vastly calm considering the rabble
dunting on its doors.

"A pot of scalding water and a servant wench at that back-window we came
in by would be a good sneck against all that think of coming after us,"
said John Splendid, stepping into the passage where we had met Mistress
Betty the day before--now with the stair-head door stoutly barred and
barricaded up with heavy chests and napery-aumries.

"God! I'm glad to see you, sir!" cried the Provost, "and you,
Elrigmore!" He came forward in a trepidation which was shared by few of
the people about him.

Young MacLachlan stood up against the wall facing the barricaded door, a
lad little over twenty, with a steel-grey quarrelsome eye, and there was
more bravado than music in a pipe-tune he was humming in a low key to
himself. A little beyond, at the door of the best room, half in and half
out, stood the goodwife Brown and her daughter. A long-legged lad, of
about thirteen, with a brog or awl was teasing out the end of a flambeau
in preparation to light it for some purpose not to be guessed at, and a
servant lass, pock-marked, with one eye on the pot and the other up the
lum, as we say of a glee or cast, made a storm of lamentation, crying in
Gaelic--

"My grief! my grief! what's to come of poor Peggy?" (Peggy being
herself.) "Nothing for it but the wood and cave and the ravishing of the
Ben Bhuidhe wolves."

Mistress Betty laughed at her notion, a sign of humour and courage in
her (considering the plight) that fairly took me.

"I daresay, Peggy, they'll let us be," she said, coming forward to shake
Splendid and me by the hand. "To keep me in braws and you in ashets to
break would be more than the poor creatures would face, I'm thinking.
You are late in the town, Elrigmore."

"Colin," I corrected her, and she bit the inside of her nether lip in a
style that means temper.

"It's no time for dalliance, I think. I thought you had been up the
glen long syne, but we are glad to have your service in this trouble,
Master--Colin" (with a little laugh and a flush at the cheek), "also
Barbreck. Do you think they mean seriously ill by MacLachlan?"

"Ill enough, I have little doubt," briskly replied Splendid. "A corps
of MacNicolls, arrant knaves from all airts, worse than the Macaulays
or the Gregarach themselves, do not come banging at the burgh door of
Inner-aora at this uncanny hour for a child's play. Sir" (he went on,
to MacLachlan), "I mind you said last market-day at Kil