"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."
