
at my side surveying me closely out of the corners of his eyes. I stood
to my feet and ganted with great deliberation to pretend I had been
half-sleeping. He yawned too, but with such obvious pretence that I
could not but laugh at him, and he smiled knowingly back.

"Well," said he in English, "you'll allow it's a fair imitation, for I
never heard that a put-on gant was smittal. I see that you are put about
at my wife's fortune: she's a miracle at the business, as I said; she
has some secrets of fate I would rather with her than me. But I would
swear a man may sometime get the better even of fate if he has a warning
of its approach."

"I can scarcely see that by the logic of Porphyrius or Peter Hispanus
with the categories, two scholars I studied at Glascow. But you
are surely a queer man to be a vagabond at the petticoat-tails of a
spae-wife," said I.

"I've had my chance of common life, city and town, and the company of
ladies with broidery and camisole and washen faces," he answered with no
hesitation, "and give me the highroad and freedom and the very brute of
simplicity. I'm not of these parts. I'm not of the Highlands at all, as
you may guess, though I've been in them and through them for many a day.
I see you're still vexed about my woman's reading of your palm. It seems
to have fitted in with some of your experience."

I confessed her knowledge of my private affairs surprised me, and his
black eyes twinkled with humour.

"I'll explain the puzzle for just as much money as you gave her," said
he, "and leave you more satisfied at the end than she did. And there's
no black art at the bottom of my skill either."

"Very well," said I; "here's your drink-money; now tell me the trick of
it, for trick I suppose it is."

He pocketed the money after a vagabond's spit on the coin for luck, and
in twenty words exposed his by-love's device. They had just come from
Inneraora two or three days before, and the tale of the Provost's
daughter in Strongara had been the talk of the town.

"But how did your wife guess the interest of the lady in a man of
Argile's army?" I asked.

"Because she spaed the lady's fortune too," he answered, "and she had to
find out in the neighbourhood what it was like to be before she did so;
you