"I hae nae trokings wi' Lovats."
"No, it'll be Prestongrange that you'll be dealing with," said I.
"Ah, but I'll no tell ye that," said Andie.
"Little need when I ken," was my retort.
"There's just the ae thing ye can be fairly sure of, Shaws," says
Andie. "And that is that (try as ye please) I'm no dealing wi'
yoursel'; nor yet I amnae goin' to," he added.
"Well, Andie, I see I'll have to be speak out plain with you," I
replied. And told him so much as I thought needful of the facts.
He heard me out with some serious interest, and when I had done,
seemed to consider a little with himself.
"Shaws," said he at last, "I'll deal with the naked hand. It's a
queer tale, and no very creditable, the way you tell it; and I'm
far frae minting that is other than the way that ye believe it. As
for yoursel', ye seem to me rather a dacent-like young man. But
me, that's aulder and mair judeecious, see perhaps a wee bit
further forrit in the job than what ye can dae. And here the
maitter clear and plain to ye. There'll be nae skaith to yoursel'
if I keep ye here; far free that, I think ye'll be a hantle better
by it. There'll be nae skaith to the kintry--just ae mair
Hielantman hangit--Gude kens, a guid riddance! On the ither hand,
it would be considerable skaith to me if I would let you free.
Sae, speakin' as a guid Whig, an honest freen' to you, and an
anxious freen' to my ainsel', the plain fact is that I think ye'll
just have to bide here wi' Andie an' the solans."
"Andie," said I, laying my hand upon his knee, "this Hielantman's
innocent."
"Ay, it's a peety about that," said he. "But ye see, in this
warld, the way God made it, we cannae just get a'thing that we
want."
CHAPTER XV--BLACK ANDIE'S TALE OF TOD LAPRAIK
I have yet said little of the Highlanders. They were all three of
the followers of James More, which bound the accusation very tight
about their master's neck. All understood a word or two of
English, but Neil was the only one who judged he had enough of it
for general converse, in which (when once he got embarked) his
company was often tempted to the contrary opinion. They were
tractable, simple creatures; showed much more courtesy than might
have been expected from their raggedness and their uncouth
appearance, and fell spontaneously to be like three servants for
Andie and myself.
Dwelling in that isolated place, in the old falling ruins of a
prison, and among endless strange sounds of the sea and the sea-
birds, I thought I perceived in them early the effects of
superstitious fear. When there was nothing doing they would either
lie and sleep, for which their appetite appeared insatiable, or
Neil would entertain the others with stories which seemed always of
a terrifying strain. If neither of these delights were within
reach--if perhaps two were sleeping and the third could find no
means to follow their example--I would see him sit and listen and
look about him in a progression of uneasiness, starting, his face
blenching, his hands clutched, a man strung like a bow. The nature
of these fears I had never an occasion to find out, but the sight
of them was catching, and the nature of the place that we were in
favourable to alarms. I can find no word for it in the English,
but Andie had an expression for it in the Scots from which he never
varied.
"Ay," he would say, "ITS AN UNCO PLACE, THE BASS."
It is so I always think of it. It was an unco place by night, unco
by day; and these were unco sounds, of the calling of the solans,
and the plash of the sea and the rock echoes, that hung continually
in our ears. It was chiefly so in moderate weather. When the
waves were anyway great they roared about the rock like thunder and
the drums of armies, dreadful but merry to hear; and it was in the
calm days that a man could daunt himself with listening--not a
Highlandman only, as I several times experimented on myself, so
many still, hollow noises haunted and reverberated in the porches
of the rock.