"I am sure of that," said I.
"Let me see," he continued. "To-morrow is the Sabbath. Come to me
on Monday by eight in the morning, and give me our promise until
then."
"Freely given, my lord," said I. "And with regard to what has
fallen from yourself, I will give it for an long as it shall please
God to spare your days."
"You will observe," he said next, "that I have made no employment
of menaces."
"It was like your lordship's nobility," said I. "Yet I am not
altogether so dull but what I can perceive the nature of those you
have not uttered."
"Well," said he, "good-night to you. May you sleep well, for I
think it is more than I am like to do."
With that he sighed, took up a candle, and gave me his conveyance
as far as the street door.
CHAPTER V--IN THE ADVOCATE'S HOUSE
The next day, Sabbath, August 27th, I had the occasion I had long
looked forward to, to hear some of the famous Edinburgh preachers,
all well known to me already by the report of Mr Campbell. Alas!
and I might just as well have been at Essendean, and sitting under
Mr. Campbell's worthy self! the turmoil of my thoughts, which dwelt
continually on the interview with Prestongrange, inhibiting me from
all attention. I was indeed much less impressed by the reasoning
of the divines than by the spectacle of the thronged congregation
in the churches, like what I imagined of a theatre or (in my then
disposition) of an assize of trial; above all at the West Kirk,
with its three tiers of galleries, where I went in the vain hope
that I might see Miss Drummond.
On the Monday I betook me for the first time to a barber's, and was
very well pleased with the result. Thence to the Advocate's, where
the red coats of the soldiers showed again about his door, making a
bright place in the close. I looked about for the young lady and
her gillies: there was never a sign of them. But I was no sooner
shown into the cabinet or antechamber where I had spent so wearyful
a time upon the Saturday, than I was aware of the tall figure of
James More in a corner. He seemed a prey to a painful uneasiness,
reaching forth his feet and hands, and his eyes speeding here and
there without rest about the walls of the small chamber, which
recalled to me with a sense of pity the man's wretched situation.
I suppose it was partly this, and partly my strong continuing
interest in his daughter, that moved me to accost him.
"Give you a good-morning, sir," said I.
"And a good-morning to you, sir," said he.
"You bide tryst with Prestongrange?" I asked.
"I do, sir, and I pray your business with that gentleman be more
agreeable than mine," was his reply.
"I hope at least that yours will be brief, for I suppose you pass
before me," said I.
"All pass before me," he said, with a shrug and a gesture upward of
the open hands. "It was not always so, sir, but times change. It
was not so when the sword was in the scale, young gentleman, and
the virtues of the soldier might sustain themselves."
There came a kind of Highland snuffle out of the man that raised my
dander strangely.
"Well, Mr. Macgregor," said I, "I understand the main thing for a
soldier is to be silent, and the first of his virtues never to
complain."
"You have my name, I perceive"--he bowed to me with his arms
crossed--"though it's one I must not use myself. Well, there is a
publicity--I have shown my face and told my name too often in the
beards of my enemies. I must not wonder if both should be known to
many that I know not."
"That you know not in the least, sir," said I, "nor yet anybody
else; but the name I am called, if you care to hear it, is
Balfour."
"It is a good name," he replied, civilly; "there are many decent
folk that use it. And now that I call to mind, there was a young
gentleman, your namesake, that marched surgeon in the year '45 with
my battalion."
"I believe that would be a brother to Balfour of Baith," said I,
for I was ready for the surgeon now.