At other times my thoughts were very
different, I recalled how strong I had expressed myself both to
Rankeillor and to Stewart; I reflected that my captivity upon the
Bass, in view of a great part of the coasts of Fife and Lothian,
was a thing I should be thought more likely to have invented than
endured; and in the eyes of these two gentlemen, at least, I must
pass for a boaster and a coward. Now I would take this lightly
enough; tell myself that so long as I stood well with Catriona
Drummond, the opinion of the rest of man was but moonshine and
spilled water; and thence pass off into those meditations of a
lover which are so delightful to himself and must always appear so
surprisingly idle to a reader. But anon the fear would take me
otherwise; I would be shaken with a perfect panic of self-esteem,
and these supposed hard judgments appear an injustice impossible to
be supported. With that another train of thought would he
presented, and I had scarce begun to be concerned about men's
judgments of myself, than I was haunted with the remembrance of
James Stewart in his dungeon and the lamentations of his wife.
Then, indeed, passion began to work in me; I could not forgive
myself to sit there idle: it seemed (if I were a man at all) that
I could fly or swim out of my place of safety; and it was in such
humours and to amuse my self-reproaches that I would set the more
particularly to win the good side of Andie Dale.
At last, when we two were alone on the summit of the rock on a
bright morning, I put in some hint about a bribe. He looked at me,
cast back his head, and laughed out loud.
"Ay, you're funny, Mr. Dale," said I, "but perhaps if you'll glance
an eye upon that paper you may change your note."
The stupid Highlanders had taken from me at the time of my seizure
nothing but hard money, and the paper I now showed Andie was an
acknowledgment from the British Linen Company for a considerable
sum.
He read it. "Troth, and ye're nane sae ill aff," said he.
"I thought that would maybe vary your opinions," said I.
"Hout!" said he. "It shows me ye can bribe; but I'm no to be
bribit."
"We'll see about that yet a while," says I. "And first, I'll show
you that I know what I am talking. You have orders to detain me
here till after Thursday, 21st September."
"Ye're no a'thegether wrong either," says Andie. "I'm to let you
gang, bar orders contrair, on Saturday, the 23rd."
I could not but feel there was something extremely insidious in
this arrangement. That I was to re-appear precisely in time to be
too late would cast the more discredit on my tale, if I were minded
to tell one; and this screwed me to fighting point.
"Now then, Andie, you that kens the world, listen to me, and think
while ye listen," said I. "I know there are great folks in the
business, and I make no doubt you have their names to go upon. I
have seen some of them myself since this affair began, and said my
say into their faces too. But what kind of a crime would this be
that I had committed? or what kind of a process is this that I am
fallen under? To be apprehended by some ragged John-Hielandman on
August 30th, carried to a rickle of old stones that is now neither
fort nor gaol (whatever it once was) but just the gamekeeper's
lodge of the Bass Rock, and set free again, September 23rd, as
secretly as I was first arrested--does that sound like law to you?
or does it sound like justice? or does it not sound honestly like a
piece of some low dirty intrigue, of which the very folk that
meddle with it are ashamed?"
"I canna gainsay ye, Shaws. It looks unco underhand," says Andie.
"And werenae the folk guid sound Whigs and true-blue Presbyterians
I would has seen them ayont Jordan and Jeroozlem or I would have
set hand to it."
"The Master of Lovat'll be a braw Whig," says I, "and a grand
Presbyterian."
"I ken naething by him," said he.