CHAPTER VIII.

THE BRAVO

The next day, August 29th, I kept my appointment at the Advocate’s in a

coat that I had made to my own measure, and was but newly ready.

“Aha,” says Prestongrange, “you are very fine to-day; my misses are to

have a fine cavalier. Come, I take that kind of you. I take that kind

of you, Mr. David. O, we shall do very well yet, and I believe your

troubles are nearly at an end.”

“You have news for me?” cried I.

“Beyond anticipation,” he replied. “Your testimony is after all to be

received; and you may go, if you will, in my company to the trial,

which in to be held at Inverary, Thursday, 21st _proximo_.”

I was too much amazed to find words.

“In the meanwhile,” he continued, “though I will not ask you to renew

your pledge, I must caution you strictly to be reticent. To-morrow your

precognition must be taken; and outside of that, do you know, I think

least said will be soonest mended.”

“I shall try to go discreetly,” said I. “I believe it is yourself that

I must thank for this crowning mercy, and I do thank you gratefully.

After yesterday, my lord, this is like the doors of Heaven. I cannot

find it in my heart to get the thing believed.”

“Ah, but you must try and manage, you must try and manage to believe

it,” says he, soothing-like, “and I am very glad to hear your

acknowledgment of obligation, for I think you may be able to repay me

very shortly”—he coughed—“or even now. The matter is much changed. Your

testimony, which I shall not trouble you for to-day, will doubtless

alter the complexion of the case for all concerned, and this makes it

less delicate for me to enter with you on a side issue.”

“My Lord,” I interrupted, “excuse me for interrupting you, but how has

this been brought about? The obstacles you told me of on Saturday

appeared even to me to be quite insurmountable; how has it been

contrived?”

“My dear Mr. David,” said he, “it would never do for me to divulge

(even to you, as you say) the councils of the Government; and you must

content yourself, if you please, with the gross fact.”

He smiled upon me like a father as he spoke, playing the while with a

new pen; methought it was impossible there could be any shadow of

deception in the man: yet when he drew to him a sheet of paper, dipped

his pen among the ink, and began again to address me, I was somehow not

so certain, and fell instinctively into an attitude of guard.

“There is a point I wish to touch upon,” he began. “I purposely left it

before upon one side, which need be now no longer necessary. This is

not, of course, a part of your examination, which is to follow by

another hand; this is a private interest of my own. You say you

encountered Alan Breck upon the hill?”

“I did, my lord,” said I.

“This was immediately after the murder?”

“It was.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“I did.”

“You had known him before, I think?” says my lord, carelessly.

“I cannot guess your reason for so thinking, my lord,” I replied, “but

such in the fact.”

“And when did you part with him again?” said he.

“I reserve my answer,” said I. “The question will be put to me at the

assize.”

“Mr. Balfour,” said he, “will you not understand that all this is

without prejudice to yourself? I have promised you life and honour;

and, believe me, I can keep my word. You are therefore clear of all

anxiety. Alan, it appears, you suppose you can protect; and you talk to

me of your gratitude, which I think (if you push me) is not

ill-deserved. There are a great many different considerations all

pointing the same way; and I will never be persuaded that you could not

help us (if you chose) to put salt on Alan’s tail.”

“My lord,” said I, “I give you my word I do not so much as guess where

Alan is.”

He paused a breath. “Nor how he might be found?” he asked.

I sat before him like a log of wood.

“And so much for your gratitude, Mr. David!” he observed. Again there

was a piece of silence. “Well,” said he, rising, “I am not fortunate,

and we are a couple at cross purposes. Let us speak of it no more; you

will receive notice when, where, and by whom, we are to take your

precognition. And in the meantime, my misses must be waiting you. They

will never forgive me if I detain their cavalier.”

Into the hands of these Graces I was accordingly offered up, and found

them dressed beyond what I had thought possible, and looking fair as a

posy.

As we went forth from the doors a small circumstance occurred which

came afterwards to look extremely big. I heard a whistle sound loud and

brief like a signal, and looking all about, spied for one moment the

red head of Neil of the Tom, the son of Duncan. The next moment he was

gone again, nor could I see so much as the skirt-tail of Catriona, upon

whom I naturally supposed him to be then attending.

My three keepers led me out by Bristo and the Bruntsfield Links; whence

a path carried us to Hope Park, a beautiful pleasance, laid with

gravel-walks, furnished with seats and summer-sheds, and warded by a

keeper. The way there was a little longsome; the two younger misses

affected an air of genteel weariness that damped me cruelly, the eldest

considered me with something that at times appeared like mirth; and

though I thought I did myself more justice than the day before, it was

not without some effort. Upon our reaching the park I was launched on a

bevy of eight or ten young gentlemen (some of them cockaded officers,

the rest chiefly advocates) who crowded to attend upon these beauties;

and though I was presented to all of them in very good words, it seemed

I was by all immediately forgotten. Young folk in a company are like to

savage animals: they fall upon or scorn a stranger without civility, or

I may say, humanity; and I am sure, if I had been among baboons, they

would have shown me quite as much of both. Some of the advocates set up

to be wits, and some of the soldiers to be rattles; and I could not

tell which of these extremes annoyed me most. All had a manner of

handling their swords and coat-skirts, for the which (in mere black

envy) I could have kicked them from the park. I daresay, upon their

side, they grudged me extremely the fine company in which I had

arrived; and altogether I had soon fallen behind, and stepped stiffly

in the rear of all that merriment with my own thoughts.

From these I was recalled by one of the officers, Lieutenant Hector

Duncansby, a gawky, leering Highland boy, asking if my name was not

“Palfour.”

I told him it was, not very kindly, for his manner was scant civil.

“Ha, Palfour,” says he, and then, repeating it, “Palfour, Palfour!”

“I am afraid you do not like my name, sir,” says I, annoyed with myself

to be annoyed with such a rustical fellow.

“No,” says he, “but I wass thinking.”

“I would not advise you to make a practice of that, sir,” says I. “I

feel sure you would not find it to agree with you.”

“Tit you effer hear where Alan Grigor fand the tangs?” said he.

I asked him what he could possibly mean, and he answered, with a

heckling laugh, that he thought I must have found the poker in the same

place and swallowed it.

There could be no mistake about this, and my cheek burned.

“Before I went about to put affronts on gentlemen,” said I, “I think I

would learn the English language first.”

He took me by the sleeve with a nod and a wink and led me quietly

outside Hope Park. But no sooner were we beyond the view of the

promenaders, than the fashion of his countenance changed. “You tam

lowland scoon’rel!” cries he, and hit me a buffet on the jaw with his

closed fist.

I paid him as good or better on the return; whereupon he stepped a

little back and took off his hat to me decorously.

“Enough plows I think,” says he. “I will be the offended shentleman,

for who effer heard of such suffeeciency as tell a shentlemans that is

the king’s officer he cannae speak Cot’s English? We have swords at our

hurdles, and here is the King’s Park at hand. Will ye walk first, or

let me show ye the way?”

I returned his bow, told him to go first, and followed him. As he went

I heard him grumble to himself about _Cot’s English_ and the _King’s

coat_, so that I might have supposed him to be seriously offended. But

his manner at the beginning of our interview was there to belie him. It

was manifest he had come prepared to fasten a quarrel on me, right or

wrong; manifest that I was taken in a fresh contrivance of my enemies;

and to me (conscious as I was of my deficiencies) manifest enough that

I should be the one to fall in our encounter.

As we came into that rough rocky desert of the King’s Park I was

tempted half-a-dozen times to take to my heels and run for it, so loath

was I to show my ignorance in fencing, and so much averse to die or

even to be wounded. But I considered if their malice went as far as

this, it would likely stick at nothing; and that to fall by the sword,

however ungracefully, was still an improvement on the gallows. I

considered besides that by the unguarded pertness of my words and the

quickness of my blow I had put myself quite out of court; and that even

if I ran, my adversary would probably pursue and catch me, which would

add disgrace to my misfortune. So that, taking all in all, I continued

marching behind him, much as a man follows the hangman, and certainly

with no more hope.

We went about the end of the long craigs, and came into the Hunter’s

Bog. Here, on a piece of fair turf, my adversary drew. There was nobody

there to see us but some birds; and no resource for me but to follow

his example, and stand on guard with the best face I could display. It

seems it was not good enough for Mr. Dancansby, who spied some flaw in

my manœuvres, paused, looked upon me sharply, and came off and on, and

menaced me with his blade in the air. As I had seen no such proceedings

from Alan, and was besides a good deal affected with the proximity of

death, I grew quite bewildered, stood helpless, and could have longed

to run away.

“Fat deil ails her?” cries the lieutenant.

And suddenly engaging, he twitched the sword out of my grasp and sent

it flying far among the rushes.

Twice was this manœuvre repeated; and the third time when I brought

back my humiliated weapon, I found he had returned his own to the

scabbard, and stood awaiting me with a face of some anger, and his

hands clasped under his skirt.

“Pe tamned if I touch you!” he cried, and asked me bitterly what right

I had to stand up before “shentlemans” when I did not know the back of

a sword from the front of it.

I answered that was the fault of my upbringing; and would he do me the

justice to say I had given him all the satisfaction it was

unfortunately in my power to offer, and had stood up like a man?

“And that is the truth,” said he. “I am fery prave myself, and pold as

a lions. But to stand up there—and you ken naething of fence!—the way

that you did, I declare it was peyond me. And I am sorry for the plow;

though I declare I pelief your own was the elder brother, and my heid

still sings with it. And I declare if I had kent what way it wass, I

would not put a hand to such a piece of pusiness.”

“That is handsomely said,” I replied, “and I am sure you will not stand

up a second time to be the actor for my private enemies.”

“Indeed, no, Palfour,” said he; “and I think I was used extremely

suffeeciently myself to be set up to fecht with an auld wife, or all

the same as a bairn whateffer! And I will tell the Master so, and fecht

him, by Cot, himself!”

“And if you knew the nature of Mr. Simon’s quarrel with me,” said I,

“you would be yet the more affronted to be mingled up with such

affairs.”

He swore he could well believe it; that all the Lovats were made of the

same meal and the devil was the miller that ground that; then suddenly

shaking me by the hand, he vowed I was a pretty enough fellow after

all, that it was a thousand pities I had been neglected, and that if he

could find the time, he would give an eye himself to have me educated.

“You can do me a better service than even what you propose,” said I;

and when he had asked its nature—“Come with me to the house of one of

my enemies, and testify how I have carried myself this day,” I told

him. “That will be the true service. For though he has sent me a

gallant adversary for the first, the thought in Mr. Simon’s mind is

merely murder. There will be a second and then a third; and by what you

have seen of my cleverness with the cold steel, you can judge for

yourself what is like to be the upshot.”

“And I would not like it myself, if I was no more of a man than what

you wass!” he cried. “But I will do you right, Palfour. Lead on!”

If I had walked slowly on the way into that accursed park my heels were

light enough on the way out. They kept time to a very good old air,

that is as ancient as the Bible, and the words of it are: “_Surely the

bitterness of death is passed_.” I mind that I was extremely thirsty,

and had a drink at Saint Margaret’s well on the road down, and the

sweetness of that water passed belief. We went through the sanctuary,

up the Canongate, in by the Netherbow, and straight to Prestongrange’s

door, talking as we came and arranging the details of our affair. The

footman owned his master was at home, but declared him engaged with

other gentlemen on very private business, and his door forbidden.

“My business is but for three minutes, and it cannot wait,” said I.

“You may say it is by no means private, and I shall be even glad to

have some witnesses.”

As the man departed unwillingly enough upon this errand, we made so

bold as to follow him to the ante-chamber, whence I could hear for a

while the murmuring of several voices in the room within. The truth is,

they were three at the one table—Prestongrange, Simon Fraser, and Mr.

Erskine, Sheriff of Perth; and as they were met in consultation on the

very business of the Appin murder, they were a little disturbed at my

appearance, but decided to receive me.

“Well, well, Mr. Balfour, and what brings you here again? and who is

this you bring with you?” says Prestongrange.

As for Fraser, he looked before him on the table.

“He is here to bear a little testimony in my favour, my lord, which I

think it very needful you should hear,” said I, and turned to

Duncansby.

“I have only to say this,” said the lieutenant, “that I stood up this

day with Palfour in the Hunter’s Pog, which I am now fery sorry for,

and he behaved himself as pretty as a shentlemans could ask it. And I

have creat respects for Palfour,” he added.

“I thank you for your honest expressions,” said I.

Whereupon Duncansby made his bow to the company, and left the chamber,

as we had agreed upon before.

“What have I to do with this?” says Prestongrange.

“I will tell your lordship in two words,” said I. “I have brought this

gentleman, a King’s officer, to do me so much justice. Now I think my

character is covered, and until a certain date, which your lordship can

very well supply, it will be quite in vain to despatch against me any

more officers. I will not consent to fight my way through the garrison

of the castle.”

The veins swelled on Prestongrange’s brow, and he regarded me with

fury.

“I think the devil uncoupled this dog of a lad between my legs!” he

cried; and then, turning fiercely on his neighbour, “This is some of

your work, Simon,” he said. “I spy your hand in the business, and, let

me tell you, I resent it. It is disloyal, when we are agreed upon one

expedient, to follow another in the dark. You are disloyal to me. What!

you let me send this lad to the place with my very daughters! And

because I let drop a word to you..... Fy, sir, keep your dishonours to

yourself!”

Simon was deadly pale. “I will be a kick-ball between you and the Duke

no longer,” he exclaimed. “Either come to an agreement, or come to a

differ, and have it out among yourselves. But I will no longer fetch

and carry, and get your contrary instructions, and be blamed by both.

For if I were to tell you what I think of all your Hanover business it

would make your head sing.”

But Sheriff Erskine had preserved his temper, and now intervened

smoothly. “And in the meantime,” says he, “I think we should tell Mr.

Balfour that his character for valour is quite established. He may

sleep in peace. Until the date he was so good as to refer to it shall

be put to the proof no more.”

His coolness brought the others to their prudence; and they made haste,

with a somewhat distracted civility, to pack me from the house.