It chanced the girl turned suddenly about, so that I saw her face for the first time. There is no greater wonder than the way the face of a young woman fits in a man’s mind, and stays there, and he could never tell you why; it just seems it was the thing he wanted. She had wonderful bright eyes like stars, and I daresay the eyes had a part in it; but what I remember the most clearly was the way her lips were a trifle open as she turned. And, whatever was the cause, I stood there staring like a fool. On her side, as she had not known there was anyone so near, she looked at me a little longer, and perhaps with more surprise, than was entirely civil.
It went through my country head she might be wondering at my new clothes; with that, I blushed to my hair, and at the sight of my colouring it is to be supposed she drew her own conclusions, for she moved her gillies farther down the close, and they fell again to this dispute, where I could hear no more of it.
I had often admired a lassie before then, if scarce so sudden and strong; and it was rather my disposition to withdraw than to come forward, for I was much in fear of mockery from the womenkind. You would have thought I had now all the more reason to pursue my common practice, since I had met this young lady in the city street, seemingly following a prisoner, and accompanied with two very ragged indecent- like Highlandmen. But there was here a different ingredient; it was plain the girl thought I had been prying in her secrets; and with my new clothes and sword, and at the top of my new fortunes, this was more than I could swallow. The beggar on horseback could not bear to be thrust down so low, or, at least of it, not by this young lady.
I followed, accordingly, and took off my new hat to her the best that I was able.
“Madam,” said I, “I think it only fair to myself to let you understand I have no Gaelic. It is true I was listening, for I have friends of my own across the Highland line, and the sound of that tongue comes friendly; but for your private affairs, if you had spoken Greek, I might have had more guess at them.”
She made me a little, distant curtsey. “There is no harm done,” said she, with a pretty accent, most like the English (but more agreeable). “A cat may look at a king.”
“I do not mean to offend,” said I. “I have no skill of city manners; I never before this day set foot inside the doors of Edinburgh. Take me for a country lad – it’s what I am; and I would rather I told you than you found it out.”
“Indeed, it will be a very unusual thing for strangers to be speaking to each other on the causeway,” she replied. “But if you are landward bred it will be different. I am as landward as yourself; I am Highland, as you see, and think myself the farther from my home.”
“It is not yet a week since I passed the line,” said I. “Less than a week ago I was on the braes of Balwhidder.”
“Balwhither?” she cries. “Come ye from Balwhither! The name of it makes all there is of me rejoice. You will not have been long there, and not known some of our friends or family?”
“I lived with a very honest, kind man called Duncan Dhu Maclaren,” I replied.
“Well, I know Duncan, and you give him the true name!” she said; “and if he is an honest man, his wife is honest indeed.”
“Ay,” said I, “they are fine people, and the place is a bonny place.”
“Where in the great world is such another!” she cries; “I am loving the smell of that place and the roots that grow there.”
I was infinitely taken with the spirit of the maid. “I could be wishing I had brought you a spray of that heather,” says I. “And, though I did ill to speak with you at the first, now it seems we have common acquaintance, I make it my petition you will not forget me. David Balfour is the name I am known by. This is my lucky day, when I have just come into a landed estate, and am not very long out of a deadly peril. I wish you would keep my name in mind for the sake of Balwhidder,” said I, “and I will yours for the sake of my lucky day.”
“My name is not spoken,” she replied, with a great deal of haughtiness. “More than a hundred years it has not gone upon men’s tongues, save for a blink. I am nameless, like the Folk of Peace. Catriona Drummond is the one I use.”
Now indeed I knew where I was standing. In all broad Scotland there was but the one name proscribed, and that was the name of the Macgregors. Yet so far from fleeing this undesirable acquaintancy, I plunged the deeper in.
“I have been sitting with one who was in the same case with yourself,” said I, “and I think he will be one of your friends. They called him Robin Oig.”
“Did ye so?” cries she. “Ye met Rob?”
“I passed the night with him,” said I.
“He is a fowl of the night,” said she.
“There was a set of pipes there,” I went on, “so you may judge if the time passed.”
“You should be no enemy, at all events,” said she. “That was his brother there a moment since, with the red soldiers round him. It is him that I call father.”
“Is it so?” cried I. “Are you a daughter of James More’s?”
“All the daughter that he has,” says she: “the daughter of a prisoner; that I should forget it so, even for one hour, to talk with strangers!”
Here one of the gillies addressed her in what he had of English, to know what “she” (meaning by that himself) was to do about “ta sneeshin.” I took some note of him for a short, bandy-legged, red- haired, big-headed man, that I was to know more of to my cost.
“There can be none the day, Neil,” she replied. “How will you get ‘sneeshin,’ wanting siller! It will teach you another time to be more careful; and I think James More will not be very well pleased with Neil of the Tom.”
“Miss Drummond,” I said, “I told you I was in my lucky day. Here I am, and a bank-porter at my tail. And remember I have had the hospitality of your own country of Balwhidder.”
“It was not one of my people gave it,” said she.
“Ah, well.” said I, “but I am owing your uncle at least for some springs upon the pipes. Besides which, I have offered myself to be your friend, and you have been so forgetful that you did not refuse me in the proper time.”
“If it had been a great sum, it might have done you honour,” said she; “but I will tell you what this is. James More lies shackled in prison; but this time past they will be bringing him down here daily to the Advocate’s. . . .”
“The Advocate’s!” I cried. “Is that . . . ?”
“It is the house of the Lord Advocate Grant of Prestongrange,” said she. “There they bring my father one time and another, for what purpose I have no thought in my mind; but it seems there is some hope dawned for him. All this same time they will not let me be seeing him, nor yet him write; and we wait upon the King’s street to catch him; and now we give him his snuff as he goes by, and now something else. And here is this son of trouble, Neil, son of Duncan, has lost my four- penny piece that was to buy that snuff, and James More must go wanting, and will think his daughter has forgotten him.”
I took sixpence from my pocket, gave it to Neil, and bade him go about his errand. Then to her, “That sixpence came with me by Balwhidder,” said I.
“Ah!” she said, “you are a friend to the Gregara!”
“I would not like to deceive you, either,” said I. “I know very little of the Gregara and less of James More and his doings, but since the while I have been standing in this close, I seem to know something of yourself; and if you will just say ‘a friend to Miss Catriona’ I will see you are the less cheated.”
“The one cannot be without the other,” said she.
“I will even try,” said I.