Catriona | Page 4

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. {3} 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,